I’m Done With No-Code. Here’s Why.
After 5 years of being “the no-code guy,” I’m walking away from it.
After 5 years of being “the no-code guy,” I’m walking away from it. This week I left Softr, and with it, I’m leaving no-code behind entirely.
Read my full announcement on leaving Softr here
I’m not saying no-code is dead (I actually HATE it when people say that). I’m saying its core value props have fundamentally changed in the recent years. The three promises of no-code, to me, were:
Build faster
Anyone can do it
It’s cheaper
None of these hold up anymore. AI does all three better.
Why learn to drag and drop components in a specific way when you can just tell AI what to build? Why get locked into a platform when AI gives you transferable code? Why pay $35/month for a personal Bubble project when you can host for free on Vercel or Cloudflare?
The infrastructure and guardrails that no-code provides are still very valuable for beginners, or for those that don’t want to bother with that kind of configuration. But that’s really just a day or two of learning to pick up the skills to get past that point. The moat is tiny. And with how fast AI is improving, I don’t think it’s a moat that will last.
The Shift That Changed Everything
Over the holiday break, I watched some of the best engineers in the world say they’re not writing code anymore.
That hit different.
For the last ~8 years, I wanted to build like an engineer. That’s why I got into no-code. But I never wanted to actually learn to code. The syntax was boring. You spend two years learning a language and then need to learn a new one. No thanks.
But now? The best engineers are saying: “I’m using all my skills as a system thinker and product builder to tell AI what to build. AI builds it in any language while I’m sleeping. It lets me know when it’s ready for review.”
That changes everything.
I’ve been going hard on AI coding since August (honestly not long at all). During that time, while working full-time, I’ve built over 20 projects entirely with code. I went from beginner to someone I’d call pretty good. I still have a lot to learn. But for the first time in my life, I believe I can compete with your average software developer.
Me. The no-code guy. Competing with real developers.
That’s exciting as hell.
What I’ve Built (To Show You This Is Real)
Insider Pass push notifications: My first code project. I needed to integrate Apple and Android SDKs into Bubble to send official push notifications. Cursor built the first version in a weekend. I had no idea what I was doing. Spent a few months refining it. This was the last project I’ll ever build with Bubble, and the first time since discovering Bubble (in 2019) that I haven’t used bubble in more than 3+ months.
Link: https://myinsiderpass.com
Reddit Chrome extension: I was doing a lot of Reddit posting for Softr. I needed to post in my voice using pre-approved messaging. So I built a chrome extension for myself in a couple hours and used it to help me do my work, faster and better.
Hackathon judging system: I co-hosted a local AI hackathon and needed a way to collect submissions, score them, and find winners. Since participants were using Lovable, I decided to use it too. Built the entire judging platform in just a couple hours while everyone else was working on their projects. It worked out well (and we never used it again … and that’s OK now cause of the limited time + money it took to build)
Learning games with my daughter: We built two things together on a Sunday morning:
Her personal website (she’s 6): https://lunaenglert.com
A reading game where AI creates a story, she reads it aloud, AI listens and helps her, then quizzes her on comprehension (kept locally on my machine for own use cases).
It took an hour to build the game. Then we played it together for the next hour.
Five years ago, that would’ve taken a week or two. And because it took so long, you’d feel bad about not using it again. Now? It’s fine. It was for learning, for a quick personal need. AI makes that possible.
Outerself: Over the holiday break, I built my own AI chat platform in two weeks. I was frustrated with ChatGPT’s Mac app and didn’t want to lose two years of memory by switching platforms again. So I built my own. Any model, my own memories and collections, fully customized. Accessible via the API to take your memory + trained voice to be used with any of your agents, etc.
Will it become a real SaaS? Maybe. It’s built that way and ready to welcome users.
But here’s the SHIFT that changes everything: building it for my personal use is enough now.
I’m not spending thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours. AI lets me build a full SaaS just for my own purposes. That’s a fundamental shift.
Claude Code Community: Quick backstory here. Alex Lieberman posted about creating a Claude Code community. He got over 7,000 responses. Then he asked for people to help mod it. Given my experience with running the Bubble Group and how well that worked out for me in my career. I thought this would be a great chance for me to do something similar, but with a new technology that I’m actively trying to learn: Claude Code. So I volunteered to help and he brought me on as one of the mods for the time being.
During that process, we needed to build an application to the community that not only collected interest, but auto vetted users to ensure the quality of the community remained very high.
So I had this idea to build a fun way for collecting applications. I wanted to give it that authentic Claude Code feel, so I built it as an interactive terminal with a hidden passage for people who knew how to explore around. And they were rewarded for exploring the unknown with access to the community.
I Vibecoded the whole thing in a couple hours. And here are some stats for it:
37.8% membership qualification rate - users who applied and unlocked the invite
1,840 users engaged with the terminal easter egg hunt
133 elite members found all 16+ eggs
13,244 total easter eggs discovered across all users
66% application completion rate (3,007 started → 1,767 completed)
Viral day: Jan 9th saw 1,165 applications in a single day
And honestly, the feedback has been incredible. People keep telling me it’s the best application process they’ve ever been through.
This might be one of my biggest wins as a builder lately, and I’m genuinely proud of how it turned out.
Check it out: claudecode.community
Building on Mobile Changed Everything
All my projects live in GitHub repos. That lets me bring my codebase to whatever AI I want. Right now I’m using Claude Code, and Anthropic has desktop and mobile apps. I also love Cursor, but I was spending hundreds ($300 - $400) each month in cursor, and now on Claudes Max $100/plan, I can spam it with nearly unlimited requests and only spend $100 per month. Which Im stoked with.
Here’s what that means: I can build from my phone. I can build from anywhere. 🌎
If I have a thought about a feature, or I’m using my product on mobile and want to change something, I open the Anthropic app and tell Claude Code what to do. Maybe I start in plan mode for high-level architecture. It works in a remote environment and notifies me when it’s ready for review.
Real example from last week: Cursor released an article about improvements to their RAG and semantic search, detailing their latest learnings.
GOLDMINE 🏆
This is core to how Outerself works. I was also cooking breakfast for my kids at the time.
So I opened up Claude Code on my phone, gave it the article and said:
Review this article (Gave it the link), compare it to how I do semantic search / RAG in Outerself (was in my virtual repo), find the learnings, implement them.Within 10 minutes, Claude Code notified me saying it identified the improvements and started building them once I approved the plan.
By the time breakfast was done, AI had implemented the feature. After I brought my kids to school, I tested it on my local device, it worked and then I shipped it to production.
AI is now working for me all the time.
It’s better at coding than I’ll ever be.
It’s running in the background while I live my life.
It’s helping me be a 10x - 100x professional in every way.
This Goes Beyond No-Code
If the best engineers aren’t writing code anymore, what does that mean?
For this Claude Code community that I helped with this past week, I’m not even close to the most experienced user. I’m still a beginner compared to many in the group. But I’m trying to learn as fast as possible because what’s happening is absurd.
In just the last two weeks:
Claude Code took off (and best engineers in the world announced that they no longer write code by hand)
Ralph emerged. An agent that takes a roadmap and works through it using Claude Code, building everything you outlined. Good video here explaining how it works.
Then Ralph got a “sister.” One level of abstraction higher. Product management. Building the roadmap itself.
The abstraction keeps going up. I’m not sure what it means for us. But I’m in the trenches figuring it out. And I’m a bit scared about it, TBH.
So now, without obligations to a company, I’m free.
I’m exploring. Learning faster than I ever have.
It feels good, but I also know that I have a long way to go.
And something tells me that I’m not alone.
The Invitation
We’re at a crucial moment. A turning point. It all starts with AI. Understanding it, leveraging it, 10x-ing yourself with it.
If you’re not exploring or learning AI on a daily basis, you need to figure out how. Otherwise, you WILL be left behind.
Not now, but in the future. This is NOT going away.
I’m jobless with a family to support. I’m lucky to have have options for what’s next, but it’s a big decision for me and I hope to take my time with it.
And so for the first time in years, I’m currently figuring it out for myself.
I invite you on this journey. Ask questions. Follow along. Whatever helps you.And if you’re not ready for Claude Code but want the power of it in a more controlled environment, check out this video I made on a new vibecoding platform that I’ve been loving. It’s a hybrid between Claude Code and Lovable. Simplicity plus power. Plus, building native mobile apps with it on your phone is addicting AF.
Watch the Vibecode video
Also the first video I’ve posted on my personal Youtube feed in a LONG time. I’m excited to start posting there again.
Please subscribe to the channel if you’d like: click here.
Thank you for all the support this week. The calls, the messages, people creating new positions for me at their company, and people just saying nice things about some of the impact I’ve made. It’s meant MORE than you could ever know.
Let’s figure this out, together.
JJ 💙
Very interesting take and all the best JJ
Honestly happy for you, man! Great to see your growth over the years. The sky is only the starting point, keep soaring!