There was a time when building apps was a niche skill and the forte of genius coders, who would not mind sitting for long hours in front of their desktops, typing in thousands of lines of code. To anyone who wished if machines could help more in building apps, here’s some news.
Google has launched Firebase Studio as a full-stack AI workspace which can be used to build apps without actually typing in a line of code. All a person needs to do is to type in a prompt to describe what kind of app and functionalities one needs in the app, and voila! Firebase Studio will deliver a fully functional app by creating all lines of code using AI. Powered by Gemini, the agentic development platform can build, code, launch, iterate on and monitor the mobile and web apps, along with monitoring APIs, frontends and backends directly from a browser. If you have a Google account, you can simply go and try the preview feature for free.
The platform can have some positive implications. It can democratize access to app building skills to a lot more people, while breaking the barriers of skills required to build functional web and mobile apps. Anyone looking for a quick prototype of a production-ready app can now leverage AI to build the software that once was a niche of capable coders. Built on Code OSS project, Firebase Studio brings together the capabilities of Project IDX and Genkit with specialized AI agents and Gemini. All a user needs to do is to visit the Firebase Studio from a browser and type in a prompt. The platform imports repositories from GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket and local machine to build apps using diverse languages, such as Java, Node.js, .NET, Python and Go. Frameworks such as Android, Flutter, Angular, React, Vue.js and Next.js are used as well.
Runtime services and tools are available to help users to emulate, test, refactor and debug an app, along with documentation of the code. With just a few prompts, the platform simplifies the coding workflows, and takes care of bug fixes, running unit tests, Docker containers, business logic, etc.
What happens to coders and app developers is certainly a big question that is being seldom answered. Will such platforms ring the death knell for the jobs of coders? Will AI eventually take up all the jobs in software sector that need higher order cognitive capabilities? Will humans eventually move away from applying their IQ on coding to activities that require even higher levels of cognitive intelligence?
These questions linger. While the Firebase Studio is a leap forward in the AI space, many questions have arisen with the launch of a platform that makes the jobs of coders redundant.
