AI is your coding superpower

THIS WEEK’S STORY

The resistance on AI coding

Last week I shared an overview of how I created an iOS app without being a developer on Reddit (original X post here). One comment really caught my attention:

This made me realize just how far ahead you can be by mastering AI prompting and compiling techniques to build software. The tech is so new and evolving so rapidly that even experienced iOS engineers are struggling to keep up, often underestimating what’s possible.

Why the skepticism? I think it comes down to three main reasons:

• Threat to the Status Quo: Traditional developers see AI as disrupting their field.

• Gatekeeping: A mindset that building apps should remain in the hands of professionals.

• Professional Identity: For some, admitting that AI can code well feels like a threat to their hard-earned expertise.

But here’s the upside: this creates a massive opportunity for low-code/no-code builders like you. If you’re willing to dive in and learn, the sky’s the limit.

HEADLINES

DeepSeek R1 vs AI Giants

DeepSeek R1 is the newest groundbreaking open-source (chinese) LLM and it’s already taking the world by storm.

It is designed to excel in areas such as mathematical reasoning, coding, and complex problem-solving, often rivaling or surpassing the performance of established AI giants like OpenAI.

Why should we as AI iOS builders care?

• Open source: anyone can analyze the source code and build on top of it. No black boxes

• Cost effective: the cost of using the API is $0.14 per 1M input tokens compared to OpenAI's $7.50 for its top reasoning model. Pretty wild right?

• Coding performance: R1 reached the 96.3 percentile on Codeforces, compared to OpenAI o1's 89 percentile. It’s a beast for coding tasks.

This means that building apps with AI has just become even better. I will be R1 with CursorAI’s composer to see how it compares to Anthropic’s 3.5 Sonnet.

Aaand as a response to deepseek, openai is making their most powerful model available to everyone soon:

Exciting times to be an AI app builder 😎

THIS WEEK’S TIP

CursorAI might be the single most important tool for AI app builders.

But it’s not perfect. If you don’t give it the right system instructions, it can hallucinate, edit files you didn’t ask it to, or duplicate functionalities. It’s happened to me more times than I can count.

Here are two tips to make CursorAI work better for you:

TIP 1: set foundational constrains:

Go to Settings > Cursor settings > General > Rules for AI and specify exactly how you want it do behave every time you send a composer request. For example:

• “Never modify files without my explicit consent”

• “When working on a particular feature, code change, file, component, etc.. always make sure that you work on that part and that part only.”

• “Do not duplicate any files nor functionalities when working on new features and implementations.”

TIP 2: debugging errors

Whenever you run into code errors and Cursor isn’t fixing them after a few tries, try this:

• Firstly, try to change the model (e.g., from Sonnet to GPT-4o) and run the request again.

• If that doesn’t work, ask it to: “Use chain of thought reasoning to find the root cause of the issue and fix it properly.” This forces the model to explain its reasoning and often fixes the issue. Works 90% of the time for me.

QUICK HITS

• President Trump revoked Biden’s AI executive order on his first day back in office, loosening AI regulations.

• Meta is developing AI that can write code at the level of a mid-level engineer, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating it could be ready in 2025

• The no-code development market is booming, with predictions that over 70% of new application development will use no-code or low-code platforms by 2025

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff warns that today's executives are the last to manage all-human workforces due to the rise of artificial intelligence.

How did you find this week’s issue? Let me know your thoughts or questions. Just reply to this email – I read every message and use your input to make these emails better for you. Happy to connect with you on Twitter/X too

See you next week!

Filippo

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