“When we have AI agents building stuff, the language I know doesn't matter anymore. I just choose the best possible language for the tech I'm building. That's why I went with Swift and Kotlin, even though I haven't written a line of Swift in my life.”
Lenny's Newsletter · Product & Design · November 2026
Context
Claire Vo asked whether he is an iOS developer. He has a web background but chose native Swift and Kotlin for a premium feel, relying on Codex to write the code.
Transcript
…But I wanted to speak Norwegian to someone to something first that wouldn't judge me and something that would correct me. But also I wanted an experience that felt like Be thrown in a Norwegian village where you have no other option, but to speak Norwegian. That was just the experience I wanted.
…they will respond to you in English. And so you can't actually get that reinforcement loop of like, did I say it right? What am I supposed to hear? And so you built this app to give you that experience. Tell us a little bit about like, are you an iOS developer? Are you like a fancy developer?
So first, I have a chemical engineering degree, but then I taught myself to code to do some web development. So I did a lot of web development over the last five, six years. I can write some front end, I can, and then I can write some back-end code to save my life. Building a web, building a mobile app, I can do it with something like React Native, for instance. But I wanted today, at least when I built Mural, I wanted a native experience. So I wanted like a premium feel to it because I felt like I could build anything, but I wanted to optimize for the best user experience possible. And I wanted to use like all the better iOS features. So I decided building Swift. Well, it wasn't going to be me building it. I needed Codex to build it. So this is building Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. And guess when we have AI agents building stuff, like the language doesn't matter. Like the language I know doesn't matter anymore. I just choose the best possible language for the tech that I'm building. So that's why I went with Swift and…
You know, it's really funny about this is, you know, over 10 years ago, I did a like a venture-funded startup, a real startup. And we picked the language we built that application in based on who we knew could write that code. So we're like, well, we know a bunch of people that can write Python and…
Background, because I have some software engineering background. I understand how to architect apps. I understand what's required if I need to make the front end, the back end. Also, the experience that I want. I think that's the most important piece here is the experience I wanted for this app. I…
Maybe that feels like autumn in Norway, right? It starts to get really dark.
More from Lenny's Newsletter
