I suspect AI is going to result in the bottom falling out of the market for simple apps.
React made simple webapps a case of just gluing dependencies together and much more approachable to a generalist developer than the previous generation of web development was. But native apps weren’t affected in the same way. With AI I suspect we’ll see a lot of simple apps, the ones that really aren’t doing much other than CRUD operations on a remote API, become very heavily AI generated by generalist developers.
But there will still remain a healthy market for working on considerably more complex apps.
These kinds of apps are basically a spreadsheet. The same way anybody can whip up an adhoc spreadsheet without being a programmer, financial analyst, or anything in particular this will enable similar adhoc for many applications outside of the Excellike GUIs of the world. In many ways, this is all that’s needed to unlock a huge opportunity for individuals to build their own tools, just like they have with spreadsheets. But it also means the risk inherent in this type of paradigm is large, just like it is with spreadsheets. But, I think we shoulder the risk. Maybe we find ways to reduce it or put other governance in place. But it’s too big of a super power to ignore and be completely risk adverse. Spreadsheet errors have crashed the markets in the past but I guarantee their use has not diminished and I guarantee there and trades being made a this moment based on formula errors and the magnitude just happens to be smaller so we collectively tolerate it an accept it as part of the process.
Will the complex apps be discoverable though, and if not, will the devs bother at all? I feel like this would be a win for old-school open source, where people would do it for the love of the aim, and better vetted app stores like F-Droid might win out
Surprisingly I'm seeing a rapid increase of discoverability for my apps FROM LLMs. The flood of Claude/ChatGPT users finding my apps right after I get a basic site up, before I've told anyone it exists, is astonishing.
If you are solving a problem users are searching for, you will be found and found faster than ever via LLMs.
Complexity doesn’t matter. Nobody jumps on the App Store and thinks, “I’m going to install something complex today.”
Presumably complex problems are lacking solutions and if that requires a complexity to solve, people will discover it. Not because it’s complex, because prior solutions were lacking.
React made simple webapps a case of just gluing dependencies together and much more approachable to a generalist developer than the previous generation of web development was. But native apps weren’t affected in the same way. With AI I suspect we’ll see a lot of simple apps, the ones that really aren’t doing much other than CRUD operations on a remote API, become very heavily AI generated by generalist developers.
But there will still remain a healthy market for working on considerably more complex apps.