AI is everywhere today, but for people who want to create an application, where is it really helping?

As a person who codes, I can’t imagine any coder not using it, just as I can’t imagine typing a text without auto-complete. For a non-coder, AI can build a prototype for you if you carefully know how to ask it.

But will it replace coders today? No, but it will shift the way we think of them.

Currently, AI makes it easier to create basic code, the code that creates an application menu or a form to accept data. The list of what AI can code is long, and it’s getting longer every day.

The nuance of an application’s requirements has become much more important than the task of building it.

But if you think coding is simply a series of tasks to complete, you’re missing the difference between a mechanical engineer and a 3D printer. Humans envision the design and the interaction with an object, and the 3D printer just builds it. AI can be used as a tool for building applications, but it’s just that—a tool for building, not an architect.

Today’s AI lacks higher-level tasks such as architecture—the application’s overall design. The nuance of an application has become much more important than the task of building it. While AI will get better at this, its overall design today is to regurgitate patterns that humans have already used, not to think of a clever new way of doing things. For the moment, that’s the exclusive domain of humans.

In the near future, I see the market for a coder who can only “code” shrinking. But for application architects and designers, the market is already exploding. They are becoming the “Prompt Engineers” of our future. They’ll be good at coaxing AI to build what they envision.

So when you hear, “AI will eliminate coders!”, that’s a gross generalization. A better explanation is that it will alter how coders do their work, recasting them as deep thinkers of the problems presented to them. They will spend more time designing at the whiteboard and less time coding at the keyboard.

After all, what is an application but a representation of what it’s architected to do?