My friend is writing a new book. He said this thing that made me stop and think:
“Every Company Is Now a Developer Tools Company”
If you think about it, this is true. With $20 and an ok computer, anyone in the world can create a website. Connect Zappier to some spreadsheet automation. Create a live dashboard that pulls data from an API. This expansion in ability means companies must enable API access to stay relevant. Aka. My friend gave Apple as the antithesis - how Apple Notes are unfriendly and don't support APIs. That resonates with people who want to build their tailored note system.
These are not complicated software tasks for an experienced developer. But rather some glue between systems. It does give every person in the world a tremendous power to build things. Sometimes you don't need deep expertise in a distributed system. You simply need to hook together some solutions.
There is an opportunity for people to transition from consumers to builders, which is an opportunity for more people to write code for a living.
Did you vibe this?
This is not me saying that vibe coding is good. On the contrary, it will create a huge slope of bad code coupled with bad practices. People learning solely from AI without consulting a human expert will fall short. Hit limitations, or just be asked by AI to move from Java to Python. Give it a try, you'll see! After some line and some chatting, AI defaults to Python code - hilarious! Or, in AI builders' language, it loses context.
There is always a need for real expertise and a software best practice foundation. Fundamentals are never going away. Demand is going to increase.
Platforms are here to stay
Now, companies should think even further. not only APIs but also design products as platforms. Apple should expand its ecosystem to enable everyone in the world to build solutions using its platform. Democratized building leads to faster experimentation, lower barriers, and more diverse builders.
Of course, the risk is technical debt at scale if companies or individuals never bridge into professional practices. But this is why there are experienced software engineers and a new generation of developers that will need to tighten their fundamentals.
To summarize
The future won’t be about who can build—it will be about who can build well. The future belongs to great builders.
That’s my Monday rumbling. What’s been keeping you busy lately?
Till then—stay curious, stay open.
Adi
This was a great way to start thinking about what’s important.
I agree with you on the limitations of vibe coding and I share the fear of a future where we’ve forgotten what it takes to build.
My favorite thing about my tenure at Twilio was the notion of “being builders” and “staying curious”. In a world where curiosity is outsourced to LLMs, we’re headed for an future where original thought and ideas (by humans) will be the exception not the norm, and the norm will be so normal it’ll end up boring simply due to a lack of novelty.