Comment by duggan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duggan | Hacker News Reader

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My take is more optimistic.

I think it will make prototyping and MVP more accessible to a wider range of people than before. This goes all the way from people who don't know how to code up to people who know very well how to code, but don't have the free time/energy to pursue every idea.

Project activation energy decreases. I think this is a net positive, as it allows more and different things to be started. I'm sure some think it's a net negative for the same reasons. If you're a developer selling the same knowledge and capacity you sold ten years ago things will change. But that was always the case.

My comparison to iOS was about the market opportunity, and the opportunity for entrepreneurship. It's not magic, not yet anyway. This is the time to go start a company, or build every weird idea that you were never going to get around to.

There are so many opportunities to create software and companies, we're not running out of those just because it's faster to generate some of the code.

What you just said seems reasonable. However, what the earlier commenter said, which led to this subthread, seems unreasonable: those people unwilling to try the tools "are absolutely going to get left in the dust."

Returning to the iOS analogy, though, there was only a short period of time in history when a random developer with a flashlight or fart app could become successful in the App Store. Nowadays, such a new app would flop, if Apple even allowed it, as you admitted: "You can still start as an iOS developer today, but the opportunity is different." The software market in general is not new. There are already a huge number of competitors. Thus, when you say, "This is the time to go start a company, or build every weird idea that you were never going to get around to," it's unclear why this would be the case. Perhaps the barrier to entry for competitors has been lowered, yet the competition is as fierce as ever (unlike in the early App Store).

In any case, there's a huge difference between "the barrier to entry has been lowered" and "those who don't use LLMs will be left in the dust". I think the latter is ridiculous.

Where are the original flashlight and fart app developers now? Hopefully they made enough money to last a lifetime, otherwise they're back in the same boat as everyone else.

> In any case, there's a huge difference between "the barrier to entry has been lowered" and "those who don't use LLMs will be left in the dust". I think the latter is ridiculous.

Yeah, it’s a bit incendiary, I just wanted to turn it into a more useful conversation.

I also think it overstates the case, but I do think it’s an opportunity.

It’s not just that the barrier to entry has been lowered (which it has) but that someone with a lot of existing skill can leverage that. Not everyone can bring that to the table, and not everyone who can is doing so. That’s the current advantage (in my opinion, of course).

All that said, I thought the Vision Pro was going to usher in a new era of computing, so I’m not much of a prognosticator.

> it’s a bit incendiary

> I also think it overstates the case

I think it's a mistake to defend and/or "reinterpret" the hype, which is not helping to promote the technology to people who aren't bandwagoners. If anything, it drives them away. It's a red flag.

I wish you would just say to the previous commenter, hey, you appear to be exaggerating, and that's not a good idea.

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