AI is changing the software development lifecycle — from how ideas are prototyped, to how products are built, secured and shipped.

In this episode of What The Tech Podcast (AU), Rene and Vivienne sit down with Gerardo Estaba from Supabase to explore the rise of the AI development lifecycle and what it means for developers, founders, product teams and modern organisations.

We unpack how AI-assisted coding, vibe coding, Postgres, open-source platforms and tools like Supabase are changing the way software gets built.

Gerardo also explains why many teams do not really have a scaling problem — they have a complexity problem — and why faster software development can create bigger risks if security, data access and engineering fundamentals are ignored.

In this episode, we cover:

• How AI is compressing the traditional software development lifecycle
• Why vibe coding is helping more people become software builders
• How Supabase simplifies the backend for modern applications
• Why Postgres still matters in the AI era
• The difference between building a prototype and shipping production software
• Why prompt-based security is not enough
• How row-level security helps protect data access
• Why technical debt may increase as more non-technical users build apps
• Why deep engineering judgement still matters when AI writes more code
• How open-source platforms reduce vendor lock-in
• What software development could look like in the next few years

This episode is for developers, founders, product leaders, AI builders and anyone trying to understand where software development is heading next.

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