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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

#81

Post by erelong »

brianhama wrote: post #63

I couldn’t disagree with this more. And at least anecdotally I’ve seen the opposite. I have one friend who has built and launched an app for diagnosing skin disease from a photo. Do I think it’s a good idea? No, but he built it. I have another friend that has completely automated her job in accounts receivable. She literally doesn’t have to work anymore and her employer has no clue. And another friend of mine is cran…

I'd expect it to go more in this direction

HN seems to attract a lot of weird gatekeeper contrarian takes

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

#82

Post by DANmode »

deadbabe wrote: post #53
afro88 wrote: post #42

I vibe coded a saas and it went nowhere because it wasn't a good enough idea to begin with. I consulted with multiple varied models along the way for competitive analysis, pricing structure etc. AI doesn't solve for ideas and product market fit. But it did allow me to fail pretty fast before I sunk too much time into it. But also, I should have spoken to potential users earlier rather than vibe coding.

Why wouldn’t just make some AI generated user personas to talk to? Whatever their opinion is, it’s already been captured and is in the training data. You don’t need to talk to users.

Hot take.

Possibly true, dependent on the service you use,

and the software space being evaluated.

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

#83

Post by afro88 »

deadbabe wrote: post #53
afro88 wrote: post #42

I vibe coded a saas and it went nowhere because it wasn't a good enough idea to begin with. I consulted with multiple varied models along the way for competitive analysis, pricing structure etc. AI doesn't solve for ideas and product market fit. But it did allow me to fail pretty fast before I sunk too much time into it. But also, I should have spoken to potential users earlier rather than vibe coding.

Why wouldn’t just make some AI generated user personas to talk to? Whatever their opinion is, it’s already been captured and is in the training data. You don’t need to talk to users.

Because AI is way too sycophantic still. The real audio engineers I spoke to said they run into this problem maybe once every few months and even then only when working for particular clients. Too much friction to purchase one offs, not enough pain for a monthly subscription.

https://claude.ai/share/be61468f-9f38-4dc0-aae3-5d758bf0f200

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

#85

Post by BenGosub »

miki123211 wrote: post #70

I think people fundamentally misunderstand what "non-techies writing software" means. Nobody is going to ask Chat GPT to write them an app. They'll just ask something like "show me all the nearby restaurants that don't have any shellfish products for allergic reasons and let me browse like on ubereats", and Chat GPT will (eventually) do the right thing. People will just see some UI, which will be like many UIs they'v…

I have non-coder friends who are vibe coding apps. The process isn't smooth, vut they are definitely excited for the new abilities they get from the models. Maybe they are a minority, but they definitely exist.

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

#86

Post by buno »

htfu wrote: post #54
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 think the idea is you'd basically have it take a look at your current system, it would learn what features you're actually using at all, it'd check company emails for past and current pain points or stuff you wish was possible or just simpler, it'd Slack everyone in the company asking what their biggest wish and biggest pet peeves are currently, it'd do a small interview with Joe himself presenting the above to see…

It's science fiction, because when you have this capabilities you don't need any payroll system, you just let the AI do the job Joe was doing.

The system you are describing is far more intelligent than Joe, there's no point to use it to solve a operational problem, just point it to the problem Joe is solving.

Or even better to the problem that create the need for Joe role.

Your scenario will never exist.

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

#87

Post by fsloth »

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…

I think brands that build trust will be the key to sustain income.

People want to outsource some things. Thats what markets are for.

The internet will become even more scammy and noisy.

Hence trusted vendors will be like beacons, and not drown.

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

#88

Post by carlosjobim »

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?

Outside of hacker sphere, there is no "maintenance" need for productivity software. People use the same software for years and years without updates. Even decades.

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

#89

Post by carlosjobim »

habinero wrote: post #76
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.

A lot of SaaS services have open source solutions that are the same, on par or better and yet people still pay for SaaS. If they're not doing it now, why would they do it when they have to build it, too?

What's an example? Not a product aimed at software developers or sys admins.

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

#90

Post by thunky »

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…

> You can't just build "a new billing system" without any more details.

Does every billing system need to be a one of a kind snowflake?

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