Comment by playorizaya
13 hours ago
The world runs on garbage code from millions of repos.
I agree with you that it doesn't replace a person, but it certainly makes code a lot cheaper.
If code is cheaper than ever, and the earning potential is the same. Why aren't investors all over it?
And I'll 1-up your Photoshop example with https://photopea.com
Made by 1 person, I use it literally every day.
Assume for a moment that the code of cost is zero, and the barrier to entry for coding is gone. Furthermore, let's say you don't want to do anything innovative, you just want to clone, so a huge part of your product management burden goes away.
The playing field is now completely level with any and all comers who want to attack Adobe. You now not only have one huge competitor, but the potential for hundreds of other competitors.
How are you going to convince someone that your execution is the one that's going to displace Adobe and steal market share? Why would I invest in your variant rather than one of your competitors?
The logical conclusion of this is that even if Adobe released its source and the theoretical price drops to zero, you're finding yourself at best in the same situation as Linux distro companies in 1999.
Assuming perfect LLM code generation (a huge assumption that is nowhere close to reality), a company built on this is going to replay the same open source dynamics, with additional steps/expense.
"Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions" –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/team-budget-problem-how-photo...
I wouldn't bet against him yet.
Photopea predates LLM coding by a lot. The fact that it was made by single developer is not particular, so was Figma.
The reality is, Photopea is unique because no one with LLMs can easily produce something similar. Also Photopea does not compare to Adobe offering similar to how Figma does. Not even close.