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The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

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Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#31

Post by operatingthetan »

jatora wrote: post #28
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #15

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

You're most certainly wrong on this one. Superior models give superior products and security over time. Until every 3-6 months stops bringing a large improvement in coding capability and scaffolding, there's no reason to assume we are nearing a hard limit. You also have to factor in that bespoke software is... bespoke. ie. much more suited to your org's use-cases than the primary solution is. Way less bloat. Way less…

>Until every 3-6 months stops bringing a large improvement in coding capability and scaffolding, there's no reason to assume we are nearing a hard limit.

How much of that is better models, and how much is it AI companies throwing more resources at each one? E.g. larger context windows and higher token/s correlate with the better models.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#32

Post by surgical_fire »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #26

It will be race to bottom for SaaS in terms of pricing, with lots of alternatives to every SaaS. It’s not about personal software it’s about how 1-3 people team will deliver a SaaS that actually works at scale for the 1/10th of the price. In terms of personal software, he’s absolutely right, it’s great for hobbyist and things like in house tooling but that’s it.

> It’s not about personal software it’s about how 1-3 people team will deliver a SaaS that actually works at scale for the 1/10th of the price.

Is this already happening?

Shouldn't it be?

> In terms of personal software, he’s absolutely right, it’s great for hobbyist and things like in house tooling but that’s it.

That much is true.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#33

Post by harrall »

jatora wrote: post #28
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #15

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

You're most certainly wrong on this one. Superior models give superior products and security over time. Until every 3-6 months stops bringing a large improvement in coding capability and scaffolding, there's no reason to assume we are nearing a hard limit. You also have to factor in that bespoke software is... bespoke. ie. much more suited to your org's use-cases than the primary solution is. Way less bloat. Way less…

This is like saying I know how to do plumbing so now I’m going to do all my own plumbing.

Yet I will still pay for a plumber. I wonder why.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#34

Post by b0nk3rsnNuts »

harrall wrote: post #33
jatora wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're most certainly wrong on this one. Superior models give superior products and security over time. Until every 3-6 months stops bringing a large improvement in coding capability and scaffolding, there's no reason to assume we are nearing a hard limit. You also have to factor in that bespoke software is... bespoke. ie. much more suited to your org's use-cases than the primary solution is. Way less bloat. Way less…

This is like saying I know how to do plumbing so now I’m going to do all my own plumbing. Yet I will still pay for a plumber. I wonder why.

[dead]

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#35

Post by simonsarris »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #15

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

This is essentially what Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) was predicting a few months ago. Incumbents in most software spaces will probably see a lot of short and medium term benefits from the new tooling as being trustworthy and truly understanding the problem space.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#36

Post by Foobar8568 »

autarch wrote: post #16
Ancalagon wrote: post #7

I don’t disagree if models stay as capable as they are today. But devils advocate: the point of the saaspocalypse isn’t just that anyone will be able to make their own software, it’s also that the AI will be good enough and interconnected enough to maintain it. The world these investors are envisioning is not one where a software engineer gives a detailed spec to a model and reviews its output, deploys the resulting…

Imagine that you are a consultant. You get a call that starts with, "Hi, this is Joe Schmoe and Schmoe Law Firm. I need a new billing system. Can you build me one?" And you respond by saying that you can, but you need to do a _lot_ of work with him to spec this billing system out. You can't just build "a new billing system" without any more details. You tell him that this will take many hours of work between the two…

Or AI won't fix diffusion of responsibility that you see in companies through outsourcing, offshoring or matrix organizations...Or to go through committees to know if they should change shh root access with abc123 as password.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#37

Post by torlok »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #15

The main point everyone seems to be making is that now with AI anyone can make a SaaS. The initial reaction I think most people have to this is "SaaS companies/devs are in trouble." I actually think the opposite is true. With an outpouring of vibe-coded apps/SaaS, you have the new wave of vulnerabilities/leaks/problems that happen even with the best software. Except now, it's worse because it's being done on platform…

This is basically why I buy the tech dip. When you pay for software, you pay for infrastructure, expertise, QA, consumer relations, having staff on call, etc. It was always possible to replace enterprise software by 2 guys coding a product in 6 months, but you still need everything around the code before serious clients will want to work with you, and at that point you're a regular software company. All these vibe coded products are one untested push away from getting dropped.

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#38

Post by Foobar8568 »

shigawire wrote: post #22
tpetry wrote: post #8

The doomsday saying the past months that everyone will now vibecode a solution instead of paying for SaaS as a big logic error… These people could have switched to self-hosting an open source clone of any popular SaaS but they didn‘t! Why? Because they dont want to be the person maintaining this, so we should those people not self-hosting a free software now go one step further and also build those products?

> Because they dont want to be the person maintaining this, so we should those people not self-hosting a free software now go one step further and also build those products? If one thinks AI can do this eventually then it makes sense. But I feel that is impossible the predict.

Who do you think they can blame in case of outage/security issues etc ?

Re: The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

#39

Post by [deleted] »

Ancalagon wrote: post #20
skywhopper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you describe is fantasy, though. It’s not real. It’s not possible to be real. “Give me a new billing system”?? No way is that going to produce a good result for the company or their clients. But the second that Joe Schmo has to start laying out all the ever-evolving requirements for his custom billing system, he will run back to traditional SaaS providers. At best, if AI is supergenius enough to just intui…

I'm not saying its logical - I think this is what investors believe however.

[deleted]
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