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Comment by frankdenbow | Hacker News Reader

I envision lots of solo coders now able to compete with bigger companies, creating more niche software that meets peoples need better than generic solutions. Truly exciting time to be in software.

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I have the exact opposite concern. Software is/was one of the few industries where a solo person can already compete with big companies, or at least live comfortably alongside. Just look at the market for niche or boutique software that does stuff like calendars or emails or task management in a particular way.

To me the current direction LLMs are headed seems like it will just further entrench the power of the trillion dollar megacorps because they’re the only people that can fund the creation and operation of this stuff.

Yes, this is more or less my life. I run a small bootstrapped startup and do some consulting on the side. I have a few decades of experience. So it's not like I can't do things myself. But chat GPT has enormously enhanced my output. It's rarely perfect but I can bridge the gap usually by completing the job. My role is increasingly directing changes and telling it what needs doing next.

Canvas sounds useful. I'll be playing with that as soon as I can access it.

Another useful thing in chat gpt that I've been leveraging is its memory function. I just tell it to remember instructions so I don't have to spell them out the next time I'm doing something.

I agree, and want to add: AI will make it possible to inexpensively produce small tailored applications that only support locally required functionality. The advantage to this is very small code bases that are easier to understand. In other words, it makes it possible to avoid huge mega apps that any particular user might use a small percentage of the functionality.

Also, is it possible that smaller focused apps will have few edge cases and be more reliable?

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