Post by Amelia Bellamy-Royds

Catching up with a friend last night, he wants to show me his new app.

It's a scheduling app for his dog-walking business, with built-in emails, invoicing, expense tracking, and financial reports ready to send to his accountant.

He's not a programmer. He developed it over 6 months by asking ChatGPT to add one feature at a time.

I warned him to double-check the numbers. I warned him to make sure he can still use it fully if the AI subscription becomes unaffordable.

But it seems useful.
1/?

This is the real paradigm shift that "vibe coding" genAI creates. Not software companies trying to make more code with fewer programmers. But non-programmers building tools for themselves.

An Edmonton company, Jobber, makes an app very similar to the one my friend built: scheduling & invoicing on the go for tradespeople who do in-person jobs for many clients. Their pricing page currently has the basic app at $29/month, on sale from $49. They've built a 1000-employee business on this.

2/

@AmeliaBR It's odd how I rarely see this side of the issue discussed. A month ago, I saw someone on Reddit talking about how they built themselves an accessibility tool with Claude, replacing a professional solution that required a subscription.

There's much to criticize about AI-based development, but I think it's also becoming a sort of democratizing force that lets folks build tools that either aren't profitable enough to exist, or are inaccessible to some because they need to be profitable.