As Software Engineers, we often get stuck thinking:
“Let’s build this from scratch. Only then it’s real.”
But that’s not how great products move fast.
Think of Apple: they wrapped Intel chips in macOS + beautiful hardware. Users didn’t care what chip was inside—as long as it worked.
When Apple finally caught up in chip design, they swapped the core. The wrapper stayed.
You can apply the same playbook in code:
* Need AI insights? Wrap OpenAI’s API first.
* Need search? Wrap Algolia or Elasticsearch.
* Need payments? Wrap Stripe.
* Need auth? Wrap Auth0.
The trick:
👉 Design your own abstraction layer (the wrapper).
👉 Swap the underlying provider later without breaking your app.
This lets you:
⚡ Ship ambitious features fast.
⚡ Validate before investing years of engineering.
⚡ Own the core later when it really matters.
Users don’t care what’s under the hood. They care if it works.
Build the wrapper first. Replace the engine later.