You took this statistic out of your rear end?
That doesn't mean you couldn't carve out a niche providing hand built software to people it does matter to, because the software industry is large, but saying 'zero percent of the market isn't willing to pay for it' isn't really wrong. It's just a rounding error that does care.
(One massive caveat though ... the argument assumes that 'hand built' means 'higher quality than AI-assisted', and that's probably not true for >99% of developers.)
We are less than a year into good-enough coding agents, and as of right now there is not a single job opening I see that offers a salary for non-AI output.
My experience of job postings advertised is exactly the same as everyone else's for the same filters.
This is not a "my personal feeling is that...", this is "I can't find an advertisement, posting or role that doesn't demand, instruct or promise that the successful candidate would be working closely with AI".
We're less than a year in, and I do not see dev jobs advertised on (for example) indeed.com with any sort of criteria omitting AI.
Imagine what it would look like in 5 years.
Says the guy with a pseudonym, active only since 2022.
This is a provably false statement, given that eg. Handmade Hero exists and sold a bunch of pre-orders despite never coming close to completion, and spawned an entire community that prides themselves on handmade software. There are also content creators like Tsoding who make a living by having people watch them do handmade coding for the love of the craft.
Some non-zero percentage of people will also always be willing to pay a premium for superior-quality software. The author's thesis isn't that LLMs can produce S-grade software but that 'nobody cares' about quality and that C-grade software is good enough. While it's true that software quality isn't greatly valued at scale, I think the minority who care is larger than the minority who care about premium woodworking goods, particularly because as an artisan software developer you more or less have access to the global market of every single person who cares, while as an artisan woodworker you mostly only have access to the market of people in your town who care.
This also overlooks that LLMs are politically divisive and there are movements to boycott them and shame people for using them. There's a niche for organic, free-range, vegan, etc. products at the supermarket for conscientious objectors, there will undoubtedly be such a niche for software. All the more so if LLMs reach a point where they actually are putting everyone out of a job, they will get much more divisive. There was already an assassination attempt against Altman and his promises to destroy everyone's livelihood haven't even come to fruition.
People are increasingly associating “AI art” with cheap slop. I wonder if the same will ever happen to programming.
This is a small part of the whole users, but.. why not. People who value hand-by wood goods are also a small part.
Also, there are also communities which slow down AI integration - like Zig. Maybe they will alive
Virtually nobody has their favourite app developer.
The classic “AI images were everywhere in 2023, but I rarely see them now” phenomenon.