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So where are all the AI apps?

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Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#121

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

I absolutely hate web development with a passion and haven’t done a new from the ground up web app in 25 years and even since then it was mostly a quick copy and paste to add a feature.

But since late last year even when it’s not part of the requirements leading app dev + cloud consulting projects, I’ll throw in a feature complete internal web admin site to manage everything for a project with a UI that looks like something I would have done 25 years ago with a decent UX.

They are completely vibe coded, authenticated with Amazon Cognito and the only things I verify are that unauthenticated users can’t access endpoints, the permissions of the lambda hosting environment (IAM role) and the database user it’s using permissions.

Only at most 5 people will ever use the website at a time - but yeah I get scalability for free (not that it matters) because it’s hosted on Lambda. (yes with IAC)

The website would not exist at all if it weren’t for AI.

Now just to be clear, if a website is meant for real people and the customer’s customers. I’ll insist on a real web designer and a real web developer be assigned to the project with me.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#122

Post by Cthulhu_ »

paxys wrote: post #28

It is incredibly easy now to get an idea to the prototype stage, but making it production-ready still needs boring old software engineering skills. I know countless people who followed the "I'll vibe code my own business" trend, and a few of them did get pretty far, but ultimately not a single one actually launched. Anyone who has been doing this professionally will tell you that the "last step" is what takes the maj…

Exactly, there have been loads of tools over time to make software development easier - like Dreamweaver and Frontpage to build websites without coding, or low/no-code platforms to click and drag software together, or all frameworks ever, or libraries that solve issues that often take time - and I'm sure they've had a cumulative effect in developer productivity and / or software quality.

But there's not one tool there that triggered a major boost in output or number of apps / libraries / products created - unless I missed something.

Sure, total output has increased, especially since the early 2010's thanks to both Github becoming the social network of software development, and (arguably) Node / JS becoming one of the most popular languages/runtimes out there attracting a lot of developers to publish a lot of tools. But that's not down to productivity or output boosting developments.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#123

Post by shafyy »

sputknick wrote: post #29
turlockmike wrote: post #12

I deleted vscode and replaced with a hyper personal dashboard that combines information from everywhere. I have a news feed, work tab for managing issues/PRs, markdown editor with folders, calendar, AI powered buttons all over the place (I click a button, it does something interesting with Claude code I can't do programmatically). Why don't I share it? Because it's highly personal, others would find it doesn't fit th…

This is probably my favorite gain from AI assisted coding: the bar for "who cares about this app" has dropped to a minimum of 1 to make sense. I recently built an app for grocery shopping that is specific to how and where I shop, would be useless to anyone other than my wife. Took me 20 minutes. This is the next frontier: I have a random manual process I do every week, I'll write an app that does it for me.

That's fine and all, but how much are you ready to pay to Anthropic and OpenAI to be able to do this? Like, is it worth 100 bucks a month for you to have your own shopping app?

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#124

Post by neonnoodle »

Igrom wrote: post #75
skydhash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I deleted vscode and replaced with a hyper personal dashboard that combines information from everywhere. Emacs with Hyperbole[0]? [0]: https://www.gnu.org/software/hyperbole/

You can't mention Hyperbole and not say how you use it. I did not get past the "include the occasional action button in org-mode" phase.

actually the rules say that no one can ever explain what Hyperbole is for

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#125

Post by lebuin »

adriand wrote: post #117
paxys wrote: post #28

It is incredibly easy now to get an idea to the prototype stage, but making it production-ready still needs boring old software engineering skills. I know countless people who followed the "I'll vibe code my own business" trend, and a few of them did get pretty far, but ultimately not a single one actually launched. Anyone who has been doing this professionally will tell you that the "last step" is what takes the maj…

> Anyone who has been doing this professionally will tell you that the "last step" is what takes the majority of time and effort. This is true, and I bet there are thousands of people who are in this stage right now - having gotten there far faster than they would have without Claude Code - which makes me predict that the point made in the article will not age well. I think it’s just a matter of a bit more time befor…

I'd argue that LLMs are not yet capable of the last step, and because most sufficiently large AI-generated codebase are an unmaintainable mess, it's also very hard for a human developer to take over and go the last mile.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#126

Post by mehagar »

andrewflnr wrote: post #101

By "apps" this author apparently means "PyPi packages". This is a bafflingly myopic perspective in a world of myopic perspectives. Do we really expect people vibecoding "apps" to put anything on PyPi as a result? They're consumers of packagers, not creators. I don't blame people for responding to the title instead of the article, because the article itself doesn't bother to answer its own question.

Did you read the article? The author means software in general, not just user-facing apps.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#128

Post by EastLondonCoder »

I’ve done a event ticket system that’s in production. Stripe integration, resend for mailing and a scan app to scan tickets. It’s for my own club but it’s been working quite well. Took about 80 hours from inception to live with a focus on testing.

I’ve done some experiments with reading gedcom files, and I think I’m quite close to a demoable version of a genealogy app.

Biggest thing is a tool for remotely working musicians. It’s about 10000 lines of well written rust, it is a demoable state and I wish I could work more on it but I just started a new job.

But yeah, this wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t been a very experienced dev who knows how to get things live. Also I’ve found a way to work with LLMs that works for me, I can quickly steer the process in the right way and I understand the code thats written, again it’s possible that a lot of real experience is needed for this.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#129

Post by nemo44x »

AI is unbelievably useful and will continue to make an impact but a few things:

- The 80/20 rule still applies. We’ve optimized the 20% of time part (a lot!) but all the hype is only including the 80% of work part. It looks amazing and is, but you can’t escape the reality of ~80% of the time is still needed on non-trivial projects.

- Breathless AI CEO hype because they need money. This stuff costs a lot. This has passed on to run of the mill CEOs that want to feel ahead of things and smart.

- You should be shipping faster in many cases. Lots of hype but there is real value especially in automating lots of communication and organization tasks.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#130

Post by Kye »

Cool data. What do I do with it? None of my use cases involve writing software, so I don't think this is _for_ me since my extensive AI use wouldn't show up in git commits, but I'm not sure who it's for. When I'm talking to artist friends, musician friends, academic friends, etc data is nice to have but I'm talking in stories: the real thing I did and how it made me better at the thing.
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