My development team costs $41.73 a month • Hacker News Board

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#21

Post by bobsomers » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #18

dmitrygr wrote: post #2

I think we need a mandatory disclosure on software "was >1% vibecoded" same as we have on allergens for food. This'll prevent its use in any safety-critical place.

This shouldn’t really matter, software can also be written by very bad coders. If you care about safety, you care about the whole process—coding, sure, but also: code review, testing, what the design specs were, and what the failure-path is for when a bug (inevitably) makes it through. Big companies produce lots of safety critical code, and it is inevitable that some incompetent people will sneak into the gaps, there…

Everything you said is 100% correct.

However, part of designing and upholding a safety-critical software development process is looking for places to reduce or eliminate the introduction of bugs in the first place.

Strong type systems, for example, eliminate entire classes of errors, so mandating that code is written in X language is a pro-active process decision to reduce the introduction of certain types of bugs.

Restricting the use of AI tools could very much be viewed the same way.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#22

Post by otoolep » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

patchymcnoodles wrote: post #11

That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself as a cost, ok fine and understandable if you don't wanna earn from this project it is kind of an ok look at cost. But if I see it in this relation, because of Copilot his "team" costs now $41.73 a month more than before. But the real cost that would be interes…

Post author here. Few things.

You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this.

I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human developers. But I've got Copilot (and Gemini when I use it) now. So, in a sense, I now do have a team. And it's allowed me to fix bugs and add small features I wouldn't have bothered to in the past. It's definitely faster (20 mins to fire up my computer, write the code, push the PR vs. 5 mins to create the GitHub issue, assign to Copilot, review, and merge).

Case in point: I'm currently adding change-data-capture to rqlite. Development is going faster, but it's also more erratic because I'm reviewing more, and coding less. It reminds me of when I've been a TL of a software team.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#23

Post by indigodaddy » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

nirolo wrote: post #15

indigodaddy wrote: post #13

I also submitted this earlier today prior to this submission, but it was flagged, which I was confused by, so glad this one got through. This was an interesting article and brought some good points around the fact that the AI never has a continuing backward/forward-looking context about one's project. Perhaps these ideas are being thought about to potentially add as features of LLMs somehow without making it unfeasib…

This is exactly the idea behind the concept of a memory bank that I think Cline introduced first. It serves as a goto for project overview and current scope and goals the project has.

Ah, I'll check this out thanks.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#24

Post by paulddraper » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

bobsomers wrote: post #21

bee_rider wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn’t really matter, software can also be written by very bad coders. If you care about safety, you care about the whole process—coding, sure, but also: code review, testing, what the design specs were, and what the failure-path is for when a bug (inevitably) makes it through. Big companies produce lots of safety critical code, and it is inevitable that some incompetent people will sneak into the gaps, there…

Everything you said is 100% correct. However, part of designing and upholding a safety-critical software development process is looking for places to reduce or eliminate the introduction of bugs in the first place. Strong type systems, for example, eliminate entire classes of errors, so mandating that code is written in X language is a pro-active process decision to reduce the introduction of certain types of bugs. R…

So you would suggest ">1% in dynamically typed language" disclaimers as well?

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#25

Post by mjr00 » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

otoolep wrote: post #22

patchymcnoodles wrote: post #11

That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself as a cost, ok fine and understandable if you don't wanna earn from this project it is kind of an ok look at cost. But if I see it in this relation, because of Copilot his "team" costs now $41.73 a month more than before. But the real cost that would be interes…

Post author here. Few things. You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this. I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human d…

> So, in a sense, I now do have a team.

In another, more accurate sense: no, you have a tool, not a team. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless.

If you believe you have a team, try taking a two week vacation and see how much work your team does while you're gone.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#26

Post by homarp » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

indigodaddy wrote: post #23

nirolo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the idea behind the concept of a memory bank that I think Cline introduced first. It serves as a goto for project overview and current scope and goals the project has.

Ah, I'll check this out thanks.

https://github.com/cline/cline/blob/main/docs/prompting/clin...

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#27

Post by jokethrowaway » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #5

>It doesn’t remember that last week we made a small refactor to make future development easier, or that I abandoned a particular idea as a dead end Sometimes you need to keep the context and sometimes you need to reset it. An example of needing to reset. Asking for X, later realizing you meant Y and having the LLM oscillates between them, on an unrelated request it adds X back in, removing Y. Etc. Clearing the contex…

Claude Code has md files with tech notes but it doesn't work too well.

They still need a baby sitter.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#28

Post by kangalioo » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #24

bobsomers wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said is 100% correct. However, part of designing and upholding a safety-critical software development process is looking for places to reduce or eliminate the introduction of bugs in the first place. Strong type systems, for example, eliminate entire classes of errors, so mandating that code is written in X language is a pro-active process decision to reduce the introduction of certain types of bugs. R…

So you would suggest ">1% in dynamically typed language" disclaimers as well?

If someone made that happen I'd be ecstatic

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#29

Post by dmitrygr » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #19

dmitrygr wrote: post #2

I think we need a mandatory disclosure on software "was >1% vibecoded" same as we have on allergens for food. This'll prevent its use in any safety-critical place.

Given performance of an average SE, that would be an improvement. So I don’t know what you’re saying.

Failure modes of human coders are well-understood. Failure modes of LLMs are not yet as well understood.

Re: My development team costs $41.73 a month

#30

Post by patchymcnoodles » Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

otoolep wrote: post #22

patchymcnoodles wrote: post #11

That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself as a cost, ok fine and understandable if you don't wanna earn from this project it is kind of an ok look at cost. But if I see it in this relation, because of Copilot his "team" costs now $41.73 a month more than before. But the real cost that would be interes…

Post author here. Few things. You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this. I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human d…

Ok, that's cool that you can develop faster now, but as the other comment: it is a tool, not the cost of a team. It still for me a very strange comparison.

But nonetheless, thanks for the explanation :).