A few months ago, a friend — who runs a small business — asked me:
"Can you build me an app that tracks job site deadlines and sends automatic reminders?"
I said yes. And I built a working prototype in about an hour.
His reaction wasn't excitement. It was confusion.
"Wait — that's it? I've been paying an agency for 6 months and they haven't delivered anything."
That conversation stuck with me.
The question I keep asking myself
As software engineers, we're watching AI reshape our craft in real time. Tools like Cursor, Antigravity, Warp, Claude, GPT — they've changed how fast we can go from idea to working product.
But here's the thing: most people outside tech have no idea this is happening.
Entrepreneurs are still spending months and tens of thousands of euros on MVPs (at least in Italy). Small business owners are still stuck with spreadsheets because "custom software is too expensive." People with genuinely good ideas don't even try because they assume building software requires a team and a budget.
Is it our responsibility to show them what's possible now?
The case for transparency
I think there's an ethical argument here.
If you know that a functional prototype can be built in an afternoon — and you stay silent while someone spends their savings on a 6-month agency project — are you part of the problem?
I'm not saying AI replaces production-grade engineering. It doesn't. But for validation — for answering the question "is this idea even worth pursuing?" — the game has fundamentally changed.
And I think people deserve to see that.
What I'm doing about it
I decided to run a live experiment. It's called Zero to POC — a free webinar where:
- Anyone can propose a project idea (no technical skills needed)
- I randomly pick one from all submissions
- I build it live, from scratch, using AI — in ~60 minutes
The whole point is to show — without filters — what's actually possible today. Not a polished demo. Not a cherry-picked example. A random idea, built in real time.
The first edition is on March 9th — free, online, open to everyone.
I'm genuinely curious
I'd love to hear from this community:
- Do you think we have a responsibility to "democratize" this knowledge?
- Or does showing non-technical people how fast we can build things actually devalue our work?
- Have you had similar conversations with non-dev friends or clients?
Let me know in the comments 👇
Top comments (3)
Hmm, actually I think the real issue here is the ethical dilemma you've stumbled into. The escape hatch used to be: "Well, I'm the one responsible when something goes wrong" — that justified the value of our expertise. But with how fast bug fixes happen now, that argument circles right back on itself. So I think those of us who are accustomed to carrying that packed responsibility also need to accept that the weight and nature of support has shifted dramatically.
A prototype is not a finished professional product, but customers can't notice the difference especially not at first glance. That's like a carpenter reselling cheap IKEA bargains instead of building customized solid wood furniture.
To answer your questions, with or without AI, web developers and designers should not show customers a quick prototype so early.
Great point. I'd add that having a responsible person behind the product will always have value — that doesn't go away.
What's changing is what's expected of us. We need to be much more broad now: managing AI agents, crafting the right prompts, knowing when and what to delegate to AI vs. doing manually, understanding architecture, security, UX, business logic — all at once.
Imho, the ability to orchestrate and make the right decisions will matter more than raw coding skills. The bar for "developer" is shifting from "can you write the code" to "can you own the outcome."