GoKawiilProductivity software veteran argues AI coding needs a 'solid base' plus custom code, not from-scratch builds
A 22-year veteran of the productivity tools market argues that his 2019 bet on the no-code revolution only partly paid off, and now proposes a new thesis for the AI era. He contends that while AI lets anyone vibe-code small personal apps, building collaborative team software from scratch in tools like Claude Code or Codex still leaves developers stuck handling hosting, authentication, permissions and databases themselves.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
As AI coding tools make writing software trivial, the real bottleneck shifts to the unglamorous plumbing—data models, permissions, concurrency—that collaborative tools require. This suggests the next wave of winners may be platforms offering a solid, pre-built foundation that AI-generated code can be layered onto, rather than pure from-scratch AI code generation.
- The author's 2019 no-code prediction only partially materialized as the market evolved.
- AI lowers the barrier for solo app-building but struggles with team collaboration features like permissions and history tracking.
- The proposed solution is a hybrid: solid software bases customized with AI-generated code, rather than building everything from zero.
Source: mdubakov.me, 2026-08-31
Published there as: “Malleable software = solid bases and custom code”
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