Winter Rant

What excites you about the future of software? And what are some areas of our life’s which will be positively impacted by future software? [Threads] [Wayback Archive]

No-code excites me about the future of software. I was not sold on this for a long time, and then this past winter, I had a bit of a realization: No Code tools give non-programmers a great sense of control and ownership on the software systems they depend on, because for the first time they are directly involved in building that software system. And this is where, I think GenAI systems can serve as a force multiplier.

Personal story: I had this realization when I was helping my Dad build a new website using WordPress. I was ready to build the site for him. But the more we worked on it, the more feedback he had, and kept getting frustrated about things not looking like he wanted them to. That’s when I started teaching him how to build things with WordPress. It took a little while, but we got there! That was a massively empowering moment for him — something I had not appreciated completely before.

On that note, I think we will see non-programmers adopt automation a lot more in their daily lives. and this is where things like No-code tools, and alerting/reminder systems really get me going. Here is a dumb use case: a weekly purchase order to buy and get groceries delivered. My Mom set this up with her local grocer via WhatsApp (in this case without code). But I think being able to automate routine things like that will free up time for other things in life — and I think software can help!