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The Sideprocalypse

johan.hal.se

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Re: The Sideprocalypse

#91

Post by alangibson »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #35
alangibson wrote: post #4

I got out of software and into physical products a couple of years ago. I wish I could say I was prescient, but honestly it's just so much easier to sell physical items. Margins are worse, but selling is easier. If you've got a thing you can be sure that someone somewhere will give you money for it.

But… distribution is so much harder?

There's legions of companies that will do warehousing and shipping for you. Definitely costs though.

That's what I mean by margins being a significant difference.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#93

Post by whynotmaybe »

wasmainiac wrote: post #63

> Quality is not a metric anyone cares about in 2026. When you write operational critical code, it matters. No one can blame “the AI made me do it” when things go down and hundreds of thousands of people are without service. When your code can hurt people, it matters. You can’t burn someone’s eye with a laser then point to some AI agent when lawsuits start flying in. When millions of dollars in production data is los…

I'm sure "bad quality" will soon be classified in the "cost of doing business" section like fines for not respecting laws.

That's why AI is hurting us so much right now.

We were always trying to have quality in our project, whether it was for readability or for code evolution.

No, Steve, you don't name your 42 variables with only two letter and no you don't use Norse mythology for naming servers in your infrastructure. Yes Odin is the most powerful so it's the production server but Tyr for the source control and print server isn't really obvious.

Well now AI is Steve.

It will create nice little 300 lines functions with a block repeating 6 times. You know that you will have 6 fix to make instead of one if this block was in a simple function.

It's not instinct a this point, is pure knowledge screaming "it's wrong".

And you now realise that the hidden strength from your craft wasn't about coding the best binary tree search algorithm, it was about knowing the underlying soft unknowns that really made it software.

We have a strong feeling that we're watching dozens of kids running with scissors and we don't know whether it's really scissors, we're just getting too old for this shit, or if we should just stop "progress" because we don't like it.

We're the horse breeders when everyone discovered cars.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#95

Post by SoftTalker »

kvgr wrote: post #60
ForHackernews wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're overstating the case, but I think there's a strong possibility people will prompt AIs to produce bespoke apps that solve their niche use-case rather than paying a developer to do it. I pay for a SaaS app that tracks my finances, but it's not that great and missing some features I would like. Very soon I expect I'll be able to get a better, local-first replacement tailored to my needs by prompting Claude & Frie…

I think developers overestimate the amount of people who want to create app. My friends are lawyers, doctors, musicians, Pr, sales and they really dont care about creating their own apps or software. They use their iPhones for calls and Instagram.

That's kind of me. I have never purchased an app for my phone. I use what it came with: phone calls, imessage, maps, browser. That's all I need.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#96

Post by catlover76 »

amarant wrote: post #32
arkensaw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If someone pitched you a book about a young kid who goes to a school of magic to learn how to use his powers, makes friends and enemies and ultimately battles evil, you might shoot down their dreams because "some cocaine-addled sales critter" already had that idea, and she's called J K Rowling and she's worth billions and shes so successful she can't even be cancelled because she makes so much money. And yet…

Ot to the article, but I just feel I need to strongly recommend The Hierarchy by James Islington. It's pretty much the same idea as the above titles but omg it's so well written. Absolute must read!

[dead]

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#97

Post by SoftTalker »

wasmainiac wrote: post #63

> Quality is not a metric anyone cares about in 2026. When you write operational critical code, it matters. No one can blame “the AI made me do it” when things go down and hundreds of thousands of people are without service. When your code can hurt people, it matters. You can’t burn someone’s eye with a laser then point to some AI agent when lawsuits start flying in. When millions of dollars in production data is los…

> thousands of people ... millions of dollars in production data

Doesn't sound like a hobby side project. Sounds like a business. And then yeah, you get all that comes with it.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#98

Post by SoftTalker »

gordonhart wrote: post #49
alangibson wrote: post #4

I got out of software and into physical products a couple of years ago. I wish I could say I was prescient, but honestly it's just so much easier to sell physical items. Margins are worse, but selling is easier. If you've got a thing you can be sure that someone somewhere will give you money for it.

Kind of looks like vibecoding is doing to SaaS what Chinese mass manufacturing did to physical products two decades ago. Only the marketing and distribution matter in a world where it's very easy for others to clone something and sell it at a lower price.

And yet people can still make money producing and selling high quality physical products. It's a smaller market but there are people who don't want mass produced chinese crap and they go out of their way to find it.

There will be people who will pay for "human coded" software if it is better. Quality is always a differentiator that some people will pay for.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#100

Post by hinkley »

arkensaw wrote: post #21
chasd00 wrote: post #8

I wish i could take back the view i gave to this article, it says nothing. Is there such a thing as an inverse hype machine? Where people take the opposite side of a hyped product and then hype that view just as much but for the same purpose? His footer even admits he's basically just trolling for views so he can reach the status of "thought leader". btw, someone else having the same idea you have for a saas company…

Exactly. If someone pitched you a book about a young kid who goes to a school of magic to learn how to use his powers, makes friends and enemies and ultimately battles evil, you might shoot down their dreams because "some cocaine-addled sales critter" already had that idea, and she's called J K Rowling and she's worth billions and shes so successful she can't even be cancelled because she makes so much money. And yet…

Scholomance but it’s highschool!
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