Comment by dd8601fn
7 hours ago
You focused largely on the promotional aspect, though I think the product competition angle is more interesting.
The other day I saw someone famous(ish) announce a new desktop application, to meaningful reception.
Thirty minutes later I had the same application, in every meaningful way. Built, working, ready for distribution.
It was just a test and I’m not about to sell it, but I can’t see how this doesn’t come down hard on indie developers.
This example produced reasonably done swift using appropriate system libs… so while “slop” will be a thing people might ignore for now, I think the bar has to go way, way up for real developers.
I don't see how you could verify "same application in every meaningful way" inside of 30 minutes. Even if the other fellow just vibed it up like you did, him caring about the product and doing thoughtful QA and actually using the application and making little tweaks and staking his reputation on it and committing to its ongoing maintenance is what matters. You may even have an identical application at the end of the day but I'll pay $20 for one that I'm better able to trust.
> I don't see how you could verify "same application in every meaningful way" inside of 30 minutes.
That was not difficult. Though obviously I wouldn’t declare it so and actually ship it to paying people in 30 minutes.
As for the rest of your point, that’s certainly going to be a fair assessment, much of the time, for now.
But that wasn’t really the point. We’re already pretty close to being there on “just tell the machine what you want” for huge swaths of non-critical software. And I don’t think pressure from that is going to let up.
>You focused largely on the promotional aspect, though I think the product competition angle is more interesting.
They are linked. LLMs mean reduced barriers and more competition, which makes promotion harder.