Comment by palata
7 hours ago
> As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one.
I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds. You most definitely spent more time than that writing this comment.
Would you mind sharing a video of you building a custom WhatsApp in less time? Not even starting to think about getting other people to talk to you on your instantly-built messaging solution...
> > "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one.
> I can install WhatsApp in a few tens of seconds.
But do you now have an insanely deep knowledge of WhatsApp (i.e. what serious "learning" means)?
As if someone vibe-coding it has that insanely deep knowledge?
It has been 3 hours already since your comment and I have just installed a WhatsApp update and it took around 10 seconds.
We're still waiting for tptacek's DIY WhatsApp alternative since he believes that it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one".
That must be one of the most silliest comments I have ever read, and the worst part is even the moderators agree with the statement.
AI psychosis is indeed real.
To be fair, I think it is true that AI will help nerds (like me) implement their own clients. Without AI, I will think that "I could make my own client", I will spend some evenings and weekends proving that I can solve the problem, and then I will never spend the time I would need to actually make it usable.
And I would love it if more services had an Open API and allowed people to write their own clients. I like the concept of "emacsification of software".
But I find it a little extreme to say "it's faster to build your own than to install an existing alternative". You still have to spend a lot of time building your own, it's just that now it's realistic without taking a sabbatical.
Also, as someone who has developed an ever growing suite of bespoke tools for my personal workflows using Codex/Gemini CLI over the last year, something I don’t see mentioned as often is the “mental overhead” of self-designed apps.
Even if the coding process itself is “effortless” and the agent just churns away to implement whatever I ask for on a dime, it can become exhausting thinking through all my needs/wants, tradeoffs, API shape etc.
Especially as complexity tends to trend upward linearly over time and what started as scripts with a couple dozen lines become 2000 line behemoths that I struggle to keep in my head purely from a functionality perspective even with documentation in README.md, AGENTS.md etc.
Once the honeymoon period of a brand new tool solving some specific pain point passes, running into a bug or missing functionality can become a “ugh not this again” feeling of a slog where I wish I could just move on without needing to think about my next prompts and do the build/test/revise chat routine yet again until satisfied. Despite not needing to write a single line of code or reading more than excerpts in the chat it can still abruptly start to feel like “work” and lead to the same kind of burn out.
I’ve had moments where I’m relieved to discover a popular open source tool that works out-of-the-box as an alternative to my own so I can offload that organizational overhead and decision fatigue to someone else. While benefiting from all their features/enhancements I didn’t have to design or maintain myself over time.
I think the "nerds (like me)" part of your observation is something that a lot of AI-enthusiast nerds seriously underestimate. For as long as there's been personal computing, there's been a narrative that everyone would be a programmer if we just made it easier for everyone to program, and we've seen attempt after attempt after attempt to introduce new technologies that will surely, surely, be the key to unlocking this. What we don't seem to consider is the vast circumstantial evidence that the vast majority of users are simply not interested in creating tools, automations, widgets, etc., and never will be.
For my part, I am not only a nerd, I am literally an Emacs-using nerd, and I am not interested in using LLMs to create a plethora of bespoke applications that are subtle tweaks on existing tools. I haven't ruled out using AI to assist in helping me with a program that I've been wanting to write for years, but a lot of what's blocking me on that is figuring out design aspects that an LLM wouldn't be able to help me with in the first place. (I'm also concerned about "vibe-coding" programs that I don't 100% understand, at least if they're programs that I might ever want to release into the world.)
> But I find it a little extreme to say "it's faster to build your own than to install an existing alternative".
Installing an existing alternative might be easy ... once you found the one which best (i.e. mostly) matches your requirements. The time consuming task IMO is the time needed to find and then choose between half a dozen (or so) alternatives which all might do the job ... until you installed them, tested them, and found that they are insufficient for the job you expect them to do.