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"Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

iamcharliegraham.substack.com

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Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#31

Post by sfn42 »

Aurornis wrote: post #22
spamizbad wrote: post #14

Can't say I agree with this article at all. This has not been my experience. I don't quite know how to articulate this well, but there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use). And while AI tools can assist you in the construction of this software, it ca…

> there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use) I recognized something similar when I first started interviewing candidates. I try to interview promising resumes even if they don't have the perfect experience match. Something that becomes obvious when d…

I'm in that boat, everything is just a crud app. I've worked on some fairly complex apps but at their core they were crud apps and most of their complexity were caused by bad developers overcomplicating and fumbling things.

That's not to say something like Figma isn't on an entirely different level, but most apps aren't Figma and don't need to be. Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because the devs are bad.

It's also worth noting that a crud app can be quite complex too. There can be a lot of complexity even if the core is simple.

I also think that those of us who can recognize simple apps for what they are and design them simply are also the people best equipped to tackle more complex apps. Those guys who can make a simple crud app into an incomprehensible buggy monster certainly can't be trusted with that kind of complexity.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#32

Post by pyrale »

SCHiM wrote: post #2

> Your company can scream to anyone that listens that all the competition is AI SLOP, but when hundreds of companies are pitching the same solution, your one voice will get lost. If you cannot out compete "AI SLOP" on merit over time (uptime? accuracy? dataloss?), then the AI SLOP is not actually sloppy... If your runway runs out before you can prove your merit over that timeframe, but you are convinced that the AI i…

I guess the point is that startups are dead because scaling up becomes harder, doesn’t mean that organic growth is harder. In fact, the potential ways forward offered by the article are not really dependent on VC funding.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#33

Post by cloverich »

grahac wrote: post #13
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #7

Bullshit. Practically an AI slop article itself. The rest of us actually building products know reality is different because we’re intimately familiar with our competitors and their limitations. Copying and playing catch up was possible before AI. I really wish we could downvote submissions like this. It adds nothing of meaning to the discussion of the subtleties of competitive product development.

Sorry. This is totally not AI slop. AI-edited for grammar, but human-created. What industry are you building in? And have you been building in it a while or is it a new startup?

I think this puts the onus in the wrong direction. I _love_ LLM coding and write probably 70% of my code that way. But having seen its (current) limits, and building a few toy apps myself, I'd love to see examples of successful, complex products that are mostly vibe coded. Until I see that, I'll continue to believe the current crop of LLM is best suited for building prototypes, helping get initial ideas shipped, and helping speed up very experienced developers working in well trodden ground (i.e. mostly CRUD in popular languages / frameworks), because that's what most peoples experience is (at best - many here wouldn't be nearly as generous as my takes).

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#34

Post by pixl97 »

sfn42 wrote: post #31
Aurornis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use) I recognized something similar when I first started interviewing candidates. I try to interview promising resumes even if they don't have the perfect experience match. Something that becomes obvious when d…

I'm in that boat, everything is just a crud app. I've worked on some fairly complex apps but at their core they were crud apps and most of their complexity were caused by bad developers overcomplicating and fumbling things. That's not to say something like Figma isn't on an entirely different level, but most apps aren't Figma and don't need to be. Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because…

Sometimes complexity exists because what you're doing is complex and their is a minimum to how simply it can be abstracted.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#35

Post by ozim »

spamizbad wrote: post #14

Can't say I agree with this article at all. This has not been my experience. I don't quite know how to articulate this well, but there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use). And while AI tools can assist you in the construction of this software, it ca…

Agree. This blog entry has vibes of: „I am software developer so I am so smart I can do everything and I can definitely make revolutionary healthcare app”.

Ignoring actual complexity of things, regulations and fact that there are areas that no one will take seriously some vibe coder and you really have to breath in out and swim with the right fish to be trusted and considered for making business with.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#36

Post by Aurornis »

sfn42 wrote: post #31
Aurornis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use) I recognized something similar when I first started interviewing candidates. I try to interview promising resumes even if they don't have the perfect experience match. Something that becomes obvious when d…

I'm in that boat, everything is just a crud app. I've worked on some fairly complex apps but at their core they were crud apps and most of their complexity were caused by bad developers overcomplicating and fumbling things. That's not to say something like Figma isn't on an entirely different level, but most apps aren't Figma and don't need to be. Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because…

> Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because the devs are bad.

I heard this a lot from candidates who had only worked on software that could be described as an app. They bounced from company to company adjusting a mobile app here, fitting into a React framework there, and changing some REST endpoints.

There is a large world of software out there and not all of it is user-facing apps.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#37

Post by tylerg »

ozim wrote: post #35
spamizbad wrote: post #14

Can't say I agree with this article at all. This has not been my experience. I don't quite know how to articulate this well, but there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use). And while AI tools can assist you in the construction of this software, it ca…

Agree. This blog entry has vibes of: „I am software developer so I am so smart I can do everything and I can definitely make revolutionary healthcare app”. Ignoring actual complexity of things, regulations and fact that there are areas that no one will take seriously some vibe coder and you really have to breath in out and swim with the right fish to be trusted and considered for making business with.

Umm... Complexity (especially with integrations) and regulations were two areas explicitly mentioned in the article as areas where you can still differentiate.

Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore

#40

Post by rchaud »

Vibe coded apps might do OK in the $5/mo product space (assuming people pay that instead of staying in the free tier) but will fall apart for anything even resembling B2B.

Buying business tools comes with the expectation of support and customization, the complexities of which become unmanageable when the lead developer is AI.

You don't hear much about WYSIWYG app builder platforms like Bubble.io anymore because once the hype subsided, it was clear that it wasn't scalable beyond extremely limited CRUD functionality.

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