This clickbait headline has been making the rounds for a few days now. Replit’s CEO is not saying that AI has “replaced” professional coders, he’s talking about their company’s target market.

It’s like a website provider making tools to simplify website creation for small businesses so that any mom-and-pop store can have a basic website, and saying “we’re not aiming these tools at professional website authors.” They’re simply not trying to occupy that niche.

Get ready for a bunch of unskilled people making the shittiest apps imaginable.

Those apps have their place. Why shouldn’t an “unskilled” person be able to make some little tool that does some specific task they need done? I’m a professional coder and I make “shitty little apps” all the time for throwaway tasks. I think it’ll be empowering for the average user to be able to do that sort of thing too.

Obviously, don’t go buying such apps and installing them on your own phone or whatever. That’s where professionals still have their place.