[namaria]

There was a lot of low hanging fruit in the mid 2000s, when Ruby and Python made creating relatively complex software easier. Now most obvious app markets (hotel/travel booking, social media, ordering food, dating, ride hailing/sharing) and everything web is three layers of framework tweaking. I think clueless 'coders' had a window in time where they could actually produce a lot of economic value but now they're producing more harm then good. A lot of people come out of bootcamps now thinking 'programming = editing high level languages in a text box' and don't have the depth of knowledge to design and run sane production environments.

[farmin]

This was true for me. I made ok money off a simple web service I created in 2013 with no formal education. But I think it still exists to a lesser degree now, probably only if you have some other domain specific specialisation though, contacts etc. e.g I am a farmer than knows how to code a little which is fun.