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Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

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Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#71

Post by jdright »

100% agree with this.

I have years of experience, but I never had the time (or will) to take on some _very minor nuisances_ or different areas of dev far from my day job expertise.

LLMs solved this. I produced about 12 different things that "I needed" to improve aspects of my life.

Each single took between a few hours to 3 days, and most of them I use daily, they are the most used applications (mobile, desktop and web) for my family.

It is a game changer.

Personalized custom software would never really reach critical mass, LLM enabled it, this is the age of personalized software, egosoftware, llmware.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#72

Post by deaux »

dotancohen wrote: post #69
rolisz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not grandparent, but I'm in the same boat. I've been dreaming for almost 10 years of building a sort of digital bullet journal. I had some feeble attempts to start, but never got to the point where I could actually use it. Last year I started again, heavily LLM assisted. After 1-2 weeks (this was before agents), I had something usable, from which I could benefit, which wanted to make me improve it more, which made me…

> With AI agents, I can kickoff a task while I'm going to the park with my kids. Instead of scrolling HN, I look every now and then to what the agent is doing. How does that work? Are you running the agents on a server? Are you using gnu screen and termux? Can you respond to prompts asking for permission to e.g. run ls or grep?

All the big providers offer this. Usually they just work on your Github repo.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#73

Post by deaux »

jdright wrote: post #71

100% agree with this. I have years of experience, but I never had the time (or will) to take on some _very minor nuisances_ or different areas of dev far from my day job expertise. LLMs solved this. I produced about 12 different things that "I needed" to improve aspects of my life. Each single took between a few hours to 3 days, and most of them I use daily, they are the most used applications (mobile, desktop and we…

> Each single took between a few hours to 3 days, and most of them I use daily, they are the most used applications (mobile, desktop and web) for my family.

How have you done distribution and auth? I'm interested in doing something similar but not sure of the best way to approach that part, especially with the family/multiplatform angle as well.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#75

Post by ggauravr »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge. For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

That is a fair distinction.

However, I don’t think using LLMs has to be an all-or-none proposition. You can still choose to build the parts you most care about yourself (where the learning happens) and delegate the other aspects to AI.

In the case of the text justifier, it was a small nuisance I wanted solved with very little effort. I didn't care about the browser APIs, just the visual outcome, so I let the LLM do it all.

If I were building something more complex, I would use LLMs much more mindfully. The value is in having the choice to delegate the chores so you can focus on the craft where it matters to you.

While we might value the process differently, the broader point remains that these tools enable people to build things they otherwise wouldn't have the time or specific resources to create, and still feel a sense of agency and ownership.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#76

Post by 6510 »

analogpixel wrote: post #24
Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge. For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

I find that most of the time, programming is just procrastination, and having the LLM there breaks through that procrastination and lets me focus on the idea I was thinking on without going into the weeds. A lot of the time, the LLM outputs the code, I test my idea, and realize I really don't care or the idea wasn't that great, and now I can move on to something else.

A friend of mine has a hilarious method for breaking though procrastination. His one trick is to spend money on the task/project, buy all kinds of things to make the job easier. It has to be useful but it is more about paying the unlock fee.

Github is full of half forgotten saved games waiting for money to be thrown at them.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#77

Post by 6510 »

resonious wrote: post #37
analogpixel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that most of the time, programming is just procrastination, and having the LLM there breaks through that procrastination and lets me focus on the idea I was thinking on without going into the weeds. A lot of the time, the LLM outputs the code, I test my idea, and realize I really don't care or the idea wasn't that great, and now I can move on to something else.

I hope at some point people don't feel the need to justify using or not using LLMs. If you feel like using them, use them. If you regret doing that, delete the code and write it yourself. And vice versa - if you are in a slog and an LLM can get you out, just use it.

You have to break down the problem into manageable chunks anyway, might as well feed those into a code agent while you write it yourself. If you don't like what it did explain what it did wrong. Shouldn't take long to figure out what parts are the biggest waste of time to write yourself. Do still have to hop tools and adjust your confidence as they improve.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#78

Post by 6510 »

Antibabelic wrote: post #57
dotancohen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm now using an LLM to write a voice note organisation application that I have been dreaming about for two decades. I did vibe code the first version. It runs, but it is utterly unmaintainable. I'm now rewriting it using the LLM as if it were a junior or outsourced programmer (not a developer, that remains my job) and I go over every line of application code. I love it, I'm pushing out decent quality code and very f…

> I would have never gotten to this stage of my dream project without AI tooling. Why not? People have been writing successful personal projects without LLMs for years.

I have at least two projects that I estimated to take a week or two but aren't finished after years. There might be others that just got abandoned that should be included in the count.

Then there are things that work but aren't polished enough or should really have documentation.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#79

Post by ggauravr »

anon7000 wrote: post #48
Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge. For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

That’s really not the point of the post! The author is saying that “perfect software” is like a perfect cup of coffee. It’s highly subjective to the end user. The perfect software for me perfectly matches how I want to interact with software. It has options just for me . It’s fine tuned to my taste and my workflows, showing me information I want to see. You might never find a tool that’s perfect for you because someo…

Thanks for this. This is exactly the spirit in which I wrote it.

You hit on the key constraint: time. The point isn't that the use of LLMs specifically provides agency, but that it lowers the barrier, allowing us to build things that bring it. "Perfect software" is perfect not just because of what they do, but because of what it lacks (fluff, tracking, features we don't need).

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#80

Post by Antibabelic »

6510 wrote: post #78
Antibabelic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have never gotten to this stage of my dream project without AI tooling. Why not? People have been writing successful personal projects without LLMs for years.

I have at least two projects that I estimated to take a week or two but aren't finished after years. There might be others that just got abandoned that should be included in the count. Then there are things that work but aren't polished enough or should really have documentation.

Why did you abandon them? Every time I ask this question, I get lots of sob stories, but not a single explanation.
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