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The minimum viable unit of saleable software

brandur.org

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Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#81

Post by lowbloodsugar »

> A task tracker’s still a complex piece of software, and even with gratuitous use of LLMs, you’d expect to spend at a minimum a few weeks on the initial push (charitably).

I don’t think I can take the author seriously after this claim. They must be a beginner when it comes to AI coding. And I’m not advocating vibe yolo coding either.

On the other hand, if someone has a $400/mo Jira bill that means at least 40 users, so $400/month seems like a distraction compared to total comp.

But again, it takes just one SDE to spend a weekend replacing it. That SDE probably has strong opinions on why Jira doesn’t work for them, and strong opinions on what a task system looks like in an AI world. In this world, I’d say Jira is the risk, regardless of its monthly cost.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#82

Post by altmanaltman »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #66

I feel like the build threshold discussed is _extremely_ optimistic? > But does that always hold true? Let’s take the other side for a second by examining a much higher-priced SaaS product. Gemini reports that the price of a fully loaded Salesforce seat is ~$500/mo. Say you need 50 seats, that’s $25k/mo! > For that price you could have 1.5x engineering resources (25 / 16.7) working on your clone full time. Once again…

There is a reason why Salesforce can command that rate, which this article is missing out. And it's not the software but also the brand and the company around it. Go ask any sales person if they prefer to use Salesforce or a new proprietory system that is "just like Salesforce". The sticky effort cannot just be replaced because you created an app that is exactly like it.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#83

Post by lowbloodsugar »

monkeydust wrote: post #11

I wouldn't underestimate the community effect of software. There are plenty of features that get shipped because a small but important minority requested them, only to benefit the long tail of users who never knew to ask for such a feature but now find it indispensable. If everyone is building their own isolated solutions, how does this positive externality manifest itself?

And far too many that don’t because only I want them. It’s why I built my own harness: my PRs were never accepted upstream.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#84

Post by zingar »

altmanaltman wrote: post #75
zingar wrote: post #16

I have multiple side projects that I would never have contemplated building before but whose utility now exceeds the much lower cost to build. I got a few weeks in to each and then stalled on all of them because the effort and motivation required to extend beyond the crazed early days _is_ still more than the utility I get. In a professional context, paying someone for software to do something outside my core domain…

why not just focus on the 1 you like the most and push through? I agree with you in principle but I think having multiple projects and each being not super important in your mind will not keep you motivated. Instead focusing on one thing that you really really want to solve will usually work better because your motivation comes from within and effort follows. Too many choices can be a bad thing as well when it comes…

This is great advice that AI (successfully) tempts me into ignoring.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#87

Post by danvayn »

dotancohen wrote: post #44
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #36

I am forced to use jira soon as I was using BB issues and that is expiring soon. So I'll build something simple for us, that integrates with our systems and how we like to do things. It won't cost us much since our meagre requirements are nothing comparted to a full fledged Jira replacement. Without LLMs it would have taken maybe a couple of days effort and perhaps an hour a month to fix any bugs we miss or add an ex…

If your choices are "use Jira" vs. "build task management software with an LLM" then you are already in a losing proposition. Go spend some time with Redmine before building your own. Redmine is free, far better than Jira, and already includes the features you don't yet realize you need.

Yeah, it’s a false dichotomy. Ironically, even in the advent of LLMs very little has changed here. An off the shelf solution to a problem has always usually been better than building it yourself most of the time. People just think it’s easier to build now, and it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s the efficient choice.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#88

Post by kwdev »

It sounds a bit like people are trending to the software version of sustenance farming not realizing that what drove society forward is compounding impact efficiency.

Sure everyone could build their own XYZ with AI, but unless that has comparable economies of scale, everyone really doing so is gonna set us back. imho.

Re: The minimum viable unit of saleable software

#89

Post by elxr »

jwitchel wrote: post #29

I recently asked Claude to duplicate Google Docs. It practically threw up. I tried to have it write a plan, decompose it, deobfuscate it. It gave me all sorts of reasons why this was a terrible idea. I've never seen it resist a task so directly and relentlessly. It knew. One point worth considering is that tools like Jira and Salesforce have dozens of screens and modals. But you only ever look at one at a time. So th…

Jira already has open source clones that companies already use.

Sure if you want your own, it takes a lot more that prompting, but it's not inherently a terrible idea to commit to duplicating something like that. Jira isn't some gargantuan work of art that stands out among its competition.

Cloning Jira is fine and tenable. Especially if your company only needs a tenth of the feature set of Jira, which is a lot of companies. "A tenth" is being generous too.

Regarding the google docs take, that I 100% agree with.

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