For twenty years, developers have been the bouncers of the digital world
Now we just found out how to sneak in the back door. This is a great thing for your ideas
This is an interesting moment in history
I think we are witnessing a transformational moment in history right now. Ever since computers have existed, designers have had to have a translator and that has typically been in the form of a developer.
These developers have been the bouncers of the party.

That translation layer has meant that a lot of things have had to conform to the technology rather than to the idea.
Before this year, if you went to a party and heard someone with a fun idea for an app or a business, you would have to smile and nod, knowing that the poor person’s idea would eventually get whittled down to either nothing or a very distant version of what they had in their head.
Shaun our bouncer, would delight in telling you the 100 different reasons why this wouldn’t work.
This was for a few reasons:
The technology was hard to build and so we orientated everything around how it worked. Languages are tricky, it is easy to introduce things and to have bugs.
As a result of that, developers needed to take requirements and translate those and then map them onto a mental model of the world that they had and then build things
All of this represents loss in the system and ultimately degrades the idea from what it was originally intended to be.
That’s not to mention the cost of everything, which was also a huge idea killer from the get go.
Now there is a new way
We are witnessing the death of the developer as bouncer and this is going to be an incredible thing for the world.
When I say designer, I don’t mean people like my dad, who is a painter.
No I am not talking about that.
If you have ever had an idea for an app
If you have ever had a pain point that you wanted to make something to solve
If you have ever felt that off the shelf software and tools didn’t fit what you need
Congratulations, you are officially a designer now.
This week was an interesting one for me
This was the first time, on three different occasions I had clients that showed me products that they had built using AI.
I wrote about that here but it was fascinating as these are all clients that would not have cared about technology before to the extent that they do now.
Now with AI - you can get far further with your random idea than ever before
Yes, if you have a genius idea in the shower about how you are going to quit your job and become a billionaire, well now you don’t have to bother talking at the party about it, hoping to find someone who knows how to code.
You could go to v0 and make a prototype in a few minutes or to Cursor and deploy an entire full stack website in a few days, as I did here (replacing our quoting tool in 6 hours that costs $160 a month).
AI 2027 thinks that this will have a bigger impact than the Industrial Revolution
I recommend reading this website, it is fascinating as to the implications of where this is all going in the short term.
But wait I’m not seeing the impact of AI - how can this be true
The head of Anthropic and the previous cofounder of Instagram, went on Lenny’s podcast and mentioned that 90 - 95% of all code in their Claude Code tool is now written by AI.
He mentions how product designers are now doing everything in AI and bypassing developers completely.
This has also been my experience. In the past I would always have to talk about the bouncers and give them my ID even though I am 6 foot 6.
Now I can just turn all my crazy ideas into reality without talking to anyone.
Like my cool vintage car comic book collection website, that I am the only person in the world who thinks is cool.
It turns my photos of vintage cars…
into vintage comics.
Why you ask? Because I can. Because there is no bouncer at the club anymore.
Or my space themed task management system.
Oh but this is fun stuff, don’t worry I have built your typical business dashboards as well.
You can even make things that look premium as well.
So what does this mean for developers?
So I think developers will be guides rather than bouncers.
Clients are still going to get overwhelmed by all the choices.
But developers will be able to help you with all of the choices and make sure you don’t build a messy spaghetti system.
This also means communication skills are going to have to increase.
So I would encourage you to try some ideas and see how far you get.
For now, the bouncer is dead. Long live the guide.
Here is some other articles posted in the week you might enjoy