But it's doing something novel, something the same people haven't done before, otherwise there would be no point in writing it.

Sure you can move the goalposts here, but OP clearly meant to say software tasks cannot be estimated because people only work on novel problems, since everything else is "not worth doing" (what a massively privileged thing to say by the way).

Just because something hasn't been done the exact same way you're doing, that doesn't mean you can't apply a generic solution. I have never changed a tyre on an SUV before, yet I do know how to do so based on my previous experience with a sedan. The same applies to a car mechanic; even if I bring a brand new car to the workshop they have never seen before, I can and should expect them to be able to (at least roughly) estimate how long a tyre change is going to take.

Couldn't agree more!

You develop a sense for when the time is right over the years, by maintaining over engineered pieces of shit, many written by yourself.

To beginners it seems like coming up with the idea and building it is the difficult part; it isn't, not even close. The only difficult parts worth mentioning is keeping complexity on a tight leash and maintaining conceptual integrity.

I've never used auto correct, and likely never will; it's the first thing I turn off on a new phone.

Part of the problem for me is communicating in multiple languages, switching back and forth. It just ends up causing more frustration and mistakes.

I've done several custom frameworks for solo projects in Java & Go, all based on server generated content, inspired by Seaside but more RESTy.

Also used Flask and similar libraries for back ends.

Did one project in Rails, which was a pretty bad experience in comparison, and killed any motivation to look into Django.

Also did plenty of Spring in Java professionally, unfortunately.

As long as you don't give a shit about data integrity, you don't need foreign keys.

I don't think blaming this mess on users makes much sense.

Smartphones on the other hand...

Maybe if they could learn how to switch their intelligence on, that would help more?

I can see why Microsoft likes AI and thinks it's great for writing code.

The kind of code AI writes is the kind of code Microsoft has always written.

I'm not convinced building nuclear plants to generate fake crap faster is here to stay, it better not or we're toast.

But surely you agree those plants would get used either way?

Sure, if we make it through the AI storm.