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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%?

#191

Post by socketcluster »

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.

This is assuming the marketplace works perfectly... Which is an incorrect assumption. Reality is that the marketplace is highly controlled by algorithms. New platforms will struggle to get exposure... No exposure, no credibility, no word of mouth, no users, catch 22... You think the big players will allow small SaaS projects to gain traction on their platforms? Have you seen how centralized the Internet is these days? Have you seen how afraid people are of betting on no-name platforms? If they choose the wrong no-name platforms and tools, they will lose their (increasingly precious) jobs. As the saying goes "Nobody lost their job for choosing IBM." As for B2C; it's dead, consumers don't have money and will have less of it in the future; the mass-market game is over.

My bet is if there were a lot of great apps being built, even excellent quality, nobody would even hear about them. The big players would copy them before anyone even found out about them.

IMO, the market is not even a playing field anymore, this is why everyone is getting into politics now, though politics is also somewhat monopolized, there is still more potential for success because there is such an abundance of dissatisfied people willing to look outside of mainstream channels. It's much easier to sell political ideologies than to sell products.

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

#193

Post by layer8 »

thot_experiment wrote: post #53
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.

To be fair, writing a SaaS software is like an order, perhaps two orders of magnitude more effort than writing software that runs on a computer and does the thing you want. There's a ton of stuff that SaaS is used for now that's basically trivial and literally all the "engineering" effort is spent on ensuring vendor lock in and retaining control of the software so that you can force people to keep paying you.

We should also get a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality native local-first software, but I’m not seeing any.

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

#194

Post by AngryData »

foxglacier wrote: post #61
andrewstuart wrote: post #8

If you’re quicker then competition heats up management wants more done, efficiencies are soon forgotten and new expectations and baselines set.

Sure but that's the good of it. Lower labor cost = more productivity. The customer wins in the end because the equivalent product is cheaper or a better product costs the same. Businesses and employees still have to compete against each other so things won't get easier for them in the long term.

The customer only wins if the customer is the one using the tools directly, otherwise it leaves all the power in the hands of businesses who's only real goal is maximum profits. And without already possessing domain knowledge to be able to guide, judge, and correct AI along the way, its existence will be of limited use to consumers and business will not feel much pressure to make anything cheaper, it just leaves more margin to funnel to the top.

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

#195

Post by zqna »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #181

I love the hand drawn chart. Apparently "Open Source" was invented around 2005, which significantly reduced development cost, then AWS was invented in 2011 or so and made development even cheaper, but then, oh no, in 2018 "complexity" happened and development became harder!

In 2018 We had kubernetes, which improved the development speed another 300%!

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

#196

Post by jcelerier »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #181

I love the hand drawn chart. Apparently "Open Source" was invented around 2005, which significantly reduced development cost, then AWS was invented in 2011 or so and made development even cheaper, but then, oh no, in 2018 "complexity" happened and development became harder!

I don't read this as when open-source was invented, but when it happened for the corporate world. In 2002 it was a very reasonable choice for $BIG_COMPANY to use a proprietary web server, e.g. IIS. In 2008 that would have been really be weird.

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

#197

Post by esafak »

nesarkvechnep wrote: post #25
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.

Programming in a spreadsheet is an anti-pattern. Does anyone review your workflow? Write tests for it? Use a real programming language; a notebook at least.

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

#198

Post by socketcluster »

codegeek wrote: post #94
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.

The keyword is "building". Yes costs may have dropped 90% just to build software. But there are 1000 other things that comes after it to run a successful software for months let alone years. - Maintenance, Security - Upgrades and patches - Hosting and ability to maintain uptime with traffic - Support and dealing with customer complexities - New requirements/features - Most importantly, ability to blame someone else (…

Good points but this list is missing the most critical problem which AI does not solve; exposure.

What you've listed are the easy parts that are within people's control. You didn't list the most critical part, the actual bottleneck which is not within people's control.

The market is now essentially controlled by algorithms. I predict there will be amazing software... Which will end up ignored by the markets completely until their features are copied by big tech and nobody will know where the idea originated.

Building is absolutely worthless in the context of a monopolized marketplace.

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

#199

Post by PaulHoule »

zahlman wrote: post #170
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.

In fact that is where AI could win. An in house system only needs to serve the needs of one customer whereas the SAAS has to be built for the imagined needs of many customers —- when you’re lucky you can “build one to throw away” and not throw it away.
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