Has the cost of building software dropped 90%? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#21

Post by martinald » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:09 PM UTC

qwertyastronaut wrote: post #10

I don’t know if it’s 90%, but I’m shipping in 2 days things that took 2-4 weeks before. Opus 4.5 in particular has been a profound shift. I’m not sure how software dev as a career survives this. I have nearly 0 reason to hire a developer for my company because I just write a spec and Claude does it in one shot. It’s honestly scary, and I hope my company doesn’t fail because as a developer I’m fucked. But… statistical…

Agreed. Opus 4.5 does feel like a real shift and I have had exactly your experience. I've shipped stuff that would have taken me weeks in days. And really to a much higher quality standard - test suites would have been far smaller if I'd built manually. And probably everything in MVP Bootstrap CSS.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#22

Post by bdangubic » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:10 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #12

This article mentions cost to ship, but ignores that the largest cost of any software project isn't consumed by how long it takes to get to market, but by maintenance and addition of new features. How is agentic coding doing there? I've only seen huge, unmaintainable messes so far.

one year in, AI slop > Human-written slop

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#23

Post by bdangubic » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

qwertyastronaut wrote: post #10

I don’t know if it’s 90%, but I’m shipping in 2 days things that took 2-4 weeks before. Opus 4.5 in particular has been a profound shift. I’m not sure how software dev as a career survives this. I have nearly 0 reason to hire a developer for my company because I just write a spec and Claude does it in one shot. It’s honestly scary, and I hope my company doesn’t fail because as a developer I’m fucked. But… statistical…

this is roughly same for me

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#24

Post by colonCapitalDee » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…

Blind leading the blind, but my thinking is this:

1. Use the tools to their fullest extend, push boundaries and figure out what works and what doesn't

2. Be more than your tools

As long as you + LLM is significantly more valuable than just an LLM, you'll be employed. I don't know how "practical" this advice is, because it's basically what you're already doing, but it's how I'm thinking about it.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#25

Post by nesarkvechnep » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

debo_ wrote: post #19

> I'm sure every organisation has hundreds if not thousands of Excel sheets tracking important business processes that would be far better off as a SaaS app. Far better off for who? People constantly dismiss spreadsheets, but in many cases, they are more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow, and are more or less universally acce…

I’m yet to see a spreadsheet workflow successfully replaced by something else.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#26

Post by BigHatLogan » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

martinald wrote: post #14

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…

Author here, thanks for your kind words! I think it's about looking at what you're building and proactively suggesting/prototyping what else could be useful for the business. This does get tricky in large corps where things are often quite siloed, but can you think "one step ahead" of the product requirements and build that as well? I think regardless if you build it, it's a good exercise to run on any project - what…

I think you're right about trying to stay one step ahead of product requirements. Maybe my issue here is that I'm looking for another "path" where one might not exist, at least not a concretely defined one. From childhood to now, things were set in front of me and I just sort of did them, but now it feels like we're entering a real fog of war.

It would be helpful, as you suggest, to start shifting away from "I code based on concrete specs" to "I discover solutions for the business."

Thanks for the reply (and for the original essay). It has given me a lot to chew on.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#27

Post by martinald » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

debo_ wrote: post #19

> I'm sure every organisation has hundreds if not thousands of Excel sheets tracking important business processes that would be far better off as a SaaS app. Far better off for who? People constantly dismiss spreadsheets, but in many cases, they are more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow, and are more or less universally acce…

Author here. Of course not everything needs to be a web app. But I'm meaning a lot of core sheets I see in businesses need more structure round them.

Especially for collaboration, access controls, etc. Not to mention they could do with unit testing.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#28

Post by JohnMakin » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

bdangubic wrote: post #22

JohnMakin wrote: post #12

This article mentions cost to ship, but ignores that the largest cost of any software project isn't consumed by how long it takes to get to market, but by maintenance and addition of new features. How is agentic coding doing there? I've only seen huge, unmaintainable messes so far.

one year in, AI slop > Human-written slop

I am highly skeptical of this claim.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#29

Post by bdangubic » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:13 PM UTC

more_corn wrote: post #3

Ask someone who builds software for a fee. Are you able to do 90% more? Fire 9/10 engineers? Produce 90% faster? No, no, and no.

90% more - nope. 35-55% more, just about on average. I am 30-year in though, not sure what these numbers are for junior devs

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#30

Post by BigHatLogan » Mon, Dec 08, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #17

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…

Don't chase specific technologies, especially not ones driven by for-profit companies. Chase ideas, become great in one slice of the industry, and the very least you can always fall back on that. Once established within a domain, you can always try to branch out, and feel a lot more comfortable doing so. Ultimately, software is for doing something , and that something can be a whole range of things. If you become rea…

Thanks for the response. When you say "one slice of the industry", is the suggestion to understand the core business of whatever I'm building instead of being the "specs to code" person? I guess this is where the advice starts to become fuzzy and vague for me.