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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?

#31

Post by epolanski »

rkozik1989 wrote: post #23
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.

I mean, it's his plans, so of course he'd recognize if AI is hallucinating.

For what is worth I have two different skills in claude code which are two reviewers with two distinct personalities.

At every plan I write, I have them review it and find edge cases, critique.

I don't think I've seen hallucinations since few opus versions at least.

Feedback is useful 4 times out of 5. Very useful actually. And one time is not very valuable or wrong (but it requires the two different skills to agree).

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

#32

Post by codingdave »

No, the opposite is true. If you are building something good, you can do it even easier as a solo dev. The only people who will get shut down by all this is the people whose ideas were low quality, and whose only value was "I can code and you cannot."

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

#34

Post by ieie3366 »

epolanski wrote: post #33
geldedus wrote: post #16

On the contrary, solo devs would produce even more output.

To the point where there's much more competition, no?

Most people building with AI have zero taste and can't even read the code it outputs, meaning they are doomed from the start

The level of serious competition is surprisingly small. It mostly consists of people who could actually build without agentic LLMs but now get supercharged.

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

#35

Post by midnitewarrior »

dudewhocodes wrote: post #6

I'm expecting a similar situation to the Video game crash of 1983 which happened due to total market saturation with low quality products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983 Everyone is talking about how many things they are building. Non-devs suddenly building... But nobody seems to call out the basic law of supply and demand. You can be the greatest marketer but you will fail when all channels a…

Yes but back then, everybody just got bored of their Ataris and moved on.

Nobody is throwing out their phone or computer. Software will still be needed.

That said, there will be a lot of noise, with 100 choices in each category, how does one rise to the top? Is it simply the one that sticks around the longest and doesn't become abandonware?

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

#36

Post by consumer451 »

codingdave wrote: post #32

No, the opposite is true. If you are building something good, you can do it even easier as a solo dev. The only people who will get shut down by all this is the people whose ideas were low quality, and whose only value was "I can code and you cannot."

> you can do it even easier as a solo dev.

I get the feeling that we are in the golden age of LLM dev tools, where many tools like Claude Code are very subsidized. That will go away soon, and worse. In the most recent Dwarkesh podcast with Dario, he mentioned that not all tokens should cost the same.

He gave an example where tokens giving advice to restart a computer should be cheap. On the other hand, tokens advising a pharma company on molecules should be expensive.

In the near future I can imaging CC replying:

> That's a great idea, this will solve the problem in production! However, given the number of users I see, this will be charged at 20x. Would you like me to proceed?

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

#37

Post by tracker1 »

I can only speak for myself and will say that AI coding has gotten me more involved with personal project ideas I've let just sit for years. Mostly in that I'm able to be several times more productive than I am on my own.

I'm able to use the agent to scaffold small projects that let me work on a single library I can test in isolation. I'm not exactly "vibe coding" an entire application, but definitely using the AI to be more effective with my time.

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

#39

Post by dysoco »

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.

On one hand yes, but also a big company can now potentially copy your project for pennies and have far bigger outreach and marketing so they eat your market.

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

#40

Post by keiferski »

dysoco wrote: post #39
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.

On one hand yes, but also a big company can now potentially copy your project for pennies and have far bigger outreach and marketing so they eat your market.

Big companies have always been able to copy your project for pennies, relatively.
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