Inflexibility is the quality I desire more and more as I get older. I don't want to force my software to do dumb shit, I want my software to force me into avoiding dumb shit. This is how you keep a system understandable. That quality is far more precious than the ability to connect complicated enterprise spaghetti machines into each other.
Malleable Software
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Re: Malleable Software
#32this is also dependent on the field of SaaS fill
good luck replicate this on financial,health,military,cyber etc field
Re: Malleable Software
#33I think most of the SaaS stuff that benefits from being malleable already is malleable - just slowly malleable. I can configure a Trello or GitHub Actions in whatever way I want. Meanwhile I really want my email, messenger, or banking apps to be exactly the same every time I use them. I'm not clear how adding a non-deterministic UI or business logic layer is going to fundamentally disrupt or improve experiences like Jira or Visual Studio.
Maybe we're in some kind of local-optimal, where all project management software has coalesced around a few user journeys, and there's some better approach out there to be discovered.. But I don't see why an accounting software company, games studio, or vehicle manufacturer, would dedicate even 1% of its resources into crafting a malleable bespoke project management software toolkit.
It goes against the concept of comparative advantage, and I can't think of any successful enterprise that's bet against comparative advantage and won.
Re: Malleable Software
#34This seems like an advertisement for that person's company.
Re: Malleable Software
#35[deleted]
Re: Malleable Software
#36I think most of the SaaS stuff that benefits from being malleable already is malleable - just slowly malleable. I can configure a Trello or GitHub Actions in whatever way I want. Meanwhile I really want my email, messenger, or banking apps to be exactly the same every time I use them. I'm not clear how adding a non-deterministic UI or business logic layer is going to fundamentally disrupt or improve experiences like…
> Meanwhile I really want my email, messenger, or banking apps to be exactly the same every time I use them.
I know that's not the point you're making, but I agree with you, alas that's already not the case today, e.g. random device updates nobody asked for, or you log in to your banking website because you need to pay something right now and half the features are gone or different.
Re: Malleable Software
#37A lot of people been saying this lately, that LLMs are going to make SaaS obsolete because you will be able to build the alternative yourself without the need to pay. But (and I'll copy & paste a comment I wrote a few days ago) I disagree. This existed way before LLM. Open source alternatives to most products are already available. And install them and deploy them is much easier than do it with LLMs, and you get upda…
Counter argument: people want simple systems that are easy to update, secure, deploy etc.
I've been burned so many times by being an early adopter of a simple product for it to add too many features and shifting focus along the way, leaving the early adopters as second class users. This usually happens because investors wants a return on their investment by enshittifying the product.
As self hosting with Docker and getting help from LLMs gets easier I can totally see a future where more companies self host. Having to deal with SaaS companies also takes a lot of time (licenses, hidden limits you can reach at any time, more complex privacy policy, approval from management), especially as they usually end up selling after a couple of years. The responsibility to self host isn't that bad all things considered.
I don't think we'll see companies vibe code the replacement of their software, but it might help them self host open source alternatives.
Re: Malleable Software
#38Low code/No has alreasy been capable of spitting out CRUD boilerplate forever. Every application turns into a special unique snowflake given time and users.
Code has never been the bottleneck once you’re out of the CRUD boilerplate phase.
Re: Malleable Software
#39I see some of this, from the point of view that it's going to be cheaper to create bespoke solutions for problems. And perhaps a "neoSaaS" company is one that, from a very bare bones idea, can create your own implementation. But, at the same time, there are two issues: - Companies can be really complex. The "create a system and parametrise it" idea has been done before, and those parametrisation processes are pretty…
Your arguments are totally valid, niche tools will be alive and well. I think my take is that even in niche tools we will see a lot of generalization and more flexible niche tools will eventually win.
Re: Malleable Software
#40For six years I worked in a SaaS startup that built an applicant tracking system (a tool to manage recruitment efforts in big/mid-sized companies) tailored for the local market of the country we lived in. My experience tells me that our main value was in forcing them to rethink their recruitment processes, not adapting to their existing ones that were usually all over the place. As much as I want to believe the oppos…
I worked for a company that provided a mobile friendly job application form that integrated with major applicant tracking systems (back when they didn’t provide mobile friendly forms).
Our biggest value was getting customers to remove all the extra questions on their applications that had built up over years of management changes that no one had any idea why they were even asking.