"The average punter does not want to build software. They don't want to prompt software." That line, from writer JA Westenberg, cuts against one of the loudest narratives in AI right now: the idea that tools like Cursor, Bolt, and Claude Code will turn everyone into a developer.
Westenberg's argument is simple and, frankly, hard to dismiss. The tech industry keeps assuming that the only thing standing between normal people and software creation is technical skill. Remove the barrier, and millions of new builders emerge. But that assumption ignores how most humans actually behave.
We've Seen This Movie Before
Desktop publishing arrived in the 1980s and didn't turn everyone into graphic designers. WordPress made website creation accessible over two decades ago, and most small business owners still pay someone else to build their sites. The pattern repeats: accessible tools get adopted by people who already wanted to create, while the majority continues buying pre-made solutions.
The AI coding pitch follows the same script. "Now anyone can build an app!" sounds compelling in a demo. In practice, the hardest part of software development was never typing the code. It's figuring out what the software should actually do, how edge cases should work, and what happens when requirements change. Westenberg calls this cognitive work something that generates "functionally zero dopamine" for most people. That tracks with what I've seen - the people most excited about vibe coding were already tinkering with code before these tools existed.
The Self-Selection Problem
There's a real blind spot in how the AI developer community talks about these tools. The people posting about building apps with AI prompts are self-selected tinkerers. They enjoy the process of specification and iteration. They represent a tiny fraction of the population, but their enthusiasm creates an echo chamber that mistakes their preferences for universal demand.
Most people don't want to configure, prompt, debug, or iterate. They want to open an app and have it work. That's why SaaS companies with good defaults keep winning over platforms that offer maximum flexibility. The real market isn't "everyone becomes a developer." It's "developers become 10x faster" - which is valuable, but a very different story than the one being sold.
None of this means AI coding tools aren't useful. Cursor and Claude Code are genuinely making experienced developers more productive. But the gap between "useful for developers" and "turns non-developers into developers" is enormous, and the industry keeps pretending it isn't there.