Instead, I'm stripping back to basics, building small tools to solve specific problems, and find myself vastly preferring established software with a track record of keeping feature-bloat down and the problem-space focused.

Distribution and marketing have become much more important than before - within the context that everyone can build "features" for free.

Nothing about this statistic supports this claim. Maybe, actually, features aren't free, and even with a glamorous HN marketing blitz, nobody wants to use the dogshit software LLMs produce. Everyone can build "features" for free, if "features" is an alias for "a pile of 100 bugs with some makeup on it to make it look like a feature if you squint at it from a distance".

However I think there will be a price to pay building software without the "trough of sorrow" phase stressing over the product and market fit and limping away with lessons learned - the way you build software and the problems you solve are basically confined to a safe space, a bubble of yourself + your AI agents and a brief moment of suspense submitting to reddit or whatever, and you risk learning nothing at all to improve your next projects and higher-volume won't help that.

We're seeing it more and more. Someone whips out an app independently, launches it, then says, "How do I find users?", "Why does nobody use my app?" With the answer always being the same - they skipped the step of actually talking to potential users before coding.

So we see what is being described - lots of throwaway projects.

In the same vein, I am trying not to feel dismayed as I venture into the SaaS landscape in a bid to decouple myself from employment and you cannot help but feel your product is doomed before it even launches given people can build their own solutions.

You just need to remember, not everyone is as technical as the people here and those individuals still require solutions to problems.

It's tiring hearing people say "oh well I'll just build it instead" yeah but is it maintainable? Does it scale? Do you know how your data is handled and saved?

I have no idea how correct the code is or what I'd do with this, and I have no plans to publish it for those reasons.

It will need licences, or content others could not deliver. Really something you can’t clone that fast.

I think about Netflix, Spotify, Amazon. You can clone all this platforms but will never have the rights, artists or the logistics for example.

I think distribution become more important than ever. And having something you can’t clone on day 1. I think about Amazon, Netflix, Spotify.

You can clone the platforms but not the licences, artists logistic etc…

I seriously don't think non-technical people are pumping out apps, probably never will. They simply don't have an interest and would rather just pay for a service. A HVAC, plumbing, or electrician company isn't going to write their own CRM system. Now they will price hunt those services so as software production becomes cheaper, I would expect SaaS margins to also be going down.

Maybe the technical stuff is more accessible then it was beforehand but the thousands of hours of the other stuff that leads to good software is still thousands of hours.

Quality has become less work, but only by a little.

But this doesn't mean people value the craftsmanship because they never did before...

It's always been simply a popularity contest and now it's that more than ever.

The question is, why are you spending your time building things? Is it to make things that are finely crafted? Is it the road to wealth? As a tool to get other work done? Just make sure you have an answer.

It's your time after all...

Frankly AI is making people even lazier than before, which means that anyone willing to stick around and be consistent is probably the winner.