Tossell: AI coding tools will not turn everyday consumers into software builders
Ben Tossell · #2287 AI made a “no code” founder into a coder · Dec 8, 2025 · at 10:35
MakerPad founder Ben Tossell discusses why AI prompt-based app generation tools like Lovable still face adoption barriers among everyday non-technical users.
0:00 / 0:44exact quote · 44.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“My mum still won't build an app even though you can use something like Lovable. It's, because I think it's still, you've got to want to do the building bit. Like, that's still the issue. It's either someone like my mother wants the app built, doesn't want to spend any time in the building of the app. So no code, you're spending time in that building phase, fixing Zapier and Airtable and whatever else. So I think that's sort of happening today on a much quicker scale, so you can get something working quicker. But if you're having to type 10, 15 prompts to any tool to get to work, You have to either enjoy that process or have a very high threshold for going through that process to get to the end.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Tossell
Tossell: Developer relations mirrors founder roles in community and product ownership
“The developer relations feels very similar to like a founder role where you need to be on top of your community. You're the person that everyone reaches out to. You've got to build a product or understand the products in and out. You've got to grow the product…”
Tossell: AI Agents Will Worsen Founder Context Switching and Productivity Anxiety
“Like, it feels like it's actually, you can work on even more stuff now, so actually people are going to get worse off feeling like they should be really productive, but actually feeling like, I've done absolutely nothing this week except for I tried to do thes…”
Tossell: AI-powered email search is awful across all existing tools
“AI search on email is awful. Whichever tool and like wrapper you use, I've tried a lot of them. It's just, it doesn't work.”
Tossell: Solo billion-dollar companies are unlikely because building alone is boring
“We hear this all the time. It's going to be one person, ten billion dollar company. Like, okay, well, it's boring by yourself. Like, if people want to have other people around them, I think it's natural to, oh, I just, I could just do, use some help with just …”
Tossell: No-code tool workflows are fundamentally programming in a visual format
“The thing I didn't realize until, I don't know whether it was within the MakerPad life or after it, was like, I'm still teaching programming, but in a different format. Like, there's different, the tools just look different. Like, they don't look like a code b…”