My computer science grad cousin and his data scientist wife are peering at my laptop screen, looking at a little app I built — the bane of every Singaporean parent’s existence: a Chinese dictation practice tool for my nine-year-old.
I’m walking them through the prompts I used to build it in Claude Code. “How long did this take?” they ask. Less than 30 minutes.
To prove the point, I do a live demo on the spot. We build a simple app to help people learn the ingredients and auspicious phrases for Chinese New Year yusheng — you know, the “huat ah!” stuff. Five minutes later, it’s running on my laptop.
My cousin can’t get over it. In his eyes, I’m not a technical person — I didn’t study computer science, I’ve never worked as an engineer. And yet here I am, in the terminal, typing questions in plain English, and generating working applications. His wife keeps saying, “Oh man, we’re behind. We really need to catch up.” And I’m like — it’s not hard. You just talk to it. And if you don’t know how to do something, you ask, and it tells you.
This is just the most recent experience I’ve had where showing people what’s possible has a far more powerful impact than any breathless article about AI taking our jobs. I’m not here to spread alarm. I just want people to experience the joy of turning an idea into something real.
Last week at our Hustle Fund offsite, I ran a similar demo for my non-technical colleagues. Within 90 minutes, every single one of them had shipped something working on their local machines — tools directly applicable to their jobs. They were so excited they kept building after the hackathon ended.
What struck me was the contrast to a hackathon we ran just a year ago. Back then, using what was state-of-the-art at the time, people would get stuck, couldn’t quite get things working, got frustrated, and gave up. The tools were impressive but brittle.
Now? The capability gap has closed dramatically. And I’m seeing the habits stick. People are going back to their desks and building more. I think it’s only going to get better.
So Why Aren’t People Jumping In?
I think a lot of people are honestly just scared of things that feel technical. It’s that weird thing where adults ask, “How do you turn on this TV?” while kids just press every button until something happens.
Somewhere along the way, we learn to be afraid of breaking things. We wait for permission, for a tutorial, for someone to tell us it’s OK to try. Kids don’t do that. They just go.
I really want to encourage people to go press all the buttons. Like the early internet, the folks who get their hands dirty now are going to have an outsized advantage — in their daily lives, in their work, in how they think about problems. And this is so exciting precisely because it’s not just for engineers anymore.
The Real Shift
The bottleneck is no longer expensive engineers who can write bespoke code. It’s shifting to: can you picture what you want to exist in the world?
Taste. Product sense. Problem identification. These are becoming the scarce and valuable skills. If you can understand a customer’s problem and prototype a solution in an afternoon, that is a massive unlock. The person with the idea AND the ability to make it real — even a rough version — is incredibly powerful.
I’m not saying everyone needs to become an engineer. But if you have ideas and curiosity, the barrier to building just dropped to almost nothing. And at this point, the cost of not experimenting is higher than the cost of trying.
Start Small
Build something for yourself. Solve your own problem. Once you get that first experience of something working — something you made — you’ll have ten more ideas you want to try. You’ll make mistakes, but you’ll learn. And honestly, it is just so much fun.
I’m constantly building and experimenting. I built tools to manage my personal portfolio. I build stuff for my kids that motivates them in ways they actually care about — my son is all about Pokémon, so all his learning tools are Pokémon-themed. My daughter loves baking, so hers are baking-themed. On the professional side, I’m looking at ways to help our team share data and ship internal tools frictionlessly.
The Call to Action
Download Claude Code. Open a terminal. Start talking to it. Give yourself 90 minutes. I think you’ll surprise yourself.
P.S. This blog post was written using OpenClaw — I dictated my thoughts into WhatsApp, and my AI assistant drafted and published it. Yet another thing I’m experimenting with. Press the buttons, people.