I keep turning my laptop towards my girlfriend and saying "look at this. I should not be able to build this." I've been saying it to everyone the past few weeks.
I'm a designer. I have no business setting up a PostgreSQL database.
And yet here I am. Databases. User authentication. Production deployments. Domain routing. Email servers. Like 7 or 8 side projects running, all built in the last couple of weeks. Things I could not have done even with a team at my disposal.
Building the wrong thing used to be expensive. Not anymore.
It's always been expensive to build the wrong thing. So as a designer, you do everything in your power to prototype, test, find problems up front. You sketch, wireframe, test with users, iterate in Figma. All to avoid the costly mistake of building something that doesn't work.
And yet. "We know it when we see it" is actually true. Nothing replaces actually clicking through an interface, actually using something. I've had it happen so many times where something looked perfect in a prototype, and the moment I could actually use it, it just didn't feel right.
Now I describe what I want and minutes later I'm trying a real thing. I built a feature last week, tried it, deleted it, started over, tried again. Three complete attempts in an hour. The cost of being wrong just dropped to almost zero. Well, almost zero plus the Claude Max bill.
Speaking things into existence
It's like having a genie. You get to make wishes, and they come true. But just like a genie, you better be specific about what you wish for, or you're going to get something you didn't want.
I'm a designer who's building full-stack apps. Literally speaking to my computer and stuff just appears. But looking around, this isn't just me.
I'm seeing product people start building their own prototypes. I'm seeing developers ship ten times more than before. I'm seeing founders go from idea to working product in a weekend, on their own. Designers, product people, company founders, developers, they all used to share the responsibility of building and coordinating together. Now everyone can just... make stuff appear.
I'm really curious what the next generation of builders is going to look like. I think it's going to favor the generalists. It definitely helps that I know the terminal, that I know what database migrations are, even though I couldn't do them myself before. But whatever your starting point is, you'll be able to surprise yourself with what comes out.
It's getting insane
Every day I'm still amazed. That's the weird part. You'd think it wears off, but it doesn't. Every day I get a little more trust in the system, and every day I'm surprised again by what comes out. It's become the new normal and it's still completely abnormal at the same time.
Twenty years of working with developers gave me an edge, for sure. But what I've been able to build in the last few weeks goes way beyond anything that context alone could explain.
I should not be able to build this. But here we are. 7 projects and counting.