291–300 of 448 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is flat-earther level Ok, so do you have a counterexample?
Can you give me any new (i.e. released in 2026) app that does something useful? There's just not many good app ideas left after all..
If that would be true then all these AIs are useless. Who needs them to built something that already exists?
two that are drawn from my own experience are:
- meaningful software still takes meaningful time to develop
- not all software is packaged for everyone
I've seen a lot of examples shared of software becoming narrow-cast, and/or ephemeral.
That that doesn't show up in library production or even app store submissions is not interesting.
I'm working on a large project that I could never have undertaken prior to contemporary assistance. I anticipate it will be months before I have something "shippable." But that's because it's a large project, not a one shot.
I was musing that this weekend: when do we see the first crop of serious and novel projects shipping, which could not have been done before (at least, by individual devs)... but which still took serious time.
Could be a while yet.
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…
https://github.com/williamcotton/webpipe
https://github.com/williamcotton/webpipe-lsp
(lots of animated GIFs to show off the LSP and debugger!)
While I barely typed any of this myself I sure as heck read most of the generated code. But not all of it!
Of course you have to consider my blog to be "in production":
https://github.com/williamcotton/williamcotton.com/blob/main...
The reason I'm mentioning this project is because the article questions where all the AI apps are. Take a look at the git history of these projects and question if this would have been possible to accomplish in such a relatively short timeframe! Or maybe it's totally doable? I'm not sure. I knew nothing about quite a bit of the subsystems, eg, the Debug Adapter Protocol, before their implementation.
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…
Technical people (which is by far the minority of people out there) building personal apps to scratch an itch is one thing. But based on the hype (100x productivity!), there should be a deluge of high quality mobile apps, Saas offerings, etc. There is a huge profit incentive to create quality software at a low price. Yet, the majority of new apps and services that I see are all AI ecosystem stuff. Wrappers around LLM…
Me, I'm not just chasing markets; I want to build things that create joy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are no new and useful apps made with AI - apps that contribute to productivity of the economy as whole. This is flat-earther level. It's like an environmentalist saying that nothing made with fossil fuels contributes to productivity. But they don't say that because they know it's not true. There are so many valid gripes to have with LLMs, pick literally any of them. The idea that a single line of generated co…
> This is flat-earther level Ok, so do you have a counterexample?
It seems like all tech executives are saying they are seeing big increases in productivity among engineering teams. Of course everyone says they're just [hyping, excusing layoffs, overhired in 2020, etc], but this would be the most relevant metric to look at I think.
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…
Try it out and don't stop trying. If something improves at this rate, even if you think it's not there right now, don't assume it is going to stop. Be honest about the things we were always obviously bad at, that the ai has been getting quickly better at, and assume that it will continue getting better. If this were true, what would that mean for you?