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Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

davekiss.com

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Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#111

Post by SkiFire13 »

mikert89 wrote: post #40
mbesto wrote: post #36

Finally, developers are realizing that it's not how you write code or who writes the code, it's figuring out WHAT to write. LLMs are finally exposing this because the feedback cycle is so short.

this isnt even true though. because if building software is so cheap, you wont be penalized for building the wrong thing. you just move onto the next

You are assuming that the only downside of building a broken product are the development resources you spent in the process. That might be true for a new product, and only if it doesn't cause damage to your customers. For an established product that needs updates, breaking it means losing a lot of the value that was in that product.

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#112

Post by mbesto »

mikert89 wrote: post #98
mbesto wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally what happens all the time with startup, it's called "pivoting".

What happens when you can pivot with a new fully built product once a month?

Nothing. A month isn't enough to get valid feedback.

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#113

Post by SkiFire13 »

Rastonbury wrote: post #109
password1 wrote: post #74

It's interesting that the the author created three saas over the weekend as some sort of proof that execution is useless now. But would any company ever buy one of these? No, because for a company to buy your saas you need salespeople or some marketing channel, compliance and regulatory checkmarks, SSO integrations, ability to take and implement special feature requests, SLAs, maintenance and support capacity, etc. T…

You don't need any of that per se, only if you want to sell enterprise or need to make investors happy, you do. But at $99/mo, people can put that on company card easily. Author only needs 10s of customers to make it worth their time and Claude subscription

To put that into perspective, it's more than what Intellij Idea Ultimate costs to enterprises per seat.

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#114

Post by davekiss »

AstroBen wrote: post #20

> This isn’t incremental improvement. This is a phase change. > This isn’t about one person copying one idea. It’s about the fundamental economics of software changing. That "this isn't x, it's y" really is a strong tell

y'all are too funny

Yep, at times, I dictate my thoughts with VoiceInk and have an LLM be an editor on P2 tasks so I can publish instead of have another unfinished idea that never sees the light of day

If you want pre-LLM samples, go ahead and scroll back or check my history—but I've got two kids to take care of and appreciate the publish assist :)

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#115

Post by davekiss »

miroljub wrote: post #43
grayhatter wrote: post #27

> I’m not exaggerating. And neither is anyone else. > Stack Overflow, the site that defined a generation of software development, received 3,710 questions last month. That’s barely above the 3,749 it got in its first month of existence. The entire knowledge-sharing infrastructure we built our careers on is collapsing because people don’t need to ask anymore. "Because people don't need to ask anymore."?! Yeah, I would…

People still need to ask, and they still keep asking. It's just they are asking there where they expect they'll reach a better answer faster than on SO.

Thanks for your comprehension

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#117

Post by cromka »

sdf2 wrote: post #103
cromka wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is a classic ChstGPT gotcha". This and the gaslighting "Exactly, now you see why A!=B" when it was ME who pointed out his wrong A=B assumption are driving me crazy. They f*cked it up. I am convinced ChatGPT will be a classic case of an early prodigy which gets surpassed by the better, second generation products. History is full of those. I think Tesla is another, recent one.

They have definitely messed it up, I know people who promised to be lifelong chatgpt users who now use Gemini. Itll take a bit of time to show up in the numbers overall, but within my reach I see the numbers changing.

Indeed, while it's anecdotal, I find Gemini give me right answers at first attempt, while sometimes I can't get ChatGPT to get it right in two-three comebacks.

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#118

Post by Bishonen88 »

LilBytes wrote: post #106
Bishonen88 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, why not. I'll drop a repo over the weekend

Thank you. I'll keep an eye out too. I've not seen any good examples of 'good vibe coded products' yet. Good being a difficult term to define but most of not all of us here know what I mean

https://github.com/bishonen/plusone

Expectation management: Please remember that this is a result of 8 vibe coding sessions (~15 minutes each).

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#119

Post by Denzel »

Bishonen88 wrote: post #118
LilBytes wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I'll keep an eye out too. I've not seen any good examples of 'good vibe coded products' yet. Good being a difficult term to define but most of not all of us here know what I mean

https://github.com/bishonen/plusone Expectation management: Please remember that this is a result of 8 vibe coding sessions (~15 minutes each).

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Looks like you have considerable experience with vibe coding to be able to produce that in 2 hours.

Re: Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper

#120

Post by Bishonen88 »

Denzel wrote: post #119
Bishonen88 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/bishonen/plusone Expectation management: Please remember that this is a result of 8 vibe coding sessions (~15 minutes each).

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Looks like you have considerable experience with vibe coding to be able to produce that in 2 hours.

While I do have some experience with vibe coding, this could've been done by my wife who has little tech knowledge. That's the scary part.

My flow was to open 3 terminals, ask AI to work on some feature in each, check how it looks in the frontend and if it didn't look/work quite right, I asked it again. Once I deemed the feature OK, I just cleared the context and went on to a new task. The 3 terminals ate through claude $20 within 10-15 minutes.

I wonder if this breaks at some point when the codebase is more complex/large, or does not. If it doesn't, then the future is scary, because everyone can recreate many of the SAAS products within hours. What's the moat for Todoist for example? Without AI, it would've taken quite some effort, know-how and time to get something similar up and running. I reckon that with the $100 plan, I could have made it almost identical to it. Perhaps I could even create mobile app builds as well (react native perhaps). What stops me from then offering this for 1/5 the cost of the real app?

And that's established apps. Imagine how easy/trivial it is to clone something that's new, and that was possibly vibe coded itself. E.g. someone posts to HN "Show HN: I made xyz". It looks great, it works great, it has a great idea. Then we take LLM's and recreate it within 4 hours. Poof! There's no reason to pay for it instantly.

That's what I find depressing, though - having a great idea and using LLM to create a great product, will not be enough. People will be able to clone everything. At least that's what my little experience with claude tells me. And now let's just wait 1 more year and see how good claude code 2.0 and co will be. I reckon sooner than later, 0 tech-knowledge will be needed to get apps up and running.

That's why it's time to pivot to some other role in the near future ;)

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