Refactoring tools in my IDE: In some cases where I could use the refactoring tools in my IDE I will ask the assistant to do something for me instead, of course it will also make changes that the refactoring tools won't do such as tear apart a complicated if-then-else ladder.

Photo retouching: there are plenty of photo retouching jobs that can be done easily with AI or with the tools built into Photoshop, which one is better depends on the situation. I really wish I had an AI tool to make masks ("cut out the person") that I could then use with the other tools or with AI generation.

GT often uses the wrong word or changes the tone of a message. AI always gets the intent right and always seems to use the most appropriate words given the original intent/meaning (or at least something way better than what GT does). And, whenever there is doubt, I can argue with it, so AI is happy to explain the nuances and differences between the possibilities.

Edit: I recently had to send a semi-formal email requesting something from a government employee in a different country (using a language I'm a beginner at), and AI was immensely helpful in getting the right tone (neither informal or too formal) and everything else right. The Google Translate version of what I had originally written was miles and miles and miles worse than what AI helped me craft.

"slapping on a chatbot" is a v0 attempt at re-imagining what software looks like. It's not very inventive and sometimes it sucks, but it's easy to understand and implement and we're very early in this era.

The distribution of change also isn't uniform. Excel might not have changed dramatically, but software engineering apps are evolving rapidly. Clawdbot/moltbot hint at new forms of personal computing. Look for the future where the optimism is.

I always had to do the requirements gathering, detailed work items, detailed architecture when assigning the work to someone else. Now I have the bandwidth to do it myself and not have to coordinate with three other people.

I just opened up an old PC to install Moltbot. I deleted WebStorm while waiting on the installation as that's one piece of software I don't expect to use again.

It's like saying that the discovery of steel did not replace any existing weapon or tool.

I am a non-technical founder (background in growth/marketing). Two years ago, building a production web application required either (1) learning to code for months/years, (2) hiring engineers at $150-200K/year, or (3) outsourcing to contractors and praying.

None of those options were viable for me to validate an idea quickly.

With Cursor, v0, and similar tools, I built our entire frontend in production. Not a prototype, not an MVP in the old sense, but actual production code serving real customers. Features that would have cost $5-10K to spec and outsource, I can now build in an afternoon.

The tools did not "replace Excel" or any specific application. What they replaced was my dependency on other people to execute technical work. That is a much more profound shift than feature replacement.

The comparison to traditional applications is a category error. AI is not competing with Excel. It is competing with the labor market.