>A few hours used to get a programmer a script; now it gets a polished app, and it gets a non-programmer something instead of nothing.
I think "polished" is doing some very heavy lifting in that sentence.
Don't get me wrong: I literally spend every weekday generating web UIs with Claude: I'm not anti-AI at all.
But to claim anything Claude produces as "polished" means limiting yourself to a very narrow definition of that term! If it didn't, people like me wouldn't get paid six figure salaries still (we'd be replaced by the AI that produces "polished" code).
Claude and Codex produce far more polished work than any of my side projects. Are they competitive with entire teams of professional developers working on standard (multi-week) project development schedules? I don't know. But it's weird to suggest that "unpolished" is their big problem.
We're entering the age of personal software. Everyone who is motivated will have a catalog of unreleased custom software to solve their own problems. No need for support, no need for community management. It's often said that LLMs can get you to an 80% prototype very quickly but polishing to a public release is really hard and still takes a ton of time. Well, 80% is good enough for my own use, which means solving problems quickly, for myself.
I’ve taken the viewpoint that a domain is basically a cup of coffee per year in cost and static web hosting is literally free so have been putting a ton of stuff up. None of these have ads or make me any money, just listing here as an example of the ease of sharing;
tfmbot.com - an implementation of my favourite board game complete with ai that plays against you
thedailycheat.com - a save game editor for a game Newstower that was fun but a little grindy ao i asked ai to figure out the save game format and make this online save editor
grandcheaten.com - a guide and save game editor for jagged alliance 3
Basically all personal projects but i find sharing them out rewarding. Occasionally i’ll get abuse or large amounts of downvotes for daring to share ai generated content but, shrug, it’s useful to me and i’ve also had lots of messages of appreciation.
Absolutely! And who wants to deal with warts you couldn't even imagine but will likely encounter if project was github hosted, gained traction, and gets the typical commentary/requests/abuse from randoms.
In the past, the effort it took to make a polished tool was much higher and hardly worth it for one self alone. We've pushed that bar up significantly.
LLMs causing a flood of apps is an interesting problem to watch the indiehackers around me try to navigate. I've watched them try to sneak around automods on Reddit or post just the right way to not piss people off, do Instagram ads, enter game jams... One guy actually had a lot of luck on Facebook groups, actually got some paid members for his Chinese learning app, which surprised me because basically every white guy that moves to Taiwan creates a Chinese learning app. Couldn't believe one actually got revenue.
Idk, maybe this is why compared to my peers I don't have much money, or the co-op I founded doesn't generate as much revenue as it probably could, but something just feels icky about it. I don't want to try to stick my head above the water of ten thousand of the same people doing the same thing. The effort to payoff ratio seems broken. I just want to build things, some of which are useful or fun. Maybe I'm too much of a dirty anarchist but it seems a lot more fun to me to make something and give it away for free that someone else is trying to charge for, than to try to monetize everything I do.
But I do wonder what's going to happen to indie game devs and hackers. I suspect that the burn-fast quick ramp up and validation strategy will begin fail, and what will make software worth paying for in the future is software that grew slowly and proved out its usefulness, maintenance, and development cadence over a long period of time. Before, you could validate an idea relatively quickly, maybe now you can just pick a couple ideas, stick to them, and cross your fingers.
I think "polished" is doing some very heavy lifting in that sentence.
Don't get me wrong: I literally spend every weekday generating web UIs with Claude: I'm not anti-AI at all.
But to claim anything Claude produces as "polished" means limiting yourself to a very narrow definition of that term! If it didn't, people like me wouldn't get paid six figure salaries still (we'd be replaced by the AI that produces "polished" code).
If anything: too polished!
(Like the words in this blog post, by the way).
tfmbot.com - an implementation of my favourite board game complete with ai that plays against you
thedailycheat.com - a save game editor for a game Newstower that was fun but a little grindy ao i asked ai to figure out the save game format and make this online save editor
grandcheaten.com - a guide and save game editor for jagged alliance 3
Basically all personal projects but i find sharing them out rewarding. Occasionally i’ll get abuse or large amounts of downvotes for daring to share ai generated content but, shrug, it’s useful to me and i’ve also had lots of messages of appreciation.
I think the author nailed it with this sentence:
> The audience can be one person.
In the past, the effort it took to make a polished tool was much higher and hardly worth it for one self alone. We've pushed that bar up significantly.
Idk, maybe this is why compared to my peers I don't have much money, or the co-op I founded doesn't generate as much revenue as it probably could, but something just feels icky about it. I don't want to try to stick my head above the water of ten thousand of the same people doing the same thing. The effort to payoff ratio seems broken. I just want to build things, some of which are useful or fun. Maybe I'm too much of a dirty anarchist but it seems a lot more fun to me to make something and give it away for free that someone else is trying to charge for, than to try to monetize everything I do.
But I do wonder what's going to happen to indie game devs and hackers. I suspect that the burn-fast quick ramp up and validation strategy will begin fail, and what will make software worth paying for in the future is software that grew slowly and proved out its usefulness, maintenance, and development cadence over a long period of time. Before, you could validate an idea relatively quickly, maybe now you can just pick a couple ideas, stick to them, and cross your fingers.
We will find out who's good at game design, and who was just OK at game design and really good at coding.