Claude Code has figured out what Steve Ballmer knew in the early 2000s: everything is code, and it's all about developers, developers, developers.

Back then, that obsession helped Microsoft beat Apple and dominate the market.

Today, the stakes are even higher — because "developers" isn't a niche anymore.
Product managers, marketers, ops, founders, analysts. Anyone who can prompt an AI and ship workflows, scripts, and tools is effectively a developer. The developer market is 100–1000x bigger than it was in Ballmer's era.

I was writing code and attending Tech-ed conferences in the early 2000s. What I'm seeing now feels like that same inflection point — except the tent is massively bigger.

And I'm not just observing it — over the past 8 weeks, Claude Code has become my dev team. I've shipped more working tools and platform updates this month than we did in the last year.

That's why Claude Code is winning right now:

• Removes friction from making things that actually work

• Opinionated about real workflows, not generic chat

• Built for people who ship, not people who "explore AI"
  
  OpenAI is still very much in the game, but it's currently too general-purpose. Codex is fine, but Claude Code feels built for the new reality where everything is code and everyone is writing it — whether they realise it or not.
  

  The next platform winners won't just serve developers. They'll create them.