At some point, the idea of a verified, trustworthy review platform will need to make a comeback.
The easier it is to make a software product, the harder it will be to differentiate between what’s good and what’s hastily assembled.
"Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
81–90 of 140 posts
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#82> The result is a Cambrian explosion of software launches. This software... Is it in the room with us right now?
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Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#83Can't say I agree with this article at all. This has not been my experience. I don't quite know how to articulate this well, but there's something that I'd call a "complexity cliff" in the software business: if you want to compete in certain spaces, you need to build very complex software (even if the software, to the user, is easy to use). And while AI tools can assist you in the construction of this software, it ca…
I think the article is more reflective of the low-to-mid complexity product landscape, where surface-level features dominate and differentiation is minimal. But you're absolutely right: once you're building something that touches real-world complexity, there's a massive moat that AI tools can't easily bridge
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in that boat, everything is just a crud app. I've worked on some fairly complex apps but at their core they were crud apps and most of their complexity were caused by bad developers overcomplicating and fumbling things. That's not to say something like Figma isn't on an entirely different level, but most apps aren't Figma and don't need to be. Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because…
> It's also worth noting that a crud app can be quite complex too. There can be a lot of complexity even if the core is simple. I suppose technically a database is just a CRUD app
Yeah, that's essentially what I mean when I say crud app. It's basically a web api written in something like C# or whatever you prefer, which receives HTTP requests and translates them into DB operations. CRUD and views basically.
For this type of development you want the DB to handle basically all the heavy lifting, the trick is to design the DB schema well and have the web API send the right SQL to get exactly the data you need for any given request and then your app will generally be nice and snappy. 90-99% of the logic is just SQL.
For the C# example you'd typically use Entity Framework so the entirety of the DB schema and the DB interaction etc is defined within the C# code.
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#85maybe 'Being different' for building products means doing physical products in 2025
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#86This article is based on vibes just like the trends it hypothesizes. To pick just one claim: “Big companies used to move slowly, but now a ragtag team of two developers at a large firm can whip up something that looks top-of-market to the untrained eye in a matter of weeks.” This is just pure speculation with no consideration of success or longevity. Big companies are going faster now? Where? Which ones? AI coding al…
Yeah, the line about big companies suddenly moving fast felt more like wishful thinking than grounded observation
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#87At some point, the idea of a verified, trustworthy review platform will need to make a comeback. The easier it is to make a software product, the harder it will be to differentiate between what’s good and what’s hastily assembled.
When hundreds of tools look polished but behave inconsistently, trust becomes the differentiator
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#88>The result is a Cambrian explosion of software launches.
Citation needed. There was a HN post a few weeks ago (I've lost it since) that said there isn't actually a measurable increase in App Store submissions and other such metrics to indicate that more software applications are being launched, in the last few years.
Also, in my view one of the most overlooked moats that incumbent software companies have is product quality. You can't upset Uber and Lyft primarily because you don't have the resources/skills to build an app of that quality (and your VC doesn't trust you can build one even given the resources). It's not due to business dev, marketing or "network effect" reasons; a lot of drivers tag-team both Uber and Lyft anyway, it doesn't cost them anything to onboard into a 3rd app even if it initially yields them 1 passenger a week.
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes complexity exists because what you're doing is complex and their is a minimum to how simply it can be abstracted.
Yeah, but based on my own experience, most of the time complexity exists because devs suck. I know because I've simplified lots of code written by others, because rewriting it is simpler than maintaining their huge mess.
Or because they used the project as an excuse to learn a complicated but (in this case) unnecessary framework or technology stack as an resume enhancer.
Re: "Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in that boat, everything is just a crud app. I've worked on some fairly complex apps but at their core they were crud apps and most of their complexity were caused by bad developers overcomplicating and fumbling things. That's not to say something like Figma isn't on an entirely different level, but most apps aren't Figma and don't need to be. Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because…
> Most apps are simple crud apps and if they aren't it's usually because the devs are bad. I heard this a lot from candidates who had only worked on software that could be described as an app. They bounced from company to company adjusting a mobile app here, fitting into a React framework there, and changing some REST endpoints. There is a large world of software out there and not all of it is user-facing apps.
I haven't done anything with an UI for decade and a half. Backend integrations, data transformations, piping, transfer protocols and so on. Javascript hell avoided so far. No thank you