I won't be crying wolf on the death of the software industry. But something happened at home this week that shows where things are going, and it's worth looking at both sides of it: how fast the technology moves, and how slowly people do.
Can you build an iPhone app for me?
At home I ramble on about how crazy AI is, and more often than not I get eye rolls. This time was different. My daughter had heard that I now had an Apple developer account and was building my own apps, and she came to ask: can you also build an iPhone app for me? I said I didn't know, let me check. I checked, and I could. Actually quite simple.
The backstory: she had an idea for an app, but the apps on the market were either not good, or very much after your data. So she was thinking about creating her own, because the options out there didn't satisfy her. Proud dad moment.
I introduced her to my process. I gave her a voice recorder and asked her to record exactly what she needs: her goals, what she wants, what she likes, what she dislikes. She recorded almost 40 minutes of ideas. As usual, I gave that to AI. It came back with a list of questions, each one got clarified, then came the plan, the requirements, the detailed specifications, and it built the app. The whole process took about an hour, voice note included, and it made her understand why I've been so excited.
Why I won't cry wolf
Stories like this one feed the idea that the software industry is about to die. I don't think so. The driving factor is not the pace of technology. It's the pace of adoption, and adoption relies on people, most of whom aren't tech-savvy. That takes a lot of time.
I learned this the hard way with OfficeBots, my second startup. The premise was as simple as I could make it: email-based assistants, using the one tool every business already has. And still, selling it to non-technical buyers meant setting up every bot myself, because many of them couldn't describe what they wanted. The technology was ready long before the buyers were.
Build or buy
But the trend is clear. People will be able to create their own personal apps, very easily. My daughter did it with a voice note. In the last few weeks I've replaced 4 apps I used every day (my music player, my notes editor, my file manager and my screen recorder), each starting from a few minutes of talking to my computer.
Businesses will follow the same path. In more and more cases, it will be more efficient to build your own than to buy from someone else. Not everywhere, and not overnight, because of the people part. But the question of build or buy is moving, and it's moving towards build.