As "AI programming" becomes increasingly easier, a new wave is emerging: "micro-applications" that anyone can create and "super programmers" who can replace entire teams

Silicon Valley is in a frenzy over a new species known as "Cracked Engineers."

In the Bay Area, shrouded in the AI gold rush, traditional recruitment logic is failing. J.X. Mo, co-founder of the robotics startup Gradient, has directly canceled the company's internship recruitment plan. The reason is simple and brutal—no one is "Cracked" enough.

In his view, in the era of AI-assisted programming, if a newcomer is not "Cracked" enough, unable to perform like a gaming expert with explosive state, technical prowess, and tireless effort, they do not deserve a badge.

Today, as AI lowers the threshold for programming infinitely, the global software industry is experiencing an unprecedented polarization.

On one hand, the barrier to programming is being lowered infinitely. Thanks to tools like Claude and ChatGPT, ordinary people who do not understand code are beginning to build highly personalized "Micro Apps" through natural language, transforming software from a "commodity" that needs to be purchased into a "tool" that can be self-made.

On the other hand, competition among professional engineers is becoming increasingly fierce. In Silicon Valley, startups are scrambling for the aforementioned "Cracked Engineers." This group of young people uses AI to amplify their personal output to the limit, attempting to replace an entire traditional development team with just one person.

Micro Apps That Everyone Can Create: From "Subscription SaaS" to "Self-Made Tools"

For a long time, if you needed software to solve a specific problem, you would typically choose to download it from the App Store or purchase a SaaS service. But now, a new consumer habit is forming: make one yourself and leave once you're done.

This software built by non-professional developers is referred to as "Micro Apps" or "Fleeting Apps." They have very distinct characteristics: extremely vertical scenarios, addressing immediate pain points, and often lacking commercial promotion intent.

Legand L. Burge III, a computer science professor at Howard University, compares it to the flash trends on social media, except this time the protagonist is the software itself—"When the demand disappears, the software disappears as well."

The story of Rebecca Yu is highly representative.

To solve the "choice paralysis" during friends' gatherings, she, with no technical background, used Claude and ChatGPT to create a web application called Where2Eat in just seven days, which can recommend restaurants based on her and her friends' common interests.

In the past, this often required hiring a professional full-stack engineer or using complex low-code platforms to accomplish.

Rebecca Yu said:

"Once I learned how to efficiently prompt AI and solve problems, the building process became much easier."

(1) Filling the Vacuum Between Excel and SaaS Bain Capital Ventures partner Christina Melas-Kyriazi keenly pointed out that micro-applications are filling the huge market vacuum between "Excel spreadsheets" and "fully functional SaaS products." Just as Shopify made opening a store simple, AI is making software development as casual as making spreadsheets.

People are starting to customize software for extremely vertical, even "trivial" needs, with similar cases exploding in Silicon Valley:

• Medical Records: Software engineer James Waugh developed a simple logger for a friend with palpitations, specifically to show heart data to doctors.

• Life Chores: Media strategist Hollie Krause, dissatisfied with a doctor-recommended app, took it upon herself to write an allergy tracking application. She described the speed of its development: "By the time my husband went out to buy dinner and came back, I was done."

• One-time Entertainment: Founder Jordi Amat developed a web game for a family holiday gathering, and once the holiday was over, the app completed its historical mission and was shut down.

• Habit Tracking: An artist even developed a "habit tracker" specifically to record how much water pipe and alcohol he consumed over the weekend.

(2) The Business Paradox of "Use and Go"

SBS Comms Vice President Darrell Etherington predicts that in the future, people will stop subscribing to monthly fee-based tool applications and instead become "self-sufficient" using tools like Claude Code, Replit, or Bolt based on specific needs.

However, this wave is not without resistance. Although the development threshold for web applications has dropped to zero, mobile apps still face the obstacle of the "Apple Tax"—the annual $99 developer account fee is too expensive for a "one-time application."

Nevertheless, the capital market has already sensed the opportunity, with startups like Anything (which raised $11 million) and VibeCode (which raised $9.4 million in seed funding) working to solve the last-mile problem of mobile "Vibe Coding."

Of course, the software developed by these individuals has inherent flaws in quality, security, and maintenance, making them unsuitable for scalable sales. But for the creators, they do not need to serve the masses; they only need to serve themselves—this itself is a disruption of the original supply-demand relationship in the software industry.

One-Person Teams: "Super Programmers" and "Cracked Engineers" in the AI Era

If micro-applications are a product of lowered programming barriers, then "Cracked Engineers" are a reflection of fierce competition among professionals.

The term "Cracked" originates from gaming slang, describing those who operate with incredible skill and are in a "cracked" state In today's Silicon Valley, it is used to define the ideal image of a software engineer in the AI era: young (usually in their 20s), extremely eager for success, technically sharp, and able to leverage AI tools to achieve astonishing output.

J.X. Mo, co-founder of the robotics startup Gradient, recently made a brutal decision: to cancel intern recruitment. After interviewing applicants, he found it "not worth the time"—because no one was sufficiently "Cracked."

Against the backdrop of the AI gold rush, startups are pursuing extreme human efficiency. Jonathan Siddharth, CEO of Turing, believes that with the help of AI, a small and elite team can potentially generate $100 million in revenue within a year. Founders no longer need mediocre code workers who follow the rules; they need special forces.

The "Cracked Engineers" here are fundamentally different from the two types of people we are familiar with:

1. They are not "Vibe Coders": Vibe Coders often lack foundational technical skills and are merely "prompt operators" for AI (Cursor Jockeys). In contrast, Cracked Engineers possess deep technical expertise; they significantly enhance efficiency using AI while also having the ability to review and correct AI-generated erroneous code. They are the riders of AI, not passengers.

2. They are not traditional "10x Engineers": The "10x engineers" praised by the previous generation of the tech circle are typically over 30, working at large companies like Google, following processes, and even holding reservations about AI programming tools. Cracked Engineers, on the other hand, are younger and more rebellious; they are uninterested in the political struggles of big companies and believe that "work is everything."

"One person equals a team" is becoming a reality.

Ron Arel, CEO of Intology, points out that several individuals who are extremely focused and adept at using Claude Code can now produce more than a 15-person team without AI assistance.

Adam Gleave, co-founder of Far.AI, revealed that one of his employees, with AI assistance, completed a prototype of a large model fine-tuning software in just a few weeks, a task that would have taken the open-source community a year to accomplish.

This high output often comes with extreme work intensity. These engineers generally accept and even advocate for the "9-9-6" work model (9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week), as they are acutely aware that in the AI race, being a step slower means elimination.

James Hawkins, co-founder of PostHog, describes them this way:

"They don't care about office politics, they don't care about dressing up, and they don't even groom themselves. Their work results speak for everything."

However, this fervent pursuit of "super programmers" also hides concerns.

Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures, observes that some young engineers, in an effort to appear "Cracked," begin to deliberately exhibit anti-social tendencies, use obscure language, or abandon all hobbies for work He reminded:

"The most effective technical leaders are often good communicators; this is not a one-person game."

Recruitment expert Kelsey Bishop bluntly stated: Many founders try to cover up the flaws in their business models by hiring a "Cracked Engineer," "they see this as a band-aid, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem."

Conclusion

As AI programming becomes increasingly accessible, the middle ground is disappearing.

For ordinary users, software development power is being decentralized, and everyone can be the "product manager" of their own life; for professional fields, the barriers are being raised infinitely, and only those who can harness AI and combine physical presence with algorithms, the "super individuals," can survive in the fierce gold rush.

This is an era of gold, but also a brutal era