You’re a Developer Now

In fantasy books, when people get magic powers, they usually spend a lot of time figuring out how to use them. In our world, when people get magic powers, they mostly go about their day ignoring them. 

I know this because that’s what you’re doing. You. You’ve got magic powers—you’ve just been distracted. 

The truth is, if you have an idea that involves a keyboard, you can build it today. Doesn’t matter what it is. You can code anything in your imagination just by typing a few commands into ChatGPT. But, more than likely, you haven’t been using these powers. Why?

It’s not your fault. No one told you it was possible. After all, in fantasy books, there’s always a character who busts down the door in the middle of the night and announces your powers to you (and enswines your spiteful cousin for good measure). So let me do that for you:

Hey, you! You, over there, with the goofy expression on your face.

You’re a developer now. 

Let me tell you how I know.

The borders of being ‘technical’ are expanding by the day

There used to be a well-defined line between who could build things and who couldn’t. Building was reserved for people who could code—people who were “technical.”

Sure, there’ve been waves of milquetoast no-code tools that purported to turn you into a developer for the past decade. But those turned out to be more like teaching people to play Guitar Hero than guitar.

AI changes this. Today it can take people who have been around tech for a long time, but have never coded, and with the right support, help them build and ship a product in 30 days.

I saw this first-hand at the demo day for the chatbot course I teach. 

It’s a month-long course where we teach people with a range of technical skills—from those who have never coded before to professional developers—how to build an AI chatbot. The key enabling technology is ChatGPT, which acts as a coding assistant, personal tutor, and coach for the students. 

I was stunned by the variety and quality of the demos. One student built a style guide bot that journalists could use to analyze their language to meet their publication’s tone and voice:

One built a bot that lets you talk with experts with different personas, like nutritionist, accountant, or trainer: