Everyone can code

Hi frens,

Recently in Taiwan, one friend from g0v community created an app ranked top one free downloads, developed by “vibe coding”, which means coding with AI without being a professional software engineer. One news report described it as “The era when everyone can code has come.”

What’s interesting to me is, we used to believe everyone can code years ago. Let’s start with simpler examples.

A webpage written in HTML, is purely plain text. Then we had FrontPage or iWeb, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools to make it even easier to build a website. However, social networks emerge and eliminate the needs and abilities to build a website. On the other hand, web frontend engineering ditches most WYSIWYG tools in favor of pure coding, to better deal with more complex needs. Those changes make it harder for everyone to code.

Even for application development, we had interface builder to create user interface without writing any code:

Interface Builder or Storyboard, become obsolete or even deprecated when SwiftUI evolves. Now Apple believes Everyone Can Code with Swift and SwiftUI. You need to write code anyway.

There’s also some “low-code” or “no-code” tools. For example, Apple platform has built-in “Shortcuts” app that could automate procedures, and actually serve as a simple “no-code” tool. You could share what you build with iCloud, or publish it on RoutineHub with the community.

While AI seems to have larger impact on how we code, the coding environment has evolved to have more tools for us. Coding might have been easier, but the whole product development still takes a lot of efforts to meet human’s complex needs.

Your friend,

Denken