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The Sideprocalypse

johan.hal.se

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Re: The Sideprocalypse

#31

Post by pixl97 »

arkensaw wrote: post #21
chasd00 wrote: post #8

I wish i could take back the view i gave to this article, it says nothing. Is there such a thing as an inverse hype machine? Where people take the opposite side of a hyped product and then hype that view just as much but for the same purpose? His footer even admits he's basically just trolling for views so he can reach the status of "thought leader". btw, someone else having the same idea you have for a saas company…

Exactly. If someone pitched you a book about a young kid who goes to a school of magic to learn how to use his powers, makes friends and enemies and ultimately battles evil, you might shoot down their dreams because "some cocaine-addled sales critter" already had that idea, and she's called J K Rowling and she's worth billions and shes so successful she can't even be cancelled because she makes so much money. And yet…

> book about a young kid who goes to a school of magic to learn how to use his powers

Add to this the 50 bajillion manga/anime's with the exact same trope.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#32

Post by amarant »

arkensaw wrote: post #21
chasd00 wrote: post #8

I wish i could take back the view i gave to this article, it says nothing. Is there such a thing as an inverse hype machine? Where people take the opposite side of a hyped product and then hype that view just as much but for the same purpose? His footer even admits he's basically just trolling for views so he can reach the status of "thought leader". btw, someone else having the same idea you have for a saas company…

Exactly. If someone pitched you a book about a young kid who goes to a school of magic to learn how to use his powers, makes friends and enemies and ultimately battles evil, you might shoot down their dreams because "some cocaine-addled sales critter" already had that idea, and she's called J K Rowling and she's worth billions and shes so successful she can't even be cancelled because she makes so much money. And yet…

Ot to the article, but I just feel I need to strongly recommend The Hierarchy by James Islington.

It's pretty much the same idea as the above titles but omg it's so well written. Absolute must read!

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#33

Post by pixl97 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #29

If I understand it, the premise of this article is that because the marginal cost of software production is now free, now nobody can compete against garbage quality code sold by the slickest "sales critter", so everyone should just give up. I mean, it seems at the very least, that open source and in-house production has a natural advantage here? If the marginal cost of software production is now free, then FOSS/in-ho…

> now nobody can compete against garbage quality code sold by the slickest "sales critter", so everyone should just give up.

Isn't that just SAP, er, I mean SAAS as it has been for a decade?

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#34

Post by WarmWash »

If dream of having a weekend-project turned $30k ARR SaaS is dead, good. It's an example of a tiny sliver of people losing their golden goose, so that everyone else in society can operate more efficiently.

One guy loses $2400/mo in revenue

200 pool cleaners can now easily track their clients filter change dates without paying $12/mo for a calendar script (something that 20 years ago would have been a one time $3 purchase).

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#35

Post by alex_suzuki »

alangibson wrote: post #4

I got out of software and into physical products a couple of years ago. I wish I could say I was prescient, but honestly it's just so much easier to sell physical items. Margins are worse, but selling is easier. If you've got a thing you can be sure that someone somewhere will give you money for it.

But… distribution is so much harder?

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#36

Post by ramon156 »

Has OP been at a company where sales people do this? I have, and I can tell you they have not gotten far.

There was one PM at my ex-job that showed a dashboard for... well... i honestly didnt understand. I think it was some uptime checks. It broke during his presentation.

There's a company I hired at that "built an ERP in 5 days and is shipping the product in June". Same thing happened, it broke when presenting. Basic feature suggestions just returned a "Yes, we can do that!" (they meant they can tell Claude to do it, not that the product could do it).

Maybe at some point non-engineers can prompt build, but for now I'd say we're pretty safe. I think engineers give themselves too little credit. Being able to read code is an amazing tool that can only be sharpened through skill.

Lastly, I think I commented this ~2 years ago as well. If your product is vibe-codable and is replacing customers, it's a shit product. Similarly, if you can outsource your product on fiverr, its's a shit product.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#37

Post by pixl97 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #14
Gud wrote: post #6

“Quality is not a metric” is the core argument here. I say the only way to build a successful long term product is by focusing on quality, ESPECIALLY when the competition is shitting out crap.

Quality buys you user retention/longevity. You can't retain users you don't have though, and getting users now is brutal.

Features get users, but features introduce complexity, bugs, technical debt, and maintenance expenses.

More so this complexity requires that you have support for your users, and QA of weird functional interactions across systems boundaries that you just can't test for when actually writing the code.

This gets expensive really fast.

Complex software is hard, yo.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#38

Post by ramon156 »

ramon156 wrote: post #36

Has OP been at a company where sales people do this? I have, and I can tell you they have not gotten far. There was one PM at my ex-job that showed a dashboard for... well... i honestly didnt understand. I think it was some uptime checks. It broke during his presentation. There's a company I hired at that "built an ERP in 5 days and is shipping the product in June". Same thing happened, it broke when presenting. Basi…

I wonder what the game dev side has been like with agentic coding. Starting a project from scratch is usually a boring task, so I wonder if

- making a markdown file with all specs, details and plans - asking claude to search online and suggest some approaches

is a better alternative to doing the research yourself.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#39

Post by pixl97 »

lelanthran wrote: post #16
simpaticoder wrote: post #10

>Yours actually works and is higher quality, because you know about things like TTFP and INP and "not putting your Supabase god-token in the client"? Oh, you sweet summer child: I take no pleasure in this but I need to tell you that these things don't matter anymore. Quality is not a metric anyone cares about in 2026. Quality will matter the most in 2026. Specifically because the barrier-to-entry for making software…

> Customers will have more options, and this will allow them to be more discerning. Lets assume this is true - how on earth are they to determine that your code doesn't have any glaring security holes but the 2h vibe-coded app has more holes than the Swiss is able to put into their cheese[1]? I really want to know how customers can tell the difference between very pretty crap and your stuff? ------------- [1] Yeah, I…

Yep, choice can paralyze.

What these customers are going to do is do a summary discard of almost all the choices but say 3 to 5 and go from there.

The problem is now how to be consistently on that top list. And that's marketing's problem.

Re: The Sideprocalypse

#40

Post by tormeh »

ileonichwiesz wrote: post #19
simpaticoder wrote: post #10

>Yours actually works and is higher quality, because you know about things like TTFP and INP and "not putting your Supabase god-token in the client"? Oh, you sweet summer child: I take no pleasure in this but I need to tell you that these things don't matter anymore. Quality is not a metric anyone cares about in 2026. Quality will matter the most in 2026. Specifically because the barrier-to-entry for making software…

Just like the tide of fast fashion caused people to seek out local-sewn clothes made from high-quality materials, right? Right? Quality isn’t a differentiator if the market is saturated with indistinguishable garbage. Everything is made in sweatshops out of the cheapest plastic available, and I don’t see why software isn’t next in line.

Well, the affordable luxury segment has done quite well over the last couple of decades.
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