this is possible now with AI
My experience: I feel like I could build a real product solo much more quickly than ever before, but the reality is my side-projects have been mostly futzing around with coding agents and related infrastructure - like building my own command proxy system with LLM review/classification & deterministic approval policy - for sandboxed agents to manage cloud infrastructure in controlled ways - building the builder who never builds. I see a lot of that kind of stuff on Twitter too.
Now to be fair, there are windows of time where that really did happen for some few. As a craftsman developer, I have the same wet dream. The problem is I know it’s just a dream now that I’m older.
So what AI has done is condense the frame in which a developer can spend years toiling away in the belief that they just need to keep going. Now the feedback loop is more instantly connected to reality and the reality is most all this stuff nobody wants or needs. starting a business now is ironically about all the business bits and that’s just rather annoying for builders like the HN crowd, myself included. This is more cathartic than anything. What do I know about entrepreneurial success?
But also you could write the god damn best software out there but if you can't convince people to open the web page or download the app then it goes nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.