Comment by lacedeconstruct
8 hours ago
I dont want that though, I want someone to spend much more time than I can afford thinking about and perfecting a product that I can pay for and dont worry about it
8 hours ago
I dont want that though, I want someone to spend much more time than I can afford thinking about and perfecting a product that I can pay for and dont worry about it
In the next few years it's going to be quicker to tell an AI to make something than it will take to hunt down software which fits all your uses perfectly. If you're honest, all software is imperfect for you. It's not customised exactly how you like it. Imagine if it could be exactly what you want with zero effort.
The metaphor that’s popped into my head recently is baking bread.
You can learn to bake good bread. It’s not _that_ hard. And it’ll probably taste better than store bought bread.
But it almost certainly won’t be cheaper. And it’ll take a more more time and effort.
Still, sometimes you might bake your own bread for kicks. But most of the time, you’ll just buy the bread someone else has already perfected.
Baking bread also takes hours of waiting.
I can have fresh bread anytime I want from a handful of nearby stores.
And some people do, both things can be true. I'd rather make a tool just for me that breaks when I introduce a new requirement and I just add into it and keep going.
The statement wasn't: "no one ever vibe codes an alternative to product X"
It was: "With sufficiently advanced vibe coding the need for certain type of product just vanishes."
If a product has 100 thousand users and 1% of them vibe codes an alternative for themselves, the product / business doesn't vanish. They still have 99 thousand of users.
That was the rebuttal, even if not presented as persuasively and intelligently as I just did.
So no, it's not the case of "both things being true". It's a case of: he was wrong.
At some point there will be market consequences for that kind of behavior. So where market dynamics are not dominated by bullshit (politics, friendships forged on Little St James, state intervention, cartel behavior, etc.) if my company provides the same service as another, but I replaced all of the low quality software as a service products my competitor uses with low quality vibe coded products, my overhead cost will be lower and that will give me an advantage.
If we could return to one-off payments without dark patterns I would agree. Hopefully at least the software that rely on grift will start to vanish.