I remember drawing in Turtle. Creating music in Basic. All on the black and white computer. It was magical - we used to have a 40 min computer period in 2001, I was 11. I don’t think it was every day, maybe once a week. We had to keep our shoes out.
The magic was the output, you could control it, mould it. Video games were not as exciting, although super fun. There was something magical about being able to create something random, from your brain, into the world - inside a computer screen by just writing code. The computer just understood you. How? Magic.
I was simultaneously into electronics too, winding copper wires (salvaged from chokes) on erasers and having two magnets and a dc battery spin it. Lots of other stuff. I am digressing from the software. Lets get back.
Then I had a period of lull, html was still fine. I just couldn’t make myself like ms-paint - how do you even control mouse to a precision? Word or powerpoint was not very fun either. Although I do remember creating an amazing front page design for homework assignment of other subjects, when I was perhaps 12-13 and got it color printed. Learned a bit of C, but after Basic it probably felt a little complex, there was no music. For some reason, I had also learned Foxpro. I might have been the first guy in my class to have a computer at home at that time. It almost feels like this was just a couple of years back.
Anyway, I need to stop rambling and come to current times. So, yes, you can perhaps build any software now. You can improve any existing software now, too. The AI models are really good at writing code now. You just have to tell it what to do, maybe course correct once in a while, ask it to write test and sometimes manually verify it (maybe not for long).
My friend built a firecracker replacement, apparently 2x faster. And also built an orchestrator for it. All in rust.
He also built an SDK and multiple apps for kobo.
The thing is that, it has become possible, if you are dedicated and have ‘taste’ to build good software.
The sites/apps built using Lovable etc. is also an example of things you can build.
You can probably build your own linux kernel at this point. You can build your own coding harness for sure. The higher the model you have access to, the less painful it will be to build them.
So, having your own appstore, personalized for your needs does seem a real possibility.