The Stack Overflow Podcast Only you can stop AI database drops
9 snips
Nov 21, 2025 
David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool, dives into the revolution AI is bringing to software engineering. He discusses the evolving role of developers as architects rather than coders and the potential risks non-engineers face when using AI tools. Hsu emphasizes the need for guardrails to protect against dangerous outputs and explores how specialized programming primitives can enhance safety. He also talks about the increasing automation of tools and tasks, highlighting how AI can take on roles in sales and support while leaving creative verification to humans.
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AI Expands What Software Can Do
- The AI era broadened what software can do, turning previously human-only tasks like composing music into solvable software problems.
- This expands the total addressable market for software and will drive a large boom in software creation.
Citizen Coding Is Still Mostly Prototyping
- Current low-code/AI code tools let non-engineers build useful apps but mostly prototypes or toys, not production systems.
- Most production software is internal and requires higher safety and reliability than current vibe-coding outputs provide.
Real-World Database Drop Example
- David Hsu cites the Replit incident where users lost data after generated code dropped a database as a concrete failure mode.
- Non-developers often cannot recognize dangerous raw code like "drop table" and will run it without caution.
