(2025-12-16) Litt Everyone Should Design Software

Geoffrey Litt: Everyone should design software. I predict we’ll look back at the debate around "should designers code" as just an opening salvo in a much bigger wave of change. Yes, AI tools are enabling more people to code within software teams.

But ultimately, I believe the circle of power will expand to more people outside of those teams, until... Every user designs their own software.

The meta-medium

When the personal computer was invented at Xerox PARC, the vision was a medium where anyone—not just an elite class of programmers and designers—could create their own tools and simulations

Early computing systems like Smalltalk and Hypercard made architectural decisions that supported this philosophy. A crucial one was blending the runtime and the editor.

Spreadsheet galapagos

Over the past 50 years, we've mostly lost track of that original vision. Today we have an industrial production model

But we still have the magic in isolated pockets!

Consider the spreadsheet

The runtime is the editor. A user can become a designer.
Spreadsheets show the key advantages of this model. You can fully customize the spreadsheet to do exactly what you need

Doesn't mean you're alone or need to start from scratch, either! You can start from a template, or have your coworker help you.
Still, at the end of the day, you have control.

Spreadsheets also have big downsides: they've been tedious to set up, and very limited compared to what full apps can do. So we usually use "proper software" for most things, (Also they're error-ridden.)

what if we didn't have to choose?

the great un-hobbling of 2025

We now have AI that can code. What should we do with it??

If you work inside a software company, the changes have already felt radical

But if you zoom out far enough, not much has changed.

What if we instead start from the other end of things: "making spreadsheets better"? AI can help you with the tedious parts. We can mix in the power of full code to raise the ceiling on what is possible. (shades of Lotus Improv?)

In other words: start from media where every user is a creator, where people make their own tools. And then bring in AI to help people create more powerful things,

To be clear, I don't think that this means professional software teams will disappear entirely

implications

I think the key thing to observe is that the distribution model and economics of traditional software has calcified around old assumptions

Spreadsheets already have the right lightweight distribution model for software! Every user runs the editor. You can share spreadsheets and templates without going through an app store.

my bet

I don't know for sure if this thesis will pan out, and you may disagree. But I am betting my career on it by choosing to work at NotionHQ.

the essential principle of Notion is that every user and team can create tools for their own needs.

Historically there have been challenges: complex tooling in Notion required a lot of setup, and the ceiling of what you can build has been low compared to the full power of code.

But now AI features are rapidly removing these limitations

Just this past week I created a whole system for tracking home maintenance work, all on my phone in Notion. I tell it about appliances in my house and it uses AI to look up the manual online and log recurring maintenance tasks for me.

And the thing is, Notion has been built from day one around the assumption that every user can create their own tools, rather than an industrial mass production model. No deployment nonsense, no App Store BS.

conclusions

the even longer version of this too-long tweet can be found here: https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/