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From the video, Second looks more like a UI wrapped over a boilerplate generators that have existed for quite a while. It's a pretty powerful one, and that can

From the video, Second looks more like a UI wrapped over a boilerplate generators that have existed for quite a while. It's a pretty powerful one, and that can be very useful in itself but how is AI involved here? If it is, was it needed in the first place? I was expecting the inputs to be more along, "give me an app to manage a restaurant", but the inputs are modules (Forgot password, billing), which are generic pieces of software. For $299/month, it sounds like a very expensive deal to me.

immortalloom 4y ago
Great question! So all of the files are generated with either compiles or GPT-3, or if the files already exist on the repo and need to be modified, the bots use GPT-3 code edits to modify the files. $299/project/month will sound expensive if you compare it to starter kits (usually free), templates (usually < $100), or no-code tools (around $100). But I believe Second will feel very close to having a dedicated developer that can build commodity features for you. I want engineers to use Second for the common stuff, so that they can focus on the stuff that special to the project. Also, yea pricing is hard! It may change.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  And this boilerplate can't be added fast with Copilot? Which is $100/year.
  - immortalloom 4y ago
    Maybe. Copilot is more like an extreme programming experience, where you are still piecing together things yourself in the IDE. Second does all of that for you by building complete features and raising a pull request! I believe that in the future, A.I. bots will be used to build large chunks of the codebase (like Second). And then human engineers will use A.I. bots in the browser to make low level tweaks and additions (Copilot)
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      Hopefully in your future an AI bot doesn't invent a Second competitor and put you out of business.
      - immortalloom 4y ago
        Hah. To be honest, 2023 is going to be insane. I'm sure hundreds, if not thousands, of companies are going to emerge which greatly improve the software development process.
        candiddevmike 4y ago
        I think the software development process is fine, it's all the organizational cruft that slows it down. Your company is a good example of it--you probably didn't use Second to make Second, and being a solo dev had to have been a huge benefit to your velocity. The things that hurt software development are people/process related, and can't be fixed by software, IMO.
        immortalloom 4y ago
        Funny enough, I did use second to build the authentication flows. But I've diverged a bit because I haven't had a chance to fully build out the other modules that Second will need. I'm planning on rebuilding Second with Second as soon as I have all of the appropriate modules in place!
        caseymarquis 4y ago
        Please write a blog post about that when you get a chance to do it!
        beezlewax 4y ago
        What like scrum and agile? Or can you be more specific? Or point me to blog posts about this stuff.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > But I believe Second will feel very close to having a dedicated developer that can build commodity features for you. A “developer” or a “grunt coder”? Or, to use the ~40+ year old terms that even the least trendy places have phased out [0], a programmer/analyst or just a programmer? [0] Largely because one of the two didn’t really fit into modern development methodologies anymore, since it presumed too narrow of a skillset and responsibility area.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    This. Thinking about any of the sizeable apps I develop and maintain, 90% of the job is just thinking of edge cases in the business logic as transmitted to me by the people running the business I'm writing an app for. About 10% is actually coding and testing. While I'm impressed with copilot/GPT's ability to write SQL queries and imitate my coding style to write functions that usually have no obvious bugs, it's the subtle, non-obvious bugs that I'm worried about. Anything it writes demands careful reading and correction - just like anything written by ChatGPT demands a great deal of fact-checking. So much so that it's not really efficient. The idea of reviewing a whole code branch it's written fills me with dread, because who knows where the corner cases are lurking? And when they arise, who knows what else patching them might affect? At least with my own code or code written by humans, I know where things are and can deduce why they were written that way. With copilot, there's no why. In a sense it's a metaphor for the whole problem of LLMs ... or AI in general. When unlimited compute lets you replace logical deduction with brute force heuristic reduction, it makes it impossible to trace routes and find bugs.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  $299/month sounds pretty reasonable if it does what it says on the tin. That's $3.6k/year. You don't need to make up many development hours before you've paid that back. And it seems like there's good opportunity to stratify billing via modules -- Using only the basic stuff? $. Using more advanced / larger modules? $$.
  - shadowcodex 4y ago
    I agree. I think if it continues to grow it will pay dividends back in development hours saved.
- yunwal 4y ago
  Is it true that the larger the app, the less effective/accurate the bot is? In that case, might it be more sensible to charge a 1-time price?
  - immortalloom 4y ago
    Good question! I believe the accuracy will still be good, but it will just be more work for the bots to get it right (lots more files and code to reason with). So my OpenAI costs will prob go up a lot for bigger code bases. Hadn't thought about that!
- swyx 4y ago
  you forgot one alternative - chatgpt, which is $20/month and infinitely flexible
  - immortalloom 4y ago
    True, but it's still work. Using ChatGPT manually is great, but it's not as fast as configuring a feature and then having the whole thing built and integrated. A lot of users also struggle with knowing what to even ask ChatGPT, unless they are already an experienced developer.
    - skor 4y ago
      if they aren’t experienced, how will they know the solution is what they need? chicken/egg problem
- pbreit 4y ago
  What would be some examples of features that your service could add to my app?
DeathArrow 4y ago
Many people implement things like forgot password and billing once and copy/paste in the next projects if they need.
- immortalloom 4y ago
  Yea! That kinda works, except that libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web, often times you need to rebuild it anyways. I also want to be more supportive of junior developers. Second can help scaffold and get large chunks of standard code in place for them to build on, rather than starting with empty files. This is especially useful when adding a new feature to an existing web application (in which case boilerplates and templates are a no-op)
  - stephendause 4y ago
    > libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web Speaking of that issue, wasn't GPT-3 trained with data that doesn't go past 2021? Won't this be an issue for any AI assistant using GPT-3 to write code?
    - immortalloom 4y ago
      I was worried about this as well. However, I think the solution to this is to create fine-tuned models on specific areas that OpenAI models won't be as knowledgable about (like Next.js 13 for example)
    - olalonde 4y ago
      I think OpenAI plans to continuously update ChatGPT (aka "gpt-3.5-turbo") but I don't think it has done so yet.
itake 4y ago
I could see this used at a big tech companies using golang. I think each company has their startup kit, but it still requires a lot of lifting and lacks many features like open source tools.
- immortalloom 4y ago
  yea totally! My plan is to train models on companies design systems as well. I think if done correctly, it could be a huge boost to product development velocity.
s1k3s 4y ago
This comment gave me the Dropbox vibes of 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 :)
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Dropbox also launched in a non-collapsed market. OP has a cool product, but the comment is right - how wide is their moat here? The biggest lesson to learn from Dropbox is that if you don't build a unique enough product, larger companies will eat your lunch. Microsoft already has Copilot patents, if Second ever threatens them then they have full control over the economics of GPT. Their business is built on the goodwill of a direct competitor.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    OpenAI has the GPT models, not Microsoft. Also the open source models like BLOOM are getting better over time and when OpenAI pulls the rug, maybe they'll be competitive.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Fingers crossed. I don't have much hope though. It feels like everyone has said that there's plenty of incentive to knock Nvidia's block off with this AI business, but we've yet to see any real competition. My guess is that the profitability of ChatGPT is configurable enough to compete with SOTA competitors. Even if a better model crops up, out-pricing OpenAI will be a struggle. It might even require a hosting partnership with AWS or Azure.
    - popcorncowboy 4y ago
      > OpenAI has the GPT models, not Microsoft. Haha no. There is no future where OpenAI operates independently of Microsoft. OpenAI is functionally beholden to MS. 49% is a paper contrivance to present a facade that they're still in control. They're not. The tail is wagging the dog, and in this case the tail is a trillion dollar dragon that OpenAI lowered the drawbridge and invited inside.
ilaksh 4y ago
I just released the new version of https//aidev.codes which you can use a prompt kind of like "give me a web page for managing a restaurant" .. it will output it and host it for pennies and if you want a subdomain its $5 per month. It is currently limited to simple static pages. But it can still manage something like recording restaurant schedules in localStorage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086436

immortalloom 4y ago

Great question! So all of the files are generated with either compiles or GPT-3, or if the files already exist on the repo and need to be modified, the bots use GPT-3 code edits to modify the files. $299/project/month will sound expensive if you compare it to starter kits (usually free), templates (usually < $100), or no-code tools (around $100). But I believe Second will feel very close to having a dedicated developer that can build commodity features for you. I want engineers to use Second for the common stuff, so that they can focus on the stuff that special to the project. Also, yea pricing is hard! It may change.

DeathArrow 4y ago
And this boilerplate can't be added fast with Copilot? Which is $100/year.
- immortalloom 4y ago
  Maybe. Copilot is more like an extreme programming experience, where you are still piecing together things yourself in the IDE. Second does all of that for you by building complete features and raising a pull request! I believe that in the future, A.I. bots will be used to build large chunks of the codebase (like Second). And then human engineers will use A.I. bots in the browser to make low level tweaks and additions (Copilot)
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    Hopefully in your future an AI bot doesn't invent a Second competitor and put you out of business.
    - immortalloom 4y ago
      Hah. To be honest, 2023 is going to be insane. I'm sure hundreds, if not thousands, of companies are going to emerge which greatly improve the software development process.
      - candiddevmike 4y ago
        I think the software development process is fine, it's all the organizational cruft that slows it down. Your company is a good example of it--you probably didn't use Second to make Second, and being a solo dev had to have been a huge benefit to your velocity. The things that hurt software development are people/process related, and can't be fixed by software, IMO.
        immortalloom 4y ago
        Funny enough, I did use second to build the authentication flows. But I've diverged a bit because I haven't had a chance to fully build out the other modules that Second will need. I'm planning on rebuilding Second with Second as soon as I have all of the appropriate modules in place!
        caseymarquis 4y ago
        Please write a blog post about that when you get a chance to do it!
        beezlewax 4y ago
        What like scrum and agile? Or can you be more specific? Or point me to blog posts about this stuff.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 4y ago
> But I believe Second will feel very close to having a dedicated developer that can build commodity features for you. A “developer” or a “grunt coder”? Or, to use the ~40+ year old terms that even the least trendy places have phased out [0], a programmer/analyst or just a programmer? [0] Largely because one of the two didn’t really fit into modern development methodologies anymore, since it presumed too narrow of a skillset and responsibility area.
- noduerme 4y ago
  This. Thinking about any of the sizeable apps I develop and maintain, 90% of the job is just thinking of edge cases in the business logic as transmitted to me by the people running the business I'm writing an app for. About 10% is actually coding and testing. While I'm impressed with copilot/GPT's ability to write SQL queries and imitate my coding style to write functions that usually have no obvious bugs, it's the subtle, non-obvious bugs that I'm worried about. Anything it writes demands careful reading and correction - just like anything written by ChatGPT demands a great deal of fact-checking. So much so that it's not really efficient. The idea of reviewing a whole code branch it's written fills me with dread, because who knows where the corner cases are lurking? And when they arise, who knows what else patching them might affect? At least with my own code or code written by humans, I know where things are and can deduce why they were written that way. With copilot, there's no why. In a sense it's a metaphor for the whole problem of LLMs ... or AI in general. When unlimited compute lets you replace logical deduction with brute force heuristic reduction, it makes it impossible to trace routes and find bugs.
ethbr0 4y ago
$299/month sounds pretty reasonable if it does what it says on the tin. That's $3.6k/year. You don't need to make up many development hours before you've paid that back. And it seems like there's good opportunity to stratify billing via modules -- Using only the basic stuff? $. Using more advanced / larger modules? $$.
- shadowcodex 4y ago
  I agree. I think if it continues to grow it will pay dividends back in development hours saved.
yunwal 4y ago
Is it true that the larger the app, the less effective/accurate the bot is? In that case, might it be more sensible to charge a 1-time price?
- immortalloom 4y ago
  Good question! I believe the accuracy will still be good, but it will just be more work for the bots to get it right (lots more files and code to reason with). So my OpenAI costs will prob go up a lot for bigger code bases. Hadn't thought about that!
swyx 4y ago
you forgot one alternative - chatgpt, which is $20/month and infinitely flexible
- immortalloom 4y ago
  True, but it's still work. Using ChatGPT manually is great, but it's not as fast as configuring a feature and then having the whole thing built and integrated. A lot of users also struggle with knowing what to even ask ChatGPT, unless they are already an experienced developer.
  - skor 4y ago
    if they aren’t experienced, how will they know the solution is what they need? chicken/egg problem
pbreit 4y ago
What would be some examples of features that your service could add to my app?

DeathArrow 4y ago

Many people implement things like forgot password and billing once and copy/paste in the next projects if they need.

immortalloom 4y ago
Yea! That kinda works, except that libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web, often times you need to rebuild it anyways. I also want to be more supportive of junior developers. Second can help scaffold and get large chunks of standard code in place for them to build on, rather than starting with empty files. This is especially useful when adding a new feature to an existing web application (in which case boilerplates and templates are a no-op)
- stephendause 4y ago
  > libraries, frameworks, and paradigms evolve so rapidly in the web Speaking of that issue, wasn't GPT-3 trained with data that doesn't go past 2021? Won't this be an issue for any AI assistant using GPT-3 to write code?
  - immortalloom 4y ago
    I was worried about this as well. However, I think the solution to this is to create fine-tuned models on specific areas that OpenAI models won't be as knowledgable about (like Next.js 13 for example)
  - olalonde 4y ago
    I think OpenAI plans to continuously update ChatGPT (aka "gpt-3.5-turbo") but I don't think it has done so yet.

itake 4y ago

I could see this used at a big tech companies using golang. I think each company has their startup kit, but it still requires a lot of lifting and lacks many features like open source tools.

immortalloom 4y ago
yea totally! My plan is to train models on companies design systems as well. I think if done correctly, it could be a huge boost to product development velocity.

s1k3s 4y ago

This comment gave me the Dropbox vibes of 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 :)

smoldesu 4y ago
Dropbox also launched in a non-collapsed market. OP has a cool product, but the comment is right - how wide is their moat here? The biggest lesson to learn from Dropbox is that if you don't build a unique enough product, larger companies will eat your lunch. Microsoft already has Copilot patents, if Second ever threatens them then they have full control over the economics of GPT. Their business is built on the goodwill of a direct competitor.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  OpenAI has the GPT models, not Microsoft. Also the open source models like BLOOM are getting better over time and when OpenAI pulls the rug, maybe they'll be competitive.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Fingers crossed. I don't have much hope though. It feels like everyone has said that there's plenty of incentive to knock Nvidia's block off with this AI business, but we've yet to see any real competition. My guess is that the profitability of ChatGPT is configurable enough to compete with SOTA competitors. Even if a better model crops up, out-pricing OpenAI will be a struggle. It might even require a hosting partnership with AWS or Azure.
  - popcorncowboy 4y ago
    > OpenAI has the GPT models, not Microsoft. Haha no. There is no future where OpenAI operates independently of Microsoft. OpenAI is functionally beholden to MS. 49% is a paper contrivance to present a facade that they're still in control. They're not. The tail is wagging the dog, and in this case the tail is a trillion dollar dragon that OpenAI lowered the drawbridge and invited inside.

ilaksh 4y ago

I just released the new version of https//aidev.codes which you can use a prompt kind of like "give me a web page for managing a restaurant" .. it will output it and host it for pennies and if you want a subdomain its $5 per month. It is currently limited to simple static pages. But it can still manage something like recording restaurant schedules in localStorage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35086436