“I do not consider myself an app developer and would never call myself that. I would say I'm an app project manager and a vibe coder. Because I could not look at the SwiftUI code in these apps and tell you anything.”
The Vergecast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
YouTuber Stephen Robles, who has shipped paid and free apps built with AI coding tools, asked whether he now thinks of himself as an app developer. He sees the apps as another spoke in his creator business.
Transcript
…on my desktop. And then when I sit down on my Mac, you know, I'll just go over to Claude, give it all the screenshots, tell it to work, and then I go do something else. So collectively, it's probably a couple of hours, but I'm multitasking. You know, it's just kind of working in the background.
…think about. And part of me wondering is like, do you look at this and say, okay, I've built a thing some people like. I'm starting to make money from it. Should I start pouring more of my time into this? And I wonder if you even have an idea of where that time would go if you decided to do so.
I think about that. I do not consider myself an app developer and would never call myself that. I would say I'm an app project manager and a vibe coder. Sure. You know, because I could not look at the Swift UI code in these apps and tell you anything. I just could not. And people have asked, like, do you get curious now about learning this stuff? And it's like, maybe, but like you, I have three kids and they're all older and like life is busy. And I do want to keep making these apps. I want to keep making CanDo. I think maybe a year from now, I'll try to figure out how to put it on Windows and the web and do collaboration. But I also need to remember like what is my business. It is shortcuts. That's why I have a pillow on it. You know, but it also kind of plays into that. Like many of my apps now have shortcuts actions. And so I can kind of, and that's the other thing too, is I was in my YouTube videos and my shortcuts community, I talk about other apps that have these features. And it's like…
My wildest take on this is that I actually think app development is going to become a core part of being a creator in a way that I really did not expect. And it's probably not true for everybody, but I mean, truly, it's gotten to the point where everybody on YouTube who like makes videos about…
Yeah, I mean, I see the trend. You know, my initial desire was this is a huge part of the tech news sphere. And so I need to know how these things work and how to use it. And then. And that turned into all of this. You know, I do think for some, maybe it'll be part of the business. It is…
Yeah, I tend to agree. And I think, frankly, the idea that a lot of people who have built sort of shady courses to make money from their community are going to build software, I think, is actually in a lot of ways just a gigantic improvement. So I will take that. For you in particular, right?…
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