A veteran software developer is betting that AI will turn ordinary people into programmers, and he is building a phone to prove it. The writer, who is parting ways with Fly.io to work with Kurt on a new project, argues that AI is collapsing the boundary between people who write software and people who use it. The result, he says, is that every user will be able to create their own apps in plain English.
The argument is simple. Today, most software comes from strangers — experts who build applications for audiences of millions. Soon, he predicts, most applications will be built by the people who use them, for themselves or for a handful of others they know by name. The operating system, as we have known it, will no longer make sense.
The VTech Keyboard and a Programming Lesson
The writer’s story begins with a childhood computer. He was given a VTech Laser 200 clone, a chiclet keyboard Z80 that ran off cassette tapes and plugged into the family TV. The device booted straight into BASIC, and he was eight years old.
“I wasn’t about to learn BASIC,” he recalls. “What I learned instead: computers were not as awesome as I’d imagined.”
Then came high school. Computer security dragged him into programming, and the more he understood how software was constructed, the more daunting it seemed to build a full application. He could write fast network servers, but a word processor? That was another matter entirely.
Now, he says, everything has changed. Computers work the way he thought they would when he was eight — and he is building a phone to show what that looks like.
What the Phone Will Do
The new device, which the writer describes as a platform, is designed for a world where users conjure their own software. He gives several examples of the kinds of applications he expects to become commonplace:
- A weather app that gives an accurate forecast for Roscoe Village in Chicago, where the nearest stations miss the lake effect.
- A navigation tool that asks whether a driver should take Roosevelt, Madison, or Lake instead of staying on the Eisenhower Expressway.
- A meeting checker that alerts a user if there is a call happening right now that they are supposed to be in.
Each of these solves a tiny, personal problem. None of them would have been worth building before, because the audience sounded too small. But with AI, he argues, the audience size stops mattering.
The End of Prefabricated Software
The writer’s central claim is that the entire concept of prefabricated, fixed-function applications is about to wash away. Today, almost all software comes from expert strangers — Egghead Software, boxed software, CD-ROMs, the Internet. Each wave replaced the last.
But the next wave is different. Instead of shipping finished apps, he says, companies will ship building blocks — the guts of a word processor or a browser — and let users assemble them into solutions for their own idiosyncratic work or home life problems. The creator of this story gives the example of a tiny fraction of a word processor being pulled in to solve a specific problem for someone who does not know what a for-loop is.
The operating system, as he describes it, is the partition between applications. It keeps different programs from interfering with each other and controls how they communicate. That makes sense in a world of imported software from strangers. It makes less sense in a world where most software shares the same provenance — the same person or a small group of people — and every application is malleable, subject to growing new limbs at any moment on the whims of its creator.
Why the Phone Matters
The product is a phone, and the writer frames it as the device for the world he has described. Every mainstream phone on the market in 2026 was planned in 2023. That is how product cycles work. In 2023, computers were still designed to run deterministic fixed-function applications produced by professional programmers, and software was something users bought, not built.
The soul of those phones is stuck in the 1970s. Dudes with big mustaches nailed down the design while hacking on VT52 terminals with Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” blaring on the FM radio perched on their workbenches. Since then, all we have done is scale and miniaturize that design.
The writer’s phone is a direct response to that history. It is the device for a world where the software is not shipped but conjured, and the user is the programmer.
A World Where Everyone Is a Programmer
The writer’s prediction is not modest. He is not predicting a trend; he is predicting a shift in the fundamental nature of computing. He is saying that the boundary between programmers and users is about to dissolve, and he is building a phone to make that happen.
He compares the moment to the rise of the Internet. The shelves at Egghead Software became obsolete. Boxed software disappeared. CD-ROMs gave way to the web. Now he thinks he is about to see something else start to wash away: the entire concept of prefabricated fixed-function applications.
The sun will rise in the east tomorrow, he says, and the world of computing will look different. The change is inevitable.
Source material: “What even is an OS now?,” sockpuppet.org.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.