'Disposable apps' are the hot new thing in tech, as AI makes coding easier and quicker

Tom Occhino, chief product officer at Vercel, knows a lot about AI, open-source technology, and software development. He spent over a decade at Meta, where he helped build React, a wildly popular framework for developing web user interfaces and apps.

Tom was one of the first technologists to introduce me to the idea of "disposable apps."

AI coding tools, including Vercel's v0 service, are making software development easier and quicker. One outcome of this: You can build an app now and after you've used it, you can just throw it away. Why? Because the upfront investment in creating software has fallen so much lately.

Here are some "throwaway apps" Occhino has seen in the wild this year:

• Folks will paste a CSV file or spreadsheet into v0 and get a quick and easy interactive dashboard.
• Vercel had a hackathon kickoff and someone put all the information about the event into a v0 app that they used to present the details to their team.
• Occhino's wife organized a trip to Europe for her and some friends and turned a planning document into a bespoke travel app with day-by-day agendas.

Occhino has built a few of these himself. He has a web app that helps him count stuff, such as the number of light switches in his home, and the number of desks in Vercel's office. You can check that one out here.

He spun up another app that gives him instant information on his location, wherever and whenever he needs it. Occhino said he uses this one all the time.

Why can you see these two apps, when they're supposed to be disposable? "I actually use them so they're not really 'throw away,'" Occhino told me.

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