Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I know it's making me work more, and I am thrilled. I have not shipped production code for 20 years, and it was desktop back then.

I am now able to single-handedly create webapp MVPs, one of which is getting traction. If anything actually takes-off, there will certainly be need for a real dev to take over. Also, my commits are not "vibe coded." I have read every single loc, and found so many issues that I am stunned that "vibe coding" is actually a thing. I do let the models run wild on prototypes though.

I think that I happen to be in some magical sweet spot as a person who knows the words, kept up with tech, but not the syntax of framework xyz.

I thought this sweet spot was very transient, and I am very happy that the tools appear to be reaching a plateau for now, so I still have at least another year of being useful.

Since agentic dev tools arrived, I am having the time of my life while gladly working 60hrs per week.

I realize that I am an outlier, but is anyone else in this same boat? If you have product ideas, is this not the best time ever to build? All of our ideas are being indirectly subsidized by billions of VC & FAANG dollars. That is pretty freaking cool.

> I realize that I am an outlier, but is anyone else in this same boat?

Yep. I have a computer science background but have always been "the most technical product management/marketing guy in the room". Now I'm having lots of fun building a SaaS and a mobile app to my standards, plus turning out micro-projects like pwascore.com in a day or two.

It turns out that I love designing/architecting products, just not the grind-y coding bits. Because I create lots of tests, use code analysis tools, etc., I'm confident that I'm creating higher quality code than (for example) what most outsourced coders are creating without LLMs.

Sounds like these are hobby projects that you're doing on your own. The point of AI making us work more is referring to people at companies, not for themselves. Employers are capturing the productivity benefits (if they exist), not employees.

That is a false assumption.

I am getting paid. I was able to resurrect a startup that failed 8 years ago. Back then, we tried to bootstrap with a very nice off-shore dev for the MVP, that's all we could afford. The iteration period was ~24hrs. That period is now minutes. You know who that helps? Every startup who didn't nail the idea from go, and requires iteration.

I can now meet with a user on Monday, show them the little feature they wanted by Tuesday... like a real full stack dev would have done 4 years ago. Is it ready for b2c scale on Tuesday? No, but that's not my goal.

I understand all the LLM-dev derision to some extent. But if you are not using the billions of non-gate-kept subsidies given to all of us right now, then either you are working on real computer science problems, or you are wasting what seems like the biggest opportunity of my lifetime.

This is the greatest time to build a startup ever. However, if you are stuck making that money for the boss, then yeah.. that's probably annoying. And yes, it is scary as hell that we are all going to be replaced, in possibly very short order. This is the time for every dev to learn to be a ... eeek... product dev, and not a just a software dev. I think Product Dev will become a thing.

Ok, they're not hobby projects, but as you put it, you're "resurrecting a startup" which is pretty close to working for yourself. In other words, your extra productivity is being captured by you and your bootstrapped startup, which is great. But my point was the article was talking about the vast majority of people who are working for a company who captures nearly all the value from the extra productivity, which they do not benefit from. It's a bit like training your replacement.

Also, I agree that LLMs are particularly good for quickly putting together MVPs/prototypes; one of their best use cases.

I am in the same boat. But i am getting overwhelm with the code quantity i have to review[0] before i update my code. I don’t let llm touch my code, i ask for code for this or that and then save the code for future review. But ideas flow in faster that i can review then.

[0] https://medium.com/@xcf.seetan/adventures-on-the-ai-coding-s...

Yes. What they've shown me is that I don't like code. Hate it, actually. But I like building things, and can still read and reason about problems and code. So I chose the best stack for what we're doing, but I don't get bogged down in arcania. It's great.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com