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Software for One

ajwaxman.com

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Re: Software for One

#101

Post by nicbou »

I think that also extends to "software for few". It lowered the bar for building calculators and widgets for my users. Instead of lengthy explanations, I can just build little calculators and decision trees for my small user base.

Maggie Appleton said that it would enable "barefoot doctors" to bring helpful software to small communities. I have seen a lot of those underserved groups in my dev career.

I am not too happy about AI killing my business and inserting slop into every aspect of my life, but I am very hopeful about that aspect.

---

I also made some apps for one in the pre-AI days, and now I can quickly add features I've been procrastinating for ages. I can finally process data that I've been collecting but had no time to write code about.

Re: Software for One

#102

Post by tim-projects »

farfatched wrote: post #26
tim-projects wrote: post #23

"building personal software won't require a developer's stack for much longer." I will if you are building anything good. What even is this statement?

They're suggesting you won't need an IDE and a VM to build a service, for example. You'll just prompt your LLM provider and they'll provision your software. It'll do testing, dependency updates, monitoring, and regular audits. If you want fixes/features, you'll prompt your LLM and it'll make it so.

> If you want fixes/features, you'll prompt your LLM and it'll make it so.

I've been using the agents since the day they came out. This, does not work. It works if you want an app that looks like it works if that works without any testing. If you use the app in any way that isn't boiler plate it will break. Because you can't prompt ai with a simple feature no matter how small and have it cover all the important cases.

What these models do is the absolute bear minimum to satisfy the user even if it means cheating. And anyone who doesn't look thinks its miraculous. It really is not.

So, you absolutely can prompt it to add a feature, but you need to prompt it 10-20 times to get the actual feature built. If you don't know this yet rip.

And before we continue, also known that when you prompt for the next feature. There is a high chance the last feature you built will be altered or deleted.

Re: Software for One

#104

Post by MagicMoonlight »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #100
p2detar wrote: post #92

Building software steadily becomes accessible to non-developers. A freelance client I had now does most things alone with chatgpt. As a developer I have less and less the urge to build software. Instead I lately started doing more hardware stuff - flashing devices, setting up RPis and antennas, learning to solder. I hope I can keep my software dev job until retirement, but I‘m a bit pessimistic on that matter.

They basically inserted themselves between clients and developers. A few corporations ingested developer work and offered clients to pay a fraction, not giving anything back to developers.

[dead]

Re: Software for One

#105

Post by faangguyindia »

EEBio wrote: post #98
faangguyindia wrote: post #34

Many people build calorie / macro tracker like OP but they don't build maintenance calorie tracker. Your app tracks calorie intake, doesn't keep track of total calorie burn of the day (maintenance calorie tracking) And no, calorie burn from watch is not good enough! >A 2020 systematic review by Fuller et al. found that consumer wearables often perform poorly at estimating energy expenditure, even when they measure st…

If the smartwatch data isn’t precise enough to estimate energy expenditure, what data does your website use that is so much better? Also, how much better it is? How do we even know it’s better? (I am not necessarily doubting it’s better, I am just interested in metrics you used)

Method is explained here: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/

The actual method used in the app is a bit more complex than this, but I think this explanation is good enough to convey the core idea for now. Later, I plan to publish a more detailed write up.

>Also, how much better it is? How do we even know it’s better?

Very simple! If a car salesman tells you that they use space technology in the engine to improve fuel efficiency, how do you know whether they are telling the truth?

You fill the tank with a specific amount of fuel and drive. If the fuel lasts much longer, you know the technology is actually improving efficiency.

The same idea applies to MacroCodex.

When you eat at maintenance you do not gain weight, when you eat above maintenance you gain weight, when you eat below it, you lose weight.

If you set a goal in the app to gain 1 lb per week and consistently eat the calorie target prescribed by the app, then your actual weight gain should match that rate. If it does, you know the maintenance calories calculated by the app are accurate.

You can choose to set "maintain" or "lose" or "gain".

Re: Software for One

#106

Post by embedding-shape »

latexr wrote: post #71
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I played a bunch of music while doing woodworking stuff and asked for more like that. Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. It's not picking random music out of the sky; it's working from my Apple Music library (and then expanding on it from the Apple Music catalog).

> Things like this are easy with a simple agent loop. To be fair, they’re also easy (trivial, even) without one. It’s not like “play more music like this” is something we ever needed AI for.

> It’s not like “play more music like this” is something we ever needed AI for.

Borderline off-topic, but I love how fast the goal post moves. A decade or two ago "Similar music to this" was definitively in the realm of AI/ML, now it's some full-stack dev's afternoon to implement.

Re: Software for One

#107

Post by wartywhoa23 »

a2800276 wrote: post #86
swiftcoder wrote: post #81

> sleep consultant I'm not sure I believe this is a real job. Do we really need to pay consultants to tell us that babies need naps?

To me it sounded like they're paying someone to plan not only their kids' naps but also their own AND spend their spare time writing an app to help keep up with the recommended nap schedule. Just take a fucking nap, maybe after going outside for a walk in the park.

Gosh, going outside for a walk in the park doesn't buy conversion for AI companies, that's such a luddite thing to propose to someone who's got skin in the game.

Re: Software for One

#108

Post by p2detar »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #100
p2detar wrote: post #92

Building software steadily becomes accessible to non-developers. A freelance client I had now does most things alone with chatgpt. As a developer I have less and less the urge to build software. Instead I lately started doing more hardware stuff - flashing devices, setting up RPis and antennas, learning to solder. I hope I can keep my software dev job until retirement, but I‘m a bit pessimistic on that matter.

They basically inserted themselves between clients and developers. A few corporations ingested developer work and offered clients to pay a fraction, not giving anything back to developers.

Indeed, but it probably won‘t get any easier for us devs when clients also get easier access to open weight LLMs. I mean from personal experience 40 tok/s on an M3 pro with gpt-oss-20b holds up quite well for lots of tasks. Thinks are changing so fast.

Re: Software for One

#109

Post by wartywhoa23 »

a2800276 wrote: post #89
rrvsh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to optimise and have the money to spare, I think it's fine. There are going to be people in the world that are better than you at most given tasks, and if working on those tasks is not fun for you and delegation is not a net negative, why not? It's why personal trainers exist (though I don't like them for separate reasons)

Its clearly a net negative, though, because missing a nap is now causing tremendous anxiety to the point where they'd rather spend a week chatting with Claude to build an app which handles the consequences of missed naps than just spending some time with their infant, maybe reading to them so they fall asleep.

The best comment in the whole discussion yet.

Re: Software for One

#110

Post by mattjhall »

I think it's sad that an article that to me was about sacrificing your own time to bring your family together has turned into sacrificing nothing to hyper optimise your life.
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