I’ve been thinking about where AI-assisted development is heading, and I wonder if we’re approaching something much bigger than simply making software easier and cheaper to build. What if the future isn’t about creating more software applications at all? Today, we buy software, learn its interface, and use it to accomplish specific tasks. But increasingly, AI can write code, access open-source libraries, connect tools and execute complex workflows. Could we be moving toward a future where we don’t actually use traditional software applications anymore? Instead, we simply tell AI what we want to accomplish, and it figures out how to do it. It might generate temporary code, access existing software engines, combine open-source tools and run everything on its own backend. We just interact with the AI and receive the finished result. In that scenario, why would we need to buy a dedicated application or pay for dozens of monthly subscriptions? I’m already seeing people seem much more hesitant to purchase or subscribe to things than they used to be because they think everything is just AI slop now Perhaps we’re moving beyond the traditional software layer entirely, where applications become collections of capabilities that AI accesses and operates on our behalf. If that’s where things are heading, what happens to the entire software industry? Are we approaching the end of traditional software sales and SaaS subscriptions, or will the value simply shift somewhere else? For context, I’m not a developer. I’ve been a designer for 25 years who has always wanted to make Software but just never could wrap my brain around it so I’m really enjoying the new ability of making plug-ins and software and tools, submitted by /u/adamfilip
Originally posted by u/adamfilip on r/ClaudeCode