You could just learn to code
The generative AI wave has made it very apparent to me that the world is absolutely out to get software engineers. I don't remember feeling this way over low code and no code solutions when they emerged to take my job.
Right now though, I feel like a witch and everybody is carrying a match.
The thing is, every potential extinction event I've been through has had a commonality. The option to learn how to code has always been there. It's arguably the best option as the world continues to throw code at most problems.
Learning to code gives you the correct language and experiences to work with tools that have convinced the bean counters that cutting a team size exponentially can somehow still yield the same output.
Sure a model can generate a bunch of code, but if you yourself have no experience coding, you have no idea how good or bad it is.
A large swath of people are seeing the magic of a pile of code minutiae being generated as the end of developers. In reality, they lack any sort of reference point to be able to know if what they saw was a work or not.
I may feel like I have a target on my back, but I know I'm not a mark.
So why do so few take these opportunities as evidence that maybe learning to code could be beneficial? Same reason a pill to help you get skinny seemingly put the body positivity movement on mute.
The easy path is the preferred path by most, even when they don't take the easy path for other things. Unsure how people can train to and run a marathon, but then think learning to code is some sort of unattainable thing.
Oh that's right, because the perception that an LLM just generated a barely functional app in 14 seconds. All while making it seem complex because it told you how many tokens it had to consume to do it.
I love the tools that we have today, but I wish more people would take the time to learn to code. If nothing else, use the tools to help you learn how to code, rather than blindly accepting generated content that you legitimately wouldn't know is a hot mess or not.