4 ms·

I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.

by imiric 1y ago

forrestthewoods 1y ago
No one ever shares their great and shipped products. AI built slop is for generating hype not revenue or users.
- tempodox 1y ago
  It does exude a strong scent of astroturfing.
- imiric 1y ago
  That's not always the case. AI is often used to pump out sites and apps that scam users, SEO spam, etc. So there is definitely a revenue stream that makes scammers and grifters excited for AI. These tools have increased the scope and reach of their scams, and provide a huge boost to their productivity. That's partly why I'm curious about OP's work. Nobody who's using these tools while following best software engineering practices would claim that they're making them that much more productive. Reviewing the generated code and fixing issues counteracts whatever time is saved by generating code. But if they're vibe coding and don't even look at the code...
- mesmertech 1y ago
  Not the OP but this is smth I've vibecoded using cursor: https://bestphoto.ai/ https://bestphoto.ai/ MRR ~$150. It basically started as a clone of my other site: https://aieasypic.com https://aieasypic.com (MRR 2.5k, 5-8k/mo rev) since I was having trouble keeping code context in mind and claude was pretty bad at doing full features with the tech stack I used for that site(Django BE, NextJS FE) making adding new features a pain, so I completely switched to a stack that claude is very good at NextJS fullstack(trpc BE) and now it can basically one-shot a feature request. Just putting this here because a lot of times AI coding seems to be dismissed as smth that can't do actual work ie generate revenue, while its more like making money as a solo dev is already pretty rare and if you're working in a corp. instead you're not going to just post your company name when asked for examples on what you're using AI for.
  - imiric 1y ago
    Those are exactly the kind of AI slop products I would expect to be vibe coded. You've created yet another wrapper around LLM APIs where the business model is charging a premium over existing services. Your revenue depends on the ignorance of customers to not realize they can get the same or better service for cheaper from companies that actually do the hard work. I bet SEO hacking is really important to you. It's irrefutable that AI tools can be used to create software that generates revenue. What's more difficult is using them to create something that brings actual value into the world.
    - mesmertech 1y ago
      Sure man, any product you don't like is just "another wrapper". I guess every website is just a wrapper over postgres or wordpress too. I run my own serverless GPU containers on runpod with a combination of comfy and my own fastapi servers using diffusers, not that it'd even matter if I just used some third party APIs. It originally even started as smth that was hacked together using 4x 4070ti supers in my basement that I then moved to runpod. Indiehacking is mostly marketing, nobody cares if you built some technically beautiful thing. Also its easy to criticize from the sidelines but, do you have products that you made by yourself that are used by hundreds of thousands of people? I have 5 such sites, 2 of which I named above
      - imiric 1y ago
        Hey, don't blame me for the fact that your sites are indistinguishable from hundreds of others that offer the same service. Everything I said is logical to assume, since all these sites look the same. Good on you for learning how AI tools work, but there's no way for anyone to tell whether your backend is self-managed or not, and practically it doesn't really matter. I reckon your users would get better results from proprietary models that expose an API than self-hosted open source ones, but then your revenue would probably be lower. > Also its easy to criticize from the sidelines but, do you have products that you made by yourself that are used by hundreds of thousands of people? I have 5 such sites, 2 of which I named above That's a lazy defense considering anyone is free to criticize anyone else's work, especially if they're familiar with the industry. Just like food and film critics don't need to be chefs and movie producers. But I'll give you credit for actually building and launching something that generates revenue. I admit that that is more than I have managed with my personal projects.
- ncruces 1y ago
  The other day someone was gloating they'd created a 30k LoC code base in a few weeks with a similar setup. I'd consider that a liability, not an asset, but they were pretty happy with it.
- danielbln 1y ago
  Man, who sucked the joy out of your life. Just try the damn thing. I have the staunchest anti-hypsters in my org and even they are using these tools heavily now. I build most of not all of my stuff for work, and I ain't sharing that. It's no panacea, but is there something to be had there? Abso-fucking-lutley. All of this would have been complete scifi at the beginning of this decade.
  - submeta 1y ago
    100%!
  - forrestthewoods 1y ago
    I’m super pro AI. I’ve been using ChatGPT since the day it released. I use an agent coder at work semi-regularly to reasonable levels of success. Big fan. But I am exceedingly tired of phrases like “complete the work of weeks and months within days”. If AI is making devs 5x to 10x faster then I’d like to see some actual results. Internet is full of hypesters that make bombastic claims of productivity but never actually shown anything they’ve made.
submeta 1y ago
I work at a company with over 700 employees. And there are tons of use cases where a simple CRUD app is sufficient. Or where glue code needs to be written / changed for legacy systems. Or where an OS system like Camunda is deployed and needs to be configured, workflows developed, etc The reality of companies out there is much simpler than the challenges of a startup that needs to build systems that are state of the art, scale for millions of users, etc There are companies out there that make millions, in areas you‘ve never heard of, and their core business does not depend on software development best practices. In our company we have an IT team with the median age of fifty, team members who never have developed software, just maintain systems, delegate hard work to expensive consultants. Now in that setting someone coming from a startup background is like someone coming from the future. I feel like a wizard who can solve problems in days, instead of weeks or months waiting for a consultant to solve.
- imiric 1y ago
  Fair enough. There are valid use cases for vibe coding scripts and simple CRUD apps, which current AI tools are fairly competent at producing. The thing is that those don't typically take weeks and months to build with conventional tooling. And I find it hard to believe that all you're doing is this type of integration work. But I suppose there are companies that need such roles. > There are companies out there that make millions, in areas you‘ve never heard of, and their core business does not depend on software development best practices. That is true. I do think that this cowboy coding approach is doing these companies a disservice, especially where tech is not their main product. It's only creating more operational risk that on-call and support staff have to deal with, and producing more technical debt that some poor soul will inevitably have to resolve one day. That is, it all appears to work until one edge case out of thousands brings down the entire system. Which could all be mitigated, if not avoided, by taking the time to understand the system and by following standard software development processes, even if it does take longer to implement. What you describe isn't new. This approach has existed long before the current wave of AI tooling. But AI tools make the problem worse by making it easier to ship code quickly without following any software development practices that ensure the software is robust and reliable. So, it's great that you're enjoying these tools. But I would suggest you adopt a more measured approach and work closely with those senior and junior engineers, instead of feeling like a wizard from the future.

I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.

by imiric 1y ago

I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.

forrestthewoods 1y ago

No one ever shares their great and shipped products. AI built slop is for generating hype not revenue or users.

tempodox 1y ago
It does exude a strong scent of astroturfing.
imiric 1y ago
That's not always the case. AI is often used to pump out sites and apps that scam users, SEO spam, etc. So there is definitely a revenue stream that makes scammers and grifters excited for AI. These tools have increased the scope and reach of their scams, and provide a huge boost to their productivity. That's partly why I'm curious about OP's work. Nobody who's using these tools while following best software engineering practices would claim that they're making them that much more productive. Reviewing the generated code and fixing issues counteracts whatever time is saved by generating code. But if they're vibe coding and don't even look at the code...
mesmertech 1y ago
Not the OP but this is smth I've vibecoded using cursor: https://bestphoto.ai/ https://bestphoto.ai/ MRR ~$150. It basically started as a clone of my other site: https://aieasypic.com https://aieasypic.com (MRR 2.5k, 5-8k/mo rev) since I was having trouble keeping code context in mind and claude was pretty bad at doing full features with the tech stack I used for that site(Django BE, NextJS FE) making adding new features a pain, so I completely switched to a stack that claude is very good at NextJS fullstack(trpc BE) and now it can basically one-shot a feature request. Just putting this here because a lot of times AI coding seems to be dismissed as smth that can't do actual work ie generate revenue, while its more like making money as a solo dev is already pretty rare and if you're working in a corp. instead you're not going to just post your company name when asked for examples on what you're using AI for.
- imiric 1y ago
  Those are exactly the kind of AI slop products I would expect to be vibe coded. You've created yet another wrapper around LLM APIs where the business model is charging a premium over existing services. Your revenue depends on the ignorance of customers to not realize they can get the same or better service for cheaper from companies that actually do the hard work. I bet SEO hacking is really important to you. It's irrefutable that AI tools can be used to create software that generates revenue. What's more difficult is using them to create something that brings actual value into the world.
  - mesmertech 1y ago
    Sure man, any product you don't like is just "another wrapper". I guess every website is just a wrapper over postgres or wordpress too. I run my own serverless GPU containers on runpod with a combination of comfy and my own fastapi servers using diffusers, not that it'd even matter if I just used some third party APIs. It originally even started as smth that was hacked together using 4x 4070ti supers in my basement that I then moved to runpod. Indiehacking is mostly marketing, nobody cares if you built some technically beautiful thing. Also its easy to criticize from the sidelines but, do you have products that you made by yourself that are used by hundreds of thousands of people? I have 5 such sites, 2 of which I named above
    - imiric 1y ago
      Hey, don't blame me for the fact that your sites are indistinguishable from hundreds of others that offer the same service. Everything I said is logical to assume, since all these sites look the same. Good on you for learning how AI tools work, but there's no way for anyone to tell whether your backend is self-managed or not, and practically it doesn't really matter. I reckon your users would get better results from proprietary models that expose an API than self-hosted open source ones, but then your revenue would probably be lower. > Also its easy to criticize from the sidelines but, do you have products that you made by yourself that are used by hundreds of thousands of people? I have 5 such sites, 2 of which I named above That's a lazy defense considering anyone is free to criticize anyone else's work, especially if they're familiar with the industry. Just like food and film critics don't need to be chefs and movie producers. But I'll give you credit for actually building and launching something that generates revenue. I admit that that is more than I have managed with my personal projects.
ncruces 1y ago
The other day someone was gloating they'd created a 30k LoC code base in a few weeks with a similar setup. I'd consider that a liability, not an asset, but they were pretty happy with it.
danielbln 1y ago
Man, who sucked the joy out of your life. Just try the damn thing. I have the staunchest anti-hypsters in my org and even they are using these tools heavily now. I build most of not all of my stuff for work, and I ain't sharing that. It's no panacea, but is there something to be had there? Abso-fucking-lutley. All of this would have been complete scifi at the beginning of this decade.
- submeta 1y ago
  100%!
- forrestthewoods 1y ago
  I’m super pro AI. I’ve been using ChatGPT since the day it released. I use an agent coder at work semi-regularly to reasonable levels of success. Big fan. But I am exceedingly tired of phrases like “complete the work of weeks and months within days”. If AI is making devs 5x to 10x faster then I’d like to see some actual results. Internet is full of hypesters that make bombastic claims of productivity but never actually shown anything they’ve made.

submeta 1y ago

I work at a company with over 700 employees. And there are tons of use cases where a simple CRUD app is sufficient. Or where glue code needs to be written / changed for legacy systems. Or where an OS system like Camunda is deployed and needs to be configured, workflows developed, etc The reality of companies out there is much simpler than the challenges of a startup that needs to build systems that are state of the art, scale for millions of users, etc There are companies out there that make millions, in areas you‘ve never heard of, and their core business does not depend on software development best practices. In our company we have an IT team with the median age of fifty, team members who never have developed software, just maintain systems, delegate hard work to expensive consultants. Now in that setting someone coming from a startup background is like someone coming from the future. I feel like a wizard who can solve problems in days, instead of weeks or months waiting for a consultant to solve.

imiric 1y ago
Fair enough. There are valid use cases for vibe coding scripts and simple CRUD apps, which current AI tools are fairly competent at producing. The thing is that those don't typically take weeks and months to build with conventional tooling. And I find it hard to believe that all you're doing is this type of integration work. But I suppose there are companies that need such roles. > There are companies out there that make millions, in areas you‘ve never heard of, and their core business does not depend on software development best practices. That is true. I do think that this cowboy coding approach is doing these companies a disservice, especially where tech is not their main product. It's only creating more operational risk that on-call and support staff have to deal with, and producing more technical debt that some poor soul will inevitably have to resolve one day. That is, it all appears to work until one edge case out of thousands brings down the entire system. Which could all be mitigated, if not avoided, by taking the time to understand the system and by following standard software development processes, even if it does take longer to implement. What you describe isn't new. This approach has existed long before the current wave of AI tooling. But AI tools make the problem worse by making it easier to ship code quickly without following any software development practices that ensure the software is robust and reliable. So, it's great that you're enjoying these tools. But I would suggest you adopt a more measured approach and work closely with those senior and junior engineers, instead of feeling like a wizard from the future.