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Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

martinalderson.com

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

#161

Post by dzonga »

pretty decent article - but what it misses is most of these agents are trained on bad code - which is open source.

so what does this mean in practice? for people working on proprietary systems (cost will never go down) - the code is not on github, maybe hosted on an internal VCS - bitbucket etc. the agents were never trained on that code - yeah they might help with docs (but are they using the latest docs?)

for others - the agents spit bad code, make assumptions that don't exist, call api's that don't exist or have been deprecated ?

each of those you need an experienced builder who has 1. technical know-how 2. domain expertise ? so has the cost of experienced builder(s) gone down ? I don't think so - I think it has gone up

what people are vibecoding out there - is mostly tools / apps that deal in closed systems (never really interact with the outside world), scripts were ai can infer based on what was done before etc but are these people building anything new ?

I have also noticed there's a huge conflation with regards to - cost & complexity. zirp drove people to build software on very complex abstractions eg kubernetes, nextjs, microservices etc - hence people thought they needed huge armies of people etc. however we also know the inverse is true that most software can be built by teams of 1-3 people. we have countless proof of this.

so people think to reduce cost is to use a.i agents instead of addressing the problem head-on - built software in a simpler manner. will ai help - yeah but not to the extent of what is being sold or written daily.

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

#162

Post by neom »

lossolo wrote: post #73
martinald wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with. A few of them are starting to replace SaaS tools with custom built internal tooling. I suspect this pattern is happening everywhere to a varying level. Often these SaaS tools are expensive, aren't actually that complicated (or if they are complicated, the bit they need isn't) and have limitations. For example, a company I know recently got told their v…

> It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with How many samples do you have? Which industries are they from? Which SaaS products were they using, exactly and which features? > ...a company I know recently got told their v1 API they relied on on some back office SaaS tool was being deprecated. V2 of the API didn't have the same features ... dev spends a week or two rebuilding that tool Was that Saa…

I'm a consultant so I see lots of businesses, it's happening in all of them. I'm not seeing people rip out tools for custom builds to be clear, I just see people solving today problems with custom apps.

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

#163

Post by devin »

kenjackson wrote: post #120
TheRoque wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the past, you knew the codebase very well, and it was trivial to implement a fix and upgrade the software. Can the same be done with LLMs ? Well from what I see, it depends on your luck. But if the LLMs can't help you, then you gotta read the whole codebase that you've never read before and you quickly lose the initial benefits. I don't doubt someday we'll get there though.

I've hit this in little bursts, but one thing I've found is that LLMs are really good at reasoning about their own code and helping me understand how to diagnose and make fixes. I recently found some assembly source for some old C64 games and used an LLM to walk me through it (purely recreational). It was so good at it. If I was teaching a software engineering class, I'd have students use LLMs to do analysis of large…

Does that mean you don't think you learned anything valuable through the experience of working through this complexity yourself?

I'm not advocating for everyone to do all of their math on paper or something, but when I look back on the times I learned the most, it involved a level of focus and dedication that LLMs simply do not require. In fact, I think their default settings may unfortunately lead you toward shallow patterns of thought.

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

#164

Post by simonw »

dzonga wrote: post #161

pretty decent article - but what it misses is most of these agents are trained on bad code - which is open source. so what does this mean in practice? for people working on proprietary systems (cost will never go down) - the code is not on github, maybe hosted on an internal VCS - bitbucket etc. the agents were never trained on that code - yeah they might help with docs (but are they using the latest docs?) for other…

The idea that LLMs were trained on miscellaneous scraped low quality code may have been true a year ago, but I suspect it is no longer true today

All of the major model vendors are competing on how well their models can code. The key to getting better code out of the model is improving the quality of the code that it is trained on.

Filtering training data for high quality code is easier than filtering for high quality data if other types.

My strong hunch is that the quality of code being used to train current frontier models is way higher than it was a year ago.

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

#165

Post by djmips »

TheRoque wrote: post #119
recursive wrote: post #4

Did I miss something or is there actually no evidence provided that costs have dropped?

Especially if you factor-in the fact that the AI companies are losing money for now, and that it's not sustainable.

Yeah, when does the other shoe drops and after being addicted to AI coding we suddenly have the rug pulled on price.

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

#166

Post by bitwize »

ubercow13 wrote: post #125
ares623 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, someone else + LLM at -10% compensation will be employed

Then why wasn't someone else employed at -10% compensation instead of you before LLMs?

Let's say LLMs add 50 "skill points" to your output. Developer A is at 60 skill points in terms of coding ability, developer B is at 40. The differential between them looks large. Now add LLMs. Developer A is at 110 skill points, developer B is at 90. Same difference, but now it doesn't look as large.

The (perceived, alleged) augmentation by LLMs makes individual differences in developer skill seem less important. From the business's perspective, you are not getting much less by hiring a less skilled developer vs. hiring a more skilled one, even if both of them would be using LLMs on the job.

Obviously, real life is more complicated than this, but that's a rough idea of what the CEO and the shareholders are grappling with from a talent acquisition standpoint.

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

#167

Post by renewiltord »

martinald wrote: post #44
nine_k wrote: post #35

Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case. This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with. A few of them are starting to replace SaaS tools with custom built internal tooling. I suspect this pattern is happening everywhere to a varying level. Often these SaaS tools are expensive, aren't actually that complicated (or if they are complicated, the bit they need isn't) and have limitations. For example, a company I know recently got told their v…

I know of at least two multi-billion corps that are moving to internal ETL tools instead of 5tran now because the cost to maintain internally is much lower and you can customize for cheap. SaaS as a model is at risk without something tying someone down.

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

#168

Post by Havoc »

soco wrote: post #103
vb-8448 wrote: post #101

It's not just about "building" ... who is going to maintain all this new sub-par code pushed to production every day? Who is going to patch all bugs, edge cases and security vulnerabilities?

The theory goes very simple, you tell the agent to patch the bug. Now the practice though...

You are a senior expert. SENIOR EXPERT :D

[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/64TNGvCoegE

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

#169

Post by krupan »

p2detar wrote: post #41
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.

While this is true, I think some fields like game development may not always have this problem. If your goal is to release a non-upgradable game - fps, arcade, single-player titles, maintenance may be much less important than shipping. edit: typos

I'm trying to understand where this kind of thinking comes from. I'm not trying to belittle you, I sincerely want to know: Are you aware that everyone writing software has the goal of releasing software so perfect it never needs an upgrade? Are you aware that we've all learned that that's impossible?

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

#170

Post by zahlman »

nine_k wrote: post #35

Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case. This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

> Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players.

Don't forget the second-order effect of clients deciding they could do it in-house.

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