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This article made no sense to me. It is talking about AI-generated code eating SaaS. That's not what is going to replace SaaS. When AI is able to do the job its

This article made no sense to me. It is talking about AI-generated code eating SaaS. That's not what is going to replace SaaS. When AI is able to do the job itself — without generating code — that's what is going to replace SaaS. AI-generated code still requires software engineers to build, test, debug, deploy, secure, monitor, be on-call, handle incidents, and so on. That's very expensive. It is much cheaper to pay a small monthly fee to a SaaS company.

mjr00 10mo ago
> AI-generated code still requires software engineers to build, test, debug, deploy, ensure security, monitor, be on-call, handle incidents, and so on. That's very expensive. It is much cheaper to pay a small monthly fee to a SaaS company. Yeah it's a fundamental misunderstanding of economies of scale. If you build an in-house app that does X, you incur 100% of the maintenance costs. If you're subscribed to a SaaS product, you're paying for 1/N % of the maintenance costs, where N is the number of customers. I only see AI-generated code replacing things that never made sense as a SaaS anyway. It's telling the author's only concrete example of a replaced SaaS product is Retool, which is much less about SaaS and much more about a product that's been fundamentally deprecated. Wake me up when we see swaths of companies AI-coding internal Jira ("just an issue tracker") and Github Enterprise ("just a browser-based wrapper over git") clones.
- sayamqazi 10mo ago
  "Wake me up when we see swaths of companies AI-coding internal Jira". This shouldnt be the goal. The goal should be to build an AI that can tell you what is done and what needs to be done i.e. replace jira with natural interactions. An AI that can "see" and "understand" your project. An AI that can see it, understand it, build it and modify it. I know this is not happening for the next few decades or so.
  - mjr00 10mo ago
    > This shouldnt be the goal. The goal should be to build an AI that can tell you what is done and what needs to be done i.e. replace jira with natural interactions. An AI that can "see" and "understand" your project. An AI that can see it, understand it, build it and modify it. The difference is that an AI-coded internal Jira clone is something that could realistically happen today. Vague notions of AI "understanding" anything are not currently realistic and won't be for an indeterminate amount of time, which could mean next year, 30 years from now, or never. I don't consider that worth discussing.
jdthedisciple 10mo ago
Perhaps OP's argument still applies to dev-oriented SaaS. Are you as a dev still going to pay for analytics and dashboards that you could have propped up by Claude in 5 minutes instead?
- rhubarbtree 10mo ago
  Yes, because then I know the code is properly engineering, tested, maintained and supported. Generating code is one part of software engineering is a small part of SaaS.
  - jdthedisciple 10mo ago
    I'd love for SaaS to stay thriving but the flip side is simply the harsh reality that my own second thought these days is immediately "how easily will an agent replace my idea? yea probably quite easily..."
    - vdfs 10mo ago
      Before AI, people would search for a free or open source alternatives before using a saas
    - bccdee 10mo ago
      Ideas were never worth much. Implementing a quick prototype was always pretty simple. How easy is it, with modern tooling, to build a collaborative web editor? Just slap together prosemirror and automerge and you're already there. Still, nobody has displaced Google Docs.
  - InvertedRhodium 10mo ago
    How do you/I know that? I implemented OpenTelemetry in a project of mine recently and was shocked to see the number of AI authored commits in the git repository.
    - re-thc 10mo ago
      > How do you/I know that? I implemented OpenTelemetry in a project of mine recently and was shocked to see the number of AI authored commits Do you pay for OpenTelemetry? How is this related?
coffeebeqn 10mo ago
Note that there is zero actual sales/renewal data quoted in the article so this is all the authors vibes based on how he has been able to vibe code a few things for a team of one person to use
x0x0 10mo ago
The bit about building an internal app for eg marketing or sales is super fun. Getting calls starting at 8am EST because they then (reasonably!) expect it to work less so. Software still has an enormous ktlo tax and until that changes, I'm skeptical about the entire thesis. Not to mention the author appears to run a 1-2 person company, so ... yeah. AI thought leadership ahoy.
liampulles 10mo ago
You could have stopped at this article makes no sense - it couches and argues against itself to the point that it really says very little.

mjr00 10mo ago

> AI-generated code still requires software engineers to build, test, debug, deploy, ensure security, monitor, be on-call, handle incidents, and so on. That's very expensive. It is much cheaper to pay a small monthly fee to a SaaS company. Yeah it's a fundamental misunderstanding of economies of scale. If you build an in-house app that does X, you incur 100% of the maintenance costs. If you're subscribed to a SaaS product, you're paying for 1/N % of the maintenance costs, where N is the number of customers. I only see AI-generated code replacing things that never made sense as a SaaS anyway. It's telling the author's only concrete example of a replaced SaaS product is Retool, which is much less about SaaS and much more about a product that's been fundamentally deprecated. Wake me up when we see swaths of companies AI-coding internal Jira ("just an issue tracker") and Github Enterprise ("just a browser-based wrapper over git") clones.

sayamqazi 10mo ago
"Wake me up when we see swaths of companies AI-coding internal Jira". This shouldnt be the goal. The goal should be to build an AI that can tell you what is done and what needs to be done i.e. replace jira with natural interactions. An AI that can "see" and "understand" your project. An AI that can see it, understand it, build it and modify it. I know this is not happening for the next few decades or so.
- mjr00 10mo ago
  > This shouldnt be the goal. The goal should be to build an AI that can tell you what is done and what needs to be done i.e. replace jira with natural interactions. An AI that can "see" and "understand" your project. An AI that can see it, understand it, build it and modify it. The difference is that an AI-coded internal Jira clone is something that could realistically happen today. Vague notions of AI "understanding" anything are not currently realistic and won't be for an indeterminate amount of time, which could mean next year, 30 years from now, or never. I don't consider that worth discussing.

jdthedisciple 10mo ago

Perhaps OP's argument still applies to dev-oriented SaaS. Are you as a dev still going to pay for analytics and dashboards that you could have propped up by Claude in 5 minutes instead?

rhubarbtree 10mo ago
Yes, because then I know the code is properly engineering, tested, maintained and supported. Generating code is one part of software engineering is a small part of SaaS.
- jdthedisciple 10mo ago
  I'd love for SaaS to stay thriving but the flip side is simply the harsh reality that my own second thought these days is immediately "how easily will an agent replace my idea? yea probably quite easily..."
  - vdfs 10mo ago
    Before AI, people would search for a free or open source alternatives before using a saas
  - bccdee 10mo ago
    Ideas were never worth much. Implementing a quick prototype was always pretty simple. How easy is it, with modern tooling, to build a collaborative web editor? Just slap together prosemirror and automerge and you're already there. Still, nobody has displaced Google Docs.
- InvertedRhodium 10mo ago
  How do you/I know that? I implemented OpenTelemetry in a project of mine recently and was shocked to see the number of AI authored commits in the git repository.
  - re-thc 10mo ago
    > How do you/I know that? I implemented OpenTelemetry in a project of mine recently and was shocked to see the number of AI authored commits Do you pay for OpenTelemetry? How is this related?

coffeebeqn 10mo ago

Note that there is zero actual sales/renewal data quoted in the article so this is all the authors vibes based on how he has been able to vibe code a few things for a team of one person to use

x0x0 10mo ago

The bit about building an internal app for eg marketing or sales is super fun. Getting calls starting at 8am EST because they then (reasonably!) expect it to work less so. Software still has an enormous ktlo tax and until that changes, I'm skeptical about the entire thesis. Not to mention the author appears to run a 1-2 person company, so ... yeah. AI thought leadership ahoy.

liampulles 10mo ago

You could have stopped at this article makes no sense - it couches and argues against itself to the point that it really says very little.