It was obviously huge. You could see it taking off. Yet a lot of people proudly displayed ignorance and backed each other up on it to the point that discussion around the topic was often drowned out by the opposition to change. Now today it takes minutes of playing with ai coding agents to realise that it’s extremely useful and going to be similarly huge.
Resistance to change is not a virtue!
They're not alone either, a bunch of the AI bankroll is coming from people who were also sold on crypto taking over the world.