Bar has been both lowered and raised.
It's a tool that most programemrs (or shall we call them "developers") must learn to use efficiently, but the details will always remain with the developer itself, as all it can do, is remix what's already been developed before.
It can't innovate.
At the same time, technically the access and introduction to developing has been made simpler, but it lacks actual teaching skills, so you're on your own, but it's still a good tool to have.
However slop is kinda massive. If you're misunderstanding your product as "content" you're gonna fail.
AI is very good in generating "something else" out of "something" but unless you actually know what you're doing, you won't escape the shit-spiral.
Sometimes slop is all you need, you see this in content generation for background imagery, music, and things like voice generation. As long as your software is just "content" like shitting out massive amounts of candy-crush-like games to fill up an app-store portfolio, it's enough. You can just vibe code that. But not when the details are important. Slop content "creators" like people making "jingles", elevator music, illustrations, or creating stock-footage of things like "people doing a stand-up meeting, laughing", or "people enjoying an after-work beer at a bar" is something that is full of errors in its details, but that doesn't matter. Whenever accuracy is of the essence, I doubt AI will be something you can just vibe code.
Back in the day, people thought things like lawyers and doctors are obsolete, because of the internet and search engines.
The people whining about "AI GON TAKE OUR JERBS!" are actually these content creators I've mentioned earlier. Not so much people working on stuff that actually matters.
I'd even consider AI content is a good litmus test, whether the work is even worth doing. If an AI generated "monthly overview report" ends up being better than the writeup of some clerk, it just means that work is really not all that important. Just like the backdrop for a youtube video, an ad, etc.
t. design engineer