Last work week I spent a good chunk of time on my projects Screenshot to Layout and Obra Icons. I also spent some time investing the hype around Cursor and oh boy… the hype is real.

I built a mobile-optimized Currency Converter app in a few hours of work mostly by prompting what I wanted. I estimate Cursor wrote around 80% of the code. I added some features that would be time intensive like language support for RTL languages, flipping the entire UI, just with a single prompt. Something like dark mode was just a prompt away too.

You might have seen videos of 8-year olds coding entire apps using Cursor. It’s pretty amazing what you can build. You have to be quite specific in your prompting but if you know what you want this is definitely a hyper productivity boost for a certain kind of work.

Naysayers will say this will lead to unmaintable code but in the prototyping/ideas stage most of my work lives in, the productivity is unmatched.

In my Twitter/X circle I see talented designers taking their product design skills to AI prompting and hacking things together that a few years ago really needed at least a 2 person team of designer and developer. For example Gabriel built Almanac and Christine a Chinese phrasebook app.

Around nine years ago I really needed a dev to help built Kana Master. Dev agency Underlined jumped in to help at the time. I believe current prompting abilities I could probably build that myself.

I haven’t tried creating anything in the iOS spheres yet (mainly because I don’t want to write the same software three times) but I am curious how far I could take things.

When I said I would quit my main contract my fiancée was worried about me finding new work – I told her that it would not really be a problem. In just one week I’ve been contacted for a short-term UI redesign project and to consult about implementing Figma in an organization.

I am exploring startup ideas, talking to different people about possibilities and overall enjoying some time figuring out what’s next. In the meantime I am available for short freelance opportunities.