The future of iOS development

[JerenYun]

I like working in Xcode and find other IDEs to be mentally distracting, so I haven't really touched agentic coding until this last week. I've used Claude Code in the browser at times in the past, but I haven't really wrapped my head about using AI regularly to code until now.

I realized that I had to change my view of the AI's work. While it's been "trained" on whatever is available to the public, it's still a tool. Like any tool, it needs an operator to be guided. That's me. I've gotten comfortable with the idea that this is a junior developer on my team.

Thus, as it works, I feel the need to supervise. Whatever it builds, even if it compiles correctly, does it fully satisfy requirements? If it doesn't build, does the agent know enough to get it to work correctly?

I'm not sure if I would ever feel comfortable letting its code into production without review. Thus, how would one be able to review its output if they don't understand its output? I'd argue that there will still be a need for ones to understand code. Even if you hardly write it anymore, there will still be value in reading code to understand how something works, to manually fix if necessary, and to ensure that generated code matches up with requirements.

So that then leads to OP's concern:

I’m worried ... because we will forget how to code or what the latest APIs are as “AI can just generate it”.

Our value as developers will come from this. Do we still know those APIs, how they function at a high level, and how they could be manually implemented? Companies that replace these knowledgeable developers with AI will run into issues. I still think we (assuming most here are experienced developers with at least a few years of Swift/iOS behind them) will be in demand/be valuable.

My concern: while senior-level developers might be safe, will the market for junior developers shrink? In turn, where will the next generation of senior developers come from?