I just saw this tweet go by Amjad Masad, Replit’s CEO:
Whatever you need… make an app for that.
— Amjad Masad (@amasad) February 4, 2025
Now on your phone. For everyone. Free. pic.twitter.com/hxFLGaCLmg
It’s a video promoting “coding on the phone”.
Watch it.
Personal, bespoke, on-demand, disposable, etc. software.
I love this! I love the direction we’re going!
Some names for this, after chatting with my bro gpt4o:
- On-Demand Software Development: Like cloud computing, but for instant, local, personal software.
- Ephemeral Coding: Like Snapchat for code—software you generate when you need it, and discard when done.
- LLM-First Programming: The same way we talk about “Mobile-First” or “Cloud-First” design.
- Personal Computation: Instead of general-purpose software for others, this is about computing tailored to you.
- Generative Programming: Like generative art, but for software. The goal isn’t writing code—it’s guiding code into existence.
I want the “thing”, not the hours of coding to get the thing. Especially with modern web-programming stacks that I don’t grok at all. Give me hugo :)
I still love programming.
This, above, is very different from the deep-down-in-my-bones love of sitting down at my terminal with an open textbook, an algorithm description, and my C compiler. (maybe a paper pdf, sublime text, and python/numpy these days…)
Delete 90% of the cowboy hackers calling themselves “programmers”.
Free the 90% of the CS class that don’t actually like locking themselves away to code all night long.
On-demand software “for the rest of us”.
It’s directional, we’re done done yet.
No CRM on demand yet, but soonish.