AI is making it easy but also hard | Hacker News Reader

AI is making it easy but also hard

I was a software engineer for 20 years and always had many, many ideas for products - as we all do.

Enter Claude Code, Kiro, Cursor, whatever. Now I can write anything I like and because I was a software engineer and now a security architect, specialising in Cloud and AI, I can do it well.

The trouble is that everyone else can also put a product together. Theirs might be rubbish or it might be wonderful.

So my question is, how do we stand out? How do we convince customers that we are the one?

Any answers and discussion is welcome!

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Great question but the point of AI is to just remove the barrier. You still need to have the depth and understanding of what you’re creating and why you are creating.

I can give you an example of myself. I have been a data scientist for 10+ years while I love data finding patterns telling a story. I’ve never enjoyed coding so much. I can do it very well, but enjoy it? No.

AI is basically my coding partner while I actually code and see what is happening. It also tells me if something goes wrong. I don’t have to break my head. Or waste hours fixing that.

I find this very useful. Yes I also know how much effort it takes to build anything because I need to build it still, somebody might be assisting me, but I am the brains.

> Enter Claude Code, Kiro, Cursor, whatever. Now I can write anything

:-)

Maybe that is still me being a control freak and pretending that it is me.

"I" can have anything written for me. The code will work and I can code review it or just make sure that my spec was implemented. My point is that instead of me potentially taking a year to put out half decent code, it can take weeks now, even with all the wrong turns these tools will give you.

That means that everyone is now putting out software and it all looks slick.

Sorry missed the point so to stand out I think we should know what is the gap and why we are creating the product and who is it for how we are creating it has become much easier now

No problem.

It's still though the problem that investors were warning about at the AI Summit last year. The barrier to entry is now so low that they have almost stopped investing in AI coded products.

You've also got the customer flooded with "the new thing" and they don't have the skills to know what is any good.

I think I'm struggling because I'm technical and now trying to build something that will be larger than just me and so I'm hitting all new questions that I've never had to consider.

I'll obviously say that I have a killer product but it is just the same as all the rest!

Many people now can build simple products and I expect we will see a lot of small new apps in the nearest future. Quality is a different question, but for small apps AI can build it pretty well. But if you will try to build something bigger - AI which we have currently still cannot do that. Who knows what we will get in a year, bat barrier definnetely will become less and less. So what becomes really important (it was always important, but know becomes kind of critical to survive) is how to shape your idea, position it, find clients, advertise, etc. This is what we as progrummers typically didn'd do, we were thinking that our nice products will find a way to clients by themselvs.

I agree with you this lowering of barrier has made it so easy for everybody to create apps. The developer might not know what is good, but the customer surely decides so finally watch this is actually only the good ones. And also the art is not just developing right? it’s also about having that idea having that vision working towards positioning it and then marketing in a way that appeals to other users not just to the one who created it

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