Comment by ascendantlogic
1 day ago
Yes, this is exactly where AI shines: PoCs and validating ideas. The problems come when you're ready to scale. And the "I can hire some devs to remake my product from scratch" part is the exact money making scenario some of my consulting friends are starting to see take shape in the market.
But people say this about technology in software engineering time and time again.
VB? VBA macros in Excel? Delphi? Uhh... Wordpress? Python as a language?
Well you see these are just for prototypes. These are just for making an MVP. They're not the real product.
But they are the real product. I've almost never seen these been successfully used as just for prototyping or MVPs. It always becomes the real codebase and it's a hot fucking mess 99% of the time.
You're not wrong about that.
What ends up happening is that humans get "woven" into the architecture/processes, so that people with pagers keep that mess going even though it really should not be running at that scale.
"Throw one away" rarely happens.
This is where the missmatch is, the future is not in scaled apps, the future is in everyone being able to make their own app.
You don't have to feature pack if you are making a custom app for your custom use case, and LLMs are great with slim narrow purpose apps.
I don't think LLMs will replace developers, but I am almost certain they will radically change how end users use computers, even if the tech plateaus right now.
> the future is in everyone being able to make their own app.
Everyone can do their own plumbing and electrical work in their homes too. For some people it works out, for others it's still better to pay someone else to do it for them.
I don't think basic software apps have anywhere near the risk profile of electrical or plumbing work.
I'm pretty comfortable letting my mom vibecode a plant watering tracker. Not so much wiring up a distribution box.
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