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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%?

#71

Post by on_the_train »

averageRoyalty wrote: post #48
on_the_train wrote: post #20

Ai saves me like an hour per month tops. I still don't understand the hype. It's a solution in search of a problem. It can't solve the hard coding problems. And it doesn't say when it can't solve the essay ones either. It's less valuable than resharper. So the business value is maybe $10 a month. That can't finance this industry.

I read these sort of comments every so often and I do not understand them. You are in a sea of people telling you that they are developing software much quicker which ticks the required boxes. I understand that for some reason this isn't the case for your work flow, but obviously it has a lot more value for others. If you are a chairmaker and everyone gains access to a machine that can spit out all the chair componen…

> You are in a sea of people telling you that they are developing software much quicker which ticks the required boxes

But that's exactly not the case. Everyone is wondering what tf this is supposed to be for. People are vehemently against this tech, and yet it gets shoved down our throats although it's prohibitively expensive.

Coding should be among the easiest problems to tackle, yet none of the big models can write basic "real" code. They break when things get more complex than pong. And they can't even write a single proper function with modern c++ templating stuff for example.

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

#72

Post by nottorp »

bdangubic wrote: post #29
more_corn wrote: post #3

Ask someone who builds software for a fee. Are you able to do 90% more? Fire 9/10 engineers? Produce 90% faster? No, no, and no.

90% more - nope. 35-55% more, just about on average. I am 30-year in though, not sure what these numbers are for junior devs

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/study-finds-ai-tools-made...

They thought they were faster too.

Yes, I know, AGI is just around the corner, we just need to wait more because "agents" are improving every day.

In the mean time, LLMs are kinda useful instead of web searches, mostly because search is both full of spam and the search providers are toxic.

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

#73

Post by lossolo »

martinald wrote: post #44
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.

It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with. A few of them are starting to replace SaaS tools with custom built internal tooling. I suspect this pattern is happening everywhere to a varying level. Often these SaaS tools are expensive, aren't actually that complicated (or if they are complicated, the bit they need isn't) and have limitations. For example, a company I know recently got told their v…

> It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with

How many samples do you have?

Which industries are they from?

Which SaaS products were they using, exactly and which features?

> ...a company I know recently got told their v1 API they relied on on some back office SaaS tool was being deprecated. V2 of the API didn't have the same features ... dev spends a week or two rebuilding that tool

Was that SaaS the equivalent of the left-pad Node.js module?

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

#74

Post by nugger »

martinald wrote: post #44
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.

It is happening though internally in businesses I've worked with. A few of them are starting to replace SaaS tools with custom built internal tooling. I suspect this pattern is happening everywhere to a varying level. Often these SaaS tools are expensive, aren't actually that complicated (or if they are complicated, the bit they need isn't) and have limitations. For example, a company I know recently got told their v…

I don't understand the timelines here at all.

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

#75

Post by ASalazarMX »

robotresearcher wrote: post #40
debo_ wrote: post #19

> I'm sure every organisation has hundreds if not thousands of Excel sheets tracking important business processes that would be far better off as a SaaS app. Far better off for who? People constantly dismiss spreadsheets, but in many cases, they are more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow, and are more or less universally acce…

Spreadsheets are an incredible tool. They were a key innovation in the history of applications. I love them and use them. But it's very hard to have a large conventional cell-formula spreadsheet that is correct. The programming model / UI are closely coupled, so it's hard to see what's going on once your sheet is above some fairly low complexity. And many workplaces have monstrous sheets that run important things, cu…

It's astounding how useful and intuitive they are, but my biggest gripe is how easy is for anyone to mess calculations, say, SUM(), by simply adding one row/column/cell.

I use Google Worksheets frequently to track new things that fit into lists/tables, and giving someone else editor access without them knowing a few worksheet nuances means I have to recheck and correct them every month or two.

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

#78

Post by bdangubic »

nottorp wrote: post #72
bdangubic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% more - nope. 35-55% more, just about on average. I am 30-year in though, not sure what these numbers are for junior devs

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/study-finds-ai-tools-made... They thought they were faster too. Yes, I know, AGI is just around the corner, we just need to wait more because "agents" are improving every day. In the mean time, LLMs are kinda useful instead of web searches, mostly because search is both full of spam and the search providers are toxic.

I am just talking about personal point-of-view, wasn’t interviewed by Arstechnica or others that live off clickbait

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

#79

Post by xnx »

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%

It definitely has for me. I'm creating toolS and utilities every week easily that I never would've attempted in the past.

> This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

Lots of people can think logically and organize a process flow, but don't know all the ridiculous code incantations (and worse development and hosting environment details) to turn their plans into tools.

It's trivial to one-shot all kinds of impressive toys in Gemini now, but it's going to be an even bigger deal when Google adds some type of persistent data storage. It will be like the rebirth of a fully modern Microsoft Access.

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