Probably true. But isn't this a failure of software engineering? We should have plenty of simple ways to build simple apps by now.

Maybe you should be able to go down to your local web app shop, give a couple simple requirements, and get back an app in a week. So why can't you? Well there's actually a good reason for that - the customer would never be satisfied by the result, and building a satisfactory result requires many iterations back and forth. Rapid feedback is essential to software development.

Okay, an alternative is to give the customer an app builder so they can make their own app. We've done this many times in history, it always takes the customer time to make the app, the results are always mediocre, but it does work, why do we keep doing this and then stopping it? I'm not really sure. Why isn't there a visual basic today (apart from Roblox) or even a Frontpage (apart from Squarespace)? My best guess is the customer tires of working on the app or never had time for it in the first place. Why won't AI suffer the same fate? Really no idea.