Creating Tools for Yourself
It's very common for developers to create small tools that they use in their everyday work.
The best example of this is probably a .bashrc or .zshrc file - which is essentially a list of shortcuts for snippets of code that you can easily run from your terminal.
They are always available to you, and are super handy as you go about your day. They save time, preserve knowledge, and allow you to not repeat the same grueling learning process time and time again.
--
If you were a marketer, the first time you were exposed to something like that in recent years was with the advent of the Zapiers and Makes of the world.
Suddenly, marketers and GTM people could get automations at their fingertips, without having to constantly resort to asking developers for help.
These were a big thing at the time - connect Google Sheets to HubSpot? No problem! Have an email from a form submission automatically verified? You got it! You want something to run at a scheduled interval and not all the time? No need for crontabs, we've got scheduled start!
However, these tools still weren't great at creating interfaces for their users to interact with them. You could connect a few pieces of infrastructure together, but you couldn't really make an "app" out of them, with a graphical user interface, and forms, and a bunch of the fun stuff you'd like to have.
Zapier recently introduced interfaces, which is a good start, and the Retools and Bubbles of the world have been around for a while, but they're still not as friendly to the average user as they should be.
--
Then we got Lovable and Bolt, which were a huge fucking leap forward. These tools enable anyone to really create full-fledged applications from scratch using just prompting.
There's GUI, and you could connect to a database at the backend, and you can publish to the web and export your code to GitHub so a developer can work on it and so forth.
But mostly - you can build yourself. No need for anyone else - dream it, prompt it, and you shall receive.
Any small tool you want is now a few prompts away.
These tools, however, have their limitations - they're mostly used for creating "playthings" you could easily share around and prototype with. They're not proper "tools" as much as they are small applications that look nice and behave well.
I never felt like these create "production" things that I can truly rely on like my trusted .bashrc. They are not great at fixing their own errors, and also are relatively hard to maintain over time due to the many components involved.
More than anything - they don't take the "heavy lifting" away from me - I still need to continuously prompt them if I want to create something truly complex and useful.
--
Recently, I came across Base44. It's still early days, but I feel like it's the most promising tool I've seen in a while. I have yet to see something that can do one-shot application building this well.
It's being built by one guy in a garage (I suppose, he might be in an office), toiling away at this bit by bit over time.
I am building tools for myself with it, and will update on the process. I haven't been excited like this for a while.
If you want to get notified when I post, subscribe here.