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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.
> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.
Not because it’ll make you faster (which it can).
But because when it’s 2am and your server is crashing and you don’t understand the error messages and your solo business is melting down, with AI you have a virtual helper to get you through solving tough problems.
Nothing is worse than being alone and things are breaking and you don’t know what to do or who to talk too since you’re solo and don’t have anyone else to troubleshoot with.
AI can be your helper in those times of need.
Founding a company, or just working on any project with a very small team (Less than 5 people) has all of the same issues the author wrote about here. At least they did for me. I resonated a lot with this. --- Separately, I hope the author of this project is able recognize how this project might be able to grow sustainably. Its a hard thing to know that you won't be able to work on something forever, and either build…
The more likely outcome is that something happens to me and I can't maintain it anymore. But if there's sufficient interest in keeping it going, anyone can fork it and pick up where I left off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.
Can you talk a little about what "further" means to you?
1. A primary meaning, "Further" means "revenue" (or "profit"). You and your AI together can sit and create a competitor to Windows 11, do the marketing copy, a sales strategy, feature testing etc, but without a team that product isn't going anywhere.
2. A secondary meaning, "Further" means "Stamina". You + AI can create everything above, but without a community (whether paying customers or free users), the product dies when your interest in it dies, even if it is still making money!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.
> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.
Surely that's both faster and further?
IMO AI agents are like a team of remote consultants that only talk shop and have no sense of humor.
The rule to remember about solo development: Alone I can go faster, together we can go further! Everything else boils down to this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.
> Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means. I disagree; it's even more obvious with AI that, with AI, a solo dev can go even faster, but still, with AI, you need a team to go further.
So, while I currently [mostly] agree, I think the / a next generation of agents might take that over a threshold and make solo development close enough to the equivalent of current 2-dev work to meaningfully change the equation. Furthermore I think that does not even need new models; I think current models with better "harness / tooling / system prompting / skills / etc." (whatever you may call the text files describing important procedures), might be able to fill most of that gap.
Obviously work that needs more than 2 devs planning might take even longer to fully solve with 1 dev + multiple agents, if ever.
My current mental model is that humans can very well think about and walk the boundary of problems, while [current] AI agents can fill the inside to some extent. If a problem has inherent "multi-dimensional boundaries", it might be hard for a person to imagine and walk it well to guide the agents. And I think most of the interesting problems fall in this category.
> But... I don't truly know what my users want. There is no telemetry of any kind in Luxury Yacht. I like being able to say that, but it means I have no idea how many people are using it, or how they're using it. I don't know what features are the most important to other people. So add telemetry and a request tracker like https://www.productboard.com/ . This is not a solo vs team thing.
Most projects don't need telemetry. They need better logs. On the backend... Why wouldn't you log every request that hits your server, and why wouldn't you already know what those requests mean? Why would you let your frontend make direct requests to any other server when you can just proxy it yourself and maintain control? On the frontend... What's so hard about wrapping all your event listeners and periodically sen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you talk a little about what "further" means to you?
Sure: 1. A primary meaning, "Further" means "revenue" (or "profit"). You and your AI together can sit and create a competitor to Windows 11, do the marketing copy, a sales strategy, feature testing etc, but without a team that product isn't going anywhere. 2. A secondary meaning, "Further" means "Stamina". You + AI can create everything above, but without a community (whether paying customers or free users), the prod…
Lessons from my failure: - do everything you can to keep burnout at bay - you do, in fact, need a holiday - hyperfocus is not your friend, ever ; if you feel you can’t put it down, you must put it down - never delete emails; the one thing you can guarantee is that you will need an email you deleted - if you look back at your notes and they are not instantly obvious, rewrite them while you still remember what you mean…
I had a $5/month thing. Made a $20/month option that barely had more features. Sold lotsa seats.
Rewrote it. $10 and $50 plans. $50 is most popular.
But a day after I launched I got a new payment for $360. Damn, I thought, Claude must've screwed something up.
Nope, just somebody going straight into the Yearly option of the $50 (that I hadn't realized Claude added (with a discount)).