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A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

#11
post #9

I know this isn't the point of your post, but as an aside, how come Intuit is an example of being grandfathered in? I wonder if we'll see the rise of plain text accounting[1] in an AI world as it can be easier for AI agents to deal with. [1] https://plaintextaccounting.org/

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the practioner side rather than the consumer side where the capabilities and costs are high.

Re: A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

#13

Everyone can write; that doesn’t mean everyone can produce an interesting novel. If everyone can produce software via llms, that doesn’t necessarily mean that software is useful or interesting.

Presumably, it would be useful and interesting to them? I'm not really talking about producing apps for an app store. In that case, I think you are right. More for individual or organizational needs.

Re: A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

#15
call me when the first one happens (hint I’ll be dead by then). the problem is that the world is coming to realization that everyone can write code. given that, no one is switching of intuit or whatever to some vibe coded nonsense. I think reddit is probably the best place to see this in action. hit any subreddit whose moderators are OK with posting “ads” and you’ll see post after post that looks like Show HN now, “I was tired of ____ so I built ____” and even funnier, just about every post will make a special note “I spent a year+ building it” - too funny.

this too shall absolutely not pass, in fact it will get worse

Re: A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

#16

Niche domain expertise still matters. A person / team with little experience of banking workflows and requirements can't produce software to replace existing vendors. That offers a moat. Obviously, not true for every case.

Agreed. That's why this is different and so powerful. People will solve their own problems that they are experts in. The downside is that they don't know what they don't know. Real expertise helps. But I think that's solvable.

Re: A disturbing thought. A world where the marginal cost of software is free

#17
post #16

Niche domain expertise still matters. A person / team with little experience of banking workflows and requirements can't produce software to replace existing vendors. That offers a moat. Obviously, not true for every case.

Agreed. That's why this is different and so powerful. People will solve their own problems that they are experts in. The downside is that they don't know what they don't know. Real expertise helps. But I think that's solvable.

Sure. For consumers, we will get there sooner. For enterprises, it is tough to see that happening any time soon. Even enterprises with fully staffed development teams will struggle to have the operational expertise required to replace legacy systems / providers. But you never really know.
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