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Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

martinalderson.com

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Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#531

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #525
nine_k wrote: post #35

Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case. This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

> Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. Aha. Are developers finally realizing that just writing code doesn't make a business? We actually have a ton of SaaS companies being born right now but they're not making headway, because functionality and good code don'…

[deleted]

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#532

Post by ilidur »

itgoon wrote: post #529
r_lee wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These posts like the one OP made is why I'm losing my mind. Like, is there truly an agentic way to go 10x or is there some catch? At this point while I'm not thrilled about the idea of just "vibe coding" all the time, I'm fine with facing reality. But I keep having the same experience as you, or rather leaning more on that supercharged Google/SO replacement or just a "can you quickly make this boring func here that d…

Like another reply says: practice. How many hours have you spent writing code? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Were you able to achieve good results in the first hundred hours? Now, compare it to how much time you've spent working with agents. Did you dedicate considerable time to figuring out how to use them? Do you stop using the agent and do things manually when it isn't going right, or do you spend time figuring ou…

And then all the heuristics you've learnt change under you and you're stuck doing 100-1000 more hours of learning with a drop in quality during that time.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#533

Post by itgoon »

r_lee wrote: post #520
adriand wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, is there truly an agentic way to go 10x or is there some catch? Yes. I think it’s practice. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I feel like I have reached a kind of mind meld state with my AI tooling, specifically Claude Code. I am not really consciously aware of having learned anything related to these processes, but I have been all in on this since ChatGPT, and I honestly think my brain has been rewired in a…

That's really interesting. May I ask what kinds of projects, stack and any kind of markdown magic you use? And any specific workflow? And are there times when you have to step in manually?

Research -> Plan -> Implement

Start by having the agent ask you questions until it has enough information to create a plan.

Use the agent to create the plan.

Follow the plan.

When I started, I had to look at the code pretty frequently. Rather than fix it myself, I spent time thinking about what I could change in my prompts or workflow.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#534

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #525
nine_k wrote: post #35

Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case. This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

> Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players. Aha. Are developers finally realizing that just writing code doesn't make a business? We actually have a ton of SaaS companies being born right now but they're not making headway, because functionality and good code don'…

[deleted]

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#535

Post by crowbahr »

itgoon wrote: post #529
r_lee wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These posts like the one OP made is why I'm losing my mind. Like, is there truly an agentic way to go 10x or is there some catch? At this point while I'm not thrilled about the idea of just "vibe coding" all the time, I'm fine with facing reality. But I keep having the same experience as you, or rather leaning more on that supercharged Google/SO replacement or just a "can you quickly make this boring func here that d…

Like another reply says: practice. How many hours have you spent writing code? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Were you able to achieve good results in the first hundred hours? Now, compare it to how much time you've spent working with agents. Did you dedicate considerable time to figuring out how to use them? Do you stop using the agent and do things manually when it isn't going right, or do you spend time figuring ou…

You can't really compare those 2. Agents a re non-deterministic. I can tell Clod to go update my unit test coverage and it will choke itself, burn 200k tokens and then loudly proclaim "Great! I've updated unit test coverage".

I'll kill that terminal, open it again and run the exact same command. 30k tokens, actually adds new tests.

It's hard to "learn" when the feedback cycle can take 30 minutes and result in the agent sitting in the corner touching itself and crooning about what a good boy it is. It's hard to _want_ to learn when you can't trust the damn thing with the same prompt twice.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#536

Post by KellyCriterion »

freedomben wrote: post #264
simonw wrote: post #158

The cost of writing simple code has dropped 90%. If you can reduce a problem to a point where it can be solved by simple code you can get the rest of the solution very quickly. Reducing a problem to a point where it can be solved with simple code takes a lot of skill and experience and is generally still quite a time-consuming process.

Completely agree. In the past 12 months, I've had five or six use cases that I would not have bothered scripting or automating before, but I've cranked out scripts or even small web services in under an hour that get the job done using AI. It has really revolutionized the super small bite-sized issues

exactly this! You can do things nearby with one prompt which would have taken weeks before to tinker around; esp. ClaudeAI is very good with "give a detailed first prompt and some context sourcefiles and create a working example on first shot".

E.g. I have to deal with lot of reports and those are usually "never fully developed" because "we can add this one row/feature later" because "management want us to ship early". Now I can enhance our reports by whatever metric just by handing over a current XLSX-exportcode and tell the LLM: "now i want additionally XY here...."

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#537

Post by funkydata »

crowbahr wrote: post #535
itgoon wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like another reply says: practice. How many hours have you spent writing code? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Were you able to achieve good results in the first hundred hours? Now, compare it to how much time you've spent working with agents. Did you dedicate considerable time to figuring out how to use them? Do you stop using the agent and do things manually when it isn't going right, or do you spend time figuring ou…

You can't really compare those 2. Agents a re non-deterministic. I can tell Clod to go update my unit test coverage and it will choke itself, burn 200k tokens and then loudly proclaim "Great! I've updated unit test coverage". I'll kill that terminal, open it again and run the exact same command. 30k tokens, actually adds new tests. It's hard to "learn" when the feedback cycle can take 30 minutes and result in the age…

That comment made my day. I actually had an intern like that!

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#538

Post by liampulles »

theshrike79 wrote: post #503
liampulles wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the working world, a lot of the time what matters is getting results, not writing 'perfect' code the way software engineers would like to. But you do recognize that one's ability to speedily implement features is dependent on the present quality of a codebase, right? Being a serious practitioner here means balancing active feature development with active tending to the codebase to keep it in a reasonable state,…

To be blunt and a bit nihilistic: I get paid to ship features. Client wants a feature EoW, they get it EoW, they're not paying for a week of extra work for the "quality codebase" feature. But the good thing is that we've had objective and automated tooling for quality checks for code. We used to use them for humans, but now we apply the same tools for AI. Good unit testing practices, exhaustive linters, .editorconfig…

I was initially hesitant to say that your view is that of a short term contractor, so I appreciate your honesty

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#539

Post by sheepscreek »

tangotaylor wrote: post #498

> Engineers need to really lean in to the change in my opinion. I tried leaning in. I really tried. I'm not a web developer or game developer (more robotics, embedded systems). I tried vibe coding web apps and games. They were pretty boring. I got frustrated that I couldn't change little things. I remember getting frustrated that my game character kept getting stuck on imaginary walls and kept asking Cursor to fix it…

The thing is, using an agent or AI to code for you is a learned skill. It doesn’t come naturally to most people. For you to be successful at it, you’ve got to adopt a mentor / lead mindset - directing vs doing. In other words, you have to be an expert at explaining yourself - communicating clearly to get great results.

Someone who hasn’t got any experience coding, or leading in any capacity, anywhere in life (or mentoring) will have a hard time with agentic development.

I’ll elaborate a bit more - the ideal mindset requires fighting that itch to “do it yourself” and sticking to the prompts for any changes. This habit will force you to get better at communicating effectively to others (including agents).

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#540

Post by prescriptivist »

theshrike79 wrote: post #500
BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…

Use the best tools, the lowest tier of Claude Code is perfect for the stuff you do at home in the evenings and weekends. It's also by far the best at being a "pair coder" as it's chatty and tells you what it's doing and doesn't get confused if you hit ESC and tell it to do something else. Build your own tools, need a small utility? Use an LLM to create it with you. Create LLM-focused tools and adjust your workflows t…

Another thing I'd suggest: look into and use non-coding AI tools that improve productivity. For example:

Zoom meeting transcriptions and summaries or Granola. A lot of context is lost when you take manual notes in meetings. If you use a tool that turns a meeting into notes automatically, you can use those notes to bootstrap a prompt/plan for agents.

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