Single-Use Software

In May of 2023, I was watching a softball game in a small town where everyone else knew each other. I was having fun, but couldn’t match player names to faces whatsoever. Smart glasses and ChatGPT were just entering the public consciousness, and I was daydreaming about applications like a dork.

I imagined an app where the player’s names were tracked over their heads. Though trivial to make, the desire to make such a niche app wouldn’t exist via traditional means. Then it struck me.

Why couldn’t ChatGPT do it? If I had smart glasses and asked “Hey ChatGPT, pick up on the player’s names and track it above their heads”; there is no reason it couldn’t write a script in whatever language and API and then execute it on the fly. And maybe not back then, no, but nowadays? Why not?

Like too many people’s ideas, I never documented or acted on it. But, that would have been crazy for Q2 2023! And while I’m sure great examples of this have happened since then, the memory of the softball game and whatnot flooded back to me after reading OpenAI’s “Intelligent UI” blog post.

In the demo, the user asks for a bill splitter for their party of five. ChatGPT then responds with an <iframe> of a use-specific app generated then and there. Oh my god. Like plastics, we’re entering an age of what I’m calling Single-Use Software. Entire apps, regardless of scope, meant to be used once and forgotten about.

And sure, people have written disposable code for decades, but this is different. It’s not like someone took time on a use-specific script. This is mass-produced single-use plastics made of code.

They say code is cheap now, but I never imagined it being disposable.

"Baseball Field" (https://skfb.ly/6ZtHM) by Tiko is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).