My site: https://natebjones.com
Full Story w/ Prompts: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/the-disposable-software-era-requires?r=1z4sm5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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What's really happening with disposable software and AI-native development? The common story is that vibe coding will replace enterprise SaaS — but the reality is more complicated.
In this video, I share the inside scoop on why the disposable software discourse gets it wrong:
• Why software cost collapsed but attention cost did not
• How Cursor's philosophy works for developers but breaks for CIOs
• What proactive AI means versus just bolting on a chatbot
• Why 95% of the market needs a completely different strategy
Cursor can ship multiple times a day because their customers are developers who tolerate variance. Salesforce cannot because their customers buy reliability — something they don't have to think about. That's not a temporary gap. It's a fundamental difference in what customers pay for.
For enterprise builders, the opportunity isn't shipping like Cursor — it's earning the right to deploy proactive AI that creates value customers didn't know they were missing.
Chapters
00:00 The age of disposable software is here
02:23 What happens when expensive becomes free
04:48 Two completely different phenomena share the same name
06:46 Code is reality: the Cursor philosophy
07:52 Disposable software kills traditional rituals
09:53 Enterprise customers buy reliability, not software
12:08 The fatal flaw: attention is still the constraint
13:59 Why Cursor's philosophy only works for developers
16:17 AI strategy for the reliability business
18:37 Proactive AI versus reactive chatbots
20:51 Why simpler interfaces absorb constant change better
21:49 Four ways the current conversation gets this wrong
24:05 How to earn the right to be proactive
25:00 Know which game you're playing
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For deeper playbooks and analysis: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/
📝 Transcript
Transcribing... This may take a few minutes.
Top Comments
@rolldabones
Red Solo cups and finger food worked in college. Eventually you need real plates, real glasses and real habits.
11 likes
@condor68y1
Code generation is 10% for a good team. The other 90% is design, figuring out customer needs, QA, etc. Those needs, and ARTS, nit skill, do not go away. Everyone generating software would be total chaos.Imagone just trying to report across the data!! Consolidation of anything. Nuts!
18 likes
@byrnemeister2008
As a Salesforce admin I could not imagine the mess we would be in if we coded our own CRM. Crazy talk.
4 likes
@alecio000
I think you may see a proliferation of tiny software agencies serving custom software to the mid-to-long tail of SMBs for whom the cost and complexity of enterprise SaaS comes with more headaches than benefits. Specialist "vibe engineers" capable of providing stable and reliable bespoke software to handfuls of clients where before it would have taken a full-time team to service a single client.
39 likes
@danielle78730
nate, you've been on f'ing fire here lately!! thank you for your perspective. i have yet to find anything even remotely like your channel…
3 likes
@davedigerati
I've been banging the drum at work that we need to be thinking about "personal software" and "custom software" but I like your 'disposable software' even better - drives home they point this is cheap and easy. We are starting to teach our architects and engineers how to build Single File Applications (all in 1 html file) for addressing personal, basic local business needs while our IT catches up and figures out how to deal with this explosion of internal data, security, and policy risks, but tech and bleeding edge users are already way ahead and getting further every day. Crazy exciting times!
5 likes
@ChrisBailey-t2g
Shadow IT needs to a new comic series.
5 likes
@seattlewa1984
Libraries, SDKs, and APIs are going to increase in importance, as these are basic building blocks that AI can make use of. UIs will decrease in importance as people will increasingly roll their own custom versions.
20 likes
@tedvortex9838
so, from engineer to engineer, except your website do you have anything running in production right now?
1 likes
@bstewartny
This is why I use Claude Code CLI and Vim/NeoVim as well using command line and bash for almost everything else. I almost don't even use VSCode anymore. I want 100% control of my UX/tools, not random UI updates I can't control.
10 likes
@agrajagco3222
Thanks for this, its a great discussion and the way you break things down help guide the viewer through the layers of complexity and differencing between enterprise software and vibe coding. One thing, is it a typo in the video title "Its Now What You Think" vs "Its Not What You Think" or is that intentional (sorry, have to ask).
2 likes
@PrismScholars
Compression-Aware Intelligence probes the model with semantically equivalent inputs and tracks whether they stay equivalent internally then it compares internal activations and output trajectories across these inputs. Divergence reveals compression strain which is places where the model compressed too much or in the wrong way. That strain is quantified as a signal (CTS) and can be localized to layers, heads, or neurons.
So instead of treating compression as hidden, CAI turns it into a measurable object where the model over/under compresses or fractures meaning
@tomlakestyle
Excellent podcast. This is a huge issue all across the internet at the moment, nearly every product is changing between logins, what a mess.
@Tarkusine
I know it's not exactly the topic at hand but I use AI to generate programs of various sorts sometimes twice a day, at least once a week for various tasks. I have a folder chock full of various python and JS scripts to perform all kinds of different things, so many that I forget about them and just generate a new one sometimes to perform the same task. Sometimes, if i have something weird or complex to calculate I'll just have AI make a program in canvas to calculate said thing and never use it again. lol.
7 likes
@28848-w
Amazing please tell us more about things you just learned about yesterday