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Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

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Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#21

Post by mark_l_watson »

Two mildly contrary points:

AI is a fantastic learning tool. Getting smarter usually leads to more success.

AI is great when you don’t have skilled co-workers to bounce ideas off of: as an indy mostly open source developer, for a few decades I would write up five to ten pages of design notes, perhaps a few diagrams like UML sequence diagrams, and then mull over my little pile of design artifacts for a while, and then start coding. Now I still create my little pile of design artifacts but will burn tokens on Gemini in research mode to critique my ideas. Very useful.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#22

Post by RevEng »

kypro wrote: post #17
keiferski wrote: post #10

I don’t see how this follows. If anything, ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev. The limiter is and has always been the idea and your ability to market it.

> ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev Or to reframe, AI tools allow everyone to have some base-level software engineering competency and makes everyone you're competing against vastly more productive. Generally speaking if you want to make money you need to provide a product/service within a niche. If too many people are able to compete against you, or just do whatever you're providing themselv…

But by the same logic, people who could readily code small projects can now code large projects. It helps everyone, not just the non-programmers. There is still a large gap between what an amateur can do and what a professional can do, so the competitive advantage is still there.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#23

Post by rkozik1989 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #21

Two mildly contrary points: AI is a fantastic learning tool. Getting smarter usually leads to more success. AI is great when you don’t have skilled co-workers to bounce ideas off of: as an indy mostly open source developer, for a few decades I would write up five to ten pages of design notes, perhaps a few diagrams like UML sequence diagrams, and then mull over my little pile of design artifacts for a while, and then…

The problem with bouncing ideas off of AI is that you still need to know enough to know when something is likely a hallucination. Because unless you're double-checking it with some kind of regular cadence you're probably accepting fiction as fact. Its really easy to just trust everything these chatbots output because of the style of communication. I'll be the first admit I fall for this trap all the time.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#24

Post by al_borland »

robofanatic wrote: post #18
topocite wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The idea that ideas are cheap and all that matters is execution is absurd. Imagine saying this about a great record album in music. Or any masterwork of art. From growing up with my young brain being programmed by surrealist MTV videos, in a society driven by tiktok brains, creativity will be at an absolute premium. Just the idea that this is a bad time for the solo developer is so uncreative that it boggles…

Ideas were “cheap” before because implementation was harder. Now I guess the coin has flipped.

A huge part of implementation is how it’s done. A lot of companies made mp3 players, Apple made the iPod. Their implementation was different. It was done with more care and thought. The idea was cheap, 1,000 songs in your pocket. An implementation that connected with people and brought it to the mainstream was hard.

Someone quickly vibe coding something might fulfill the requirements of an idea. However, their implementation will likely be poor and lack the care needed to connect with people on a way that makes them want to use it.

I think understanding this has always been the key to standing out. That doesn’t change in the world of LLM, it becomes more important than ever.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#25

Post by satvikpendem »

kypro wrote: post #17
keiferski wrote: post #10

I don’t see how this follows. If anything, ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev. The limiter is and has always been the idea and your ability to market it.

> ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev Or to reframe, AI tools allow everyone to have some base-level software engineering competency and makes everyone you're competing against vastly more productive. Generally speaking if you want to make money you need to provide a product/service within a niche. If too many people are able to compete against you, or just do whatever you're providing themselv…

It's a self-solving problem because people don't know how to market, which is 10x harder than development and which an AI cannot really help with, and that's how the real money is made.

And by the way it's SaaS, software as a service, Sass is a different tool, for CSS.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#26

Post by rkozik1989 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #13

There's certainly more weekend projects being built, but the vast majority of it is unabashed shovelware. I see a torrent of poor ideas made a reality without enough thought put into them, designed without taste, and built without quality by people without the experience to maintain them.

Giving an audience something they never asked for is very easy when you don't have much experience interacting with them. That's where a lot of would be entrepreneurs and creators alike stumble. They forget (or don't know to) quantify the size of their obtainable market before taking action and building something.

Seeing as how LLMs just tell you what you want to hear and not what they think you need to hear I don't see this problem changing anytime soon. They might need to develop a different type of model to have it reason that way.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#27

Post by aristofun »

> unless you are good at marketing.

Sorry to (not)disappoint, but it was _always_ like this.

If you analyze closely, every single solopreneurial success is based first and foremost on a successful marketing/sales. Whether by luck, hard work or being in the right place at the right time. The dev part and the product is never a main dish.

Re: Ask HN: Is AI the final nail in the coffin for solo developers?

#29

Post by hogehoge51 »

kypro wrote: post #17
keiferski wrote: post #10

I don’t see how this follows. If anything, ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev. The limiter is and has always been the idea and your ability to market it.

> ai tools let you be vastly more productive as a single dev Or to reframe, AI tools allow everyone to have some base-level software engineering competency and makes everyone you're competing against vastly more productive. Generally speaking if you want to make money you need to provide a product/service within a niche. If too many people are able to compete against you, or just do whatever you're providing themselv…

it's not base-level. it shifts the margin, at low skill base-level and your marginal level may be similar. but if you have enough experience and know the complete SLDC , having done each role during your career it, the margin is a massive wedge. if you know a niche, you now know all the adjacent niches and technolgies IF you are open minded to want to know them. that has powerful leverage.
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