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I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's n

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun. What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want. I stopped reviewing the code at all. People on here are often saying how that's a disaster, how the result would be unmaintainable, and so on. I think they are clueless. My app has 200k LOC + 100k in tests, and there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it. I've been working on the project for four months now. I invested hundreds of hours, and I expect to publish my paid app in the AppStore this month. It has been fun. I am using the app every day and I look forward to the features I will add in the future.

yoz-y 21d ago
Me too I use my apps every day. But the main thing coming out of this is that they are tailored to me. Turning hobbies into hustles is one of the worse things that happened in the post social media days.
- user43928 21d ago
  I think selling software that solves your own problems is great and beats trying to develop for customers you do not understand.
  - grvdrm 21d ago
    Completely agree. You tell the best story for your product doing it that way.
mohamedkoubaa 21d ago
>there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it This means you designed the system well and made sure the agent implemented it correctly. Even at Big Company the big shot architects don't review every line of code, and nobody seemed to mind that
- vorticalbox 21d ago
  It’s just a fact that an ai will write and read faster than me. I can’t compete so getting ai to do that has freed up both time and mental capacity to actually think about the implementation details.
- user43928 21d ago
  I'd like to think it comes down to my expertise, but I don't believe I did a lot of designing. Sure, I've given a lot of inputs over the time, probably I've steered it to solutions that work. Maybe it was also helpful that I set up a skill to use a different model to review the code for correctness, technical debt, and whether the location where the code is added is appropriate or warrants a new file or abstraction. I set this up long before subagents were widely used.
lacedeconstruct 21d ago
>My app has 200k LOC + 100k in tests, and there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it. May I ask what does this app do ? 200k is like GTA vice city level, is like sqlite level, If its a financial tracker or a to-do list or an agent coordinator I am going to kill myself
- user43928 21d ago
  I'm not going to share exact details about my paid app, but you could think media management, with a lot of extra features, an in-app browser with custom controls, and multiple AI powered features with on device processing.
  - SoftTalker 21d ago
    You're selling an app, but don't want to share any details, or even name it? Call me suspicious.
    - user43928 21d ago
      I said I'm hoping to complete it this month and I already shared some details. Should I post my market and keyword research too, here on this site for software developers and entrepreneurs?
      - lelanthran 21d ago
        It doesn't matter when you post it; some kid with a $200 claude sub (or cheaper) is going to clone it for far cheaper than you, and sell it for far cheaper than you. There's no friction to what you produced, so why do you think that you won't have 100s of clones, all cheaper? We're now in a market for lemons as far as software goes.
        user43928 21d ago
        I spent hundreds of hours on this, so there is still some friction. If I told you the exact market and use case, I'd still have a decent head start, but indeed, someone without a job could invest more time than I do. People in a cheaper location can work for far cheaper than I can afford to. With head start I don't meant that the idea is so novel that I need to keep it a secret. However, I believe that if there is an established app that does the same thing, and your app cannot beat it on quality, it will be hard to attract users.
Palomides 21d ago
AI has really revealed the programmers who were temporarily inconvenienced idea guys
- user43928 21d ago
  Not the case here. When I was young I dabbled in reverse engineering and hacking games for example. I don't think I am less of a 'hacker' or programmer than the next person on HN.
  - danielbln 21d ago
    Same here. Loved hacking on things from all angles, still do. The only thing lost to me now is the yak shaving, and good riddance. I want to think in systems, solutions, integration, and first and foremost the higher level problem, not nitty gritty implementation details. Ever since Fable and Sol level LLMs/agents came online, I have ceased to look at the code. I recently launched a project for a client that integrated many many systems, has considerable traffic with low latency requirements and everything just.. works. I've never had to do this little firefighting when launching a project of that complexity and scale. It's been liberating and I was able to focus mostly on polish and QoL improvements of the stack and systems. What a time to be alive for a technical builder.
- acedTrex 21d ago
  This is BY FAR the worst part of LLMs to me. The idea guys were always incredibly annoying but very ignorable. Now they are constantly in your face but providing the exact same 0 value as always.
- RedCinnabar 21d ago
  I mean, wasn’t that the case for most of them? Im not a developer anymore, but to me programming was always a means to an end. Sure you can have preferences (static vs dynamic typing, functional vs OOP, etc.), but in the end they should only be relevant if they make you more productive, makes the codebase more readable and so on. Since these nuances are progressively getting less and less important, why would you care about the process?
mycocola 21d ago
My impression with how the wind is blowing is that someone is going to come along, if your app has merit, and duplicate it with Astra/Fable. Then they'd back it with significant ad spend, outcompeting yours.
bradly 21d ago
> I've been working on the project for four months now. I invested hundreds of hours, and I expect to publish my paid app in the AppStore this month. I wish you the best, but you have invested a considerable about of time and I'm guessing token budget for something with no revenue and no customers. That in itself is totally fine, but I'm not sure it gives you the authority to calling people clueless for having a different opinion on the maintainability of 200k unreviewed, llm generated code with no users.
- adrianwaj 21d ago
  I would be chasing altcoin revenue - those worthless things nobody wants. Hold those but encourage their spending too, with an app, is the road to riches in a world where one's IP can be immediately negated by a disgruntled robotic employee jumping ship. Actually, I don't know if the premise works in the real world, but can't see why "crypto-enabled" isn't adopted at every turn. Altcoins - the snowball lying in wake. Bitcoins were crap too at one point but they have stood the test of time and obscurity. It's about going from HODL'ing to spending for dear life. Something like that anyway. Maybe 3+ years to go before any serious price movement because of dumping pressure being so high from pre-miners and the like. No idea.
vabadus 21d ago
Same experience here. I have published 3 apps this year that have just been ideas I've been kicking around for far too long - I never had the time outside of my day job to work on them. Most modern models write code better than I could, maintain it better, and free me up to focus on creativity and trying to add value.
groundzeros2015 21d ago
I find that it falls apart after the first 1000 or so lines.
- djha-skin 21d ago
  I used to think this but then improved and found that it was a matter of tooling. Using beads[1] and getting the AI to write its own tickets and wiki articles using GitHub's wiki feature on repos, it can keep track of long horizon projects pretty easily. Then you curate some of the tickets or read through them and have them update the beads or adjust them as they work them. When they want to retain some important piece of knowledge you have them add it to the GitHub repo wiki. Modern AI programming looks an awful lot like traditional product owner or product management roles. 1: https://beads.gascity.com/ https://beads.gascity.com/
  - groundzeros2015 21d ago
    I’m not into the personal wiki thing, let alone an AI wiki. This feels like productivity porn.
- someguynamedq 21d ago
  Then you're really really bad at using it. At the very least it is functional with minimal effort on codebases with 10s of thounsand
  - groundzeros2015 21d ago
    Or what happens is that after 1000 lines there are hundreds of decisions it would have to consider to do anything and it doesn’t do that and instead finds the smallest path to insert its latest request.
albertodenia 20d ago
I'm also having the time of my life building products I want to exist. It's like suddenly having the budget to hire a small team and materialize ideas that before would have required many months or years of your time (or taking investment). And yet, I'd be lying if I said I don't miss the flow.
cx42net 19d ago
The way I see it, they are two types of ("technical") peoples: The ones that loves the technicity, the challenge of building something, putting complex things together, the puzzle part of creating something. The ones that wants to have stuff build to use them, were coding was just a mean to an end. (DHH mentioned in his podcast with Lex Fridman, that he is more in this category) For the later, AI is the perfect tool that could come around, removing that barrier that was stopping them to achieve their needs (which you appear to be part of, I'm saying this without no jugement) The writer of the blog post is in the former category.

yoz-y 21d ago

Me too I use my apps every day. But the main thing coming out of this is that they are tailored to me. Turning hobbies into hustles is one of the worse things that happened in the post social media days.

user43928 21d ago
I think selling software that solves your own problems is great and beats trying to develop for customers you do not understand.
- grvdrm 21d ago
  Completely agree. You tell the best story for your product doing it that way.

mohamedkoubaa 21d ago

>there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it This means you designed the system well and made sure the agent implemented it correctly. Even at Big Company the big shot architects don't review every line of code, and nobody seemed to mind that

vorticalbox 21d ago
It’s just a fact that an ai will write and read faster than me. I can’t compete so getting ai to do that has freed up both time and mental capacity to actually think about the implementation details.
user43928 21d ago
I'd like to think it comes down to my expertise, but I don't believe I did a lot of designing. Sure, I've given a lot of inputs over the time, probably I've steered it to solutions that work. Maybe it was also helpful that I set up a skill to use a different model to review the code for correctness, technical debt, and whether the location where the code is added is appropriate or warrants a new file or abstraction. I set this up long before subagents were widely used.

lacedeconstruct 21d ago

>My app has 200k LOC + 100k in tests, and there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it. May I ask what does this app do ? 200k is like GTA vice city level, is like sqlite level, If its a financial tracker or a to-do list or an agent coordinator I am going to kill myself

user43928 21d ago
I'm not going to share exact details about my paid app, but you could think media management, with a lot of extra features, an in-app browser with custom controls, and multiple AI powered features with on device processing.
- SoftTalker 21d ago
  You're selling an app, but don't want to share any details, or even name it? Call me suspicious.
  - user43928 21d ago
    I said I'm hoping to complete it this month and I already shared some details. Should I post my market and keyword research too, here on this site for software developers and entrepreneurs?
    - lelanthran 21d ago
      It doesn't matter when you post it; some kid with a $200 claude sub (or cheaper) is going to clone it for far cheaper than you, and sell it for far cheaper than you. There's no friction to what you produced, so why do you think that you won't have 100s of clones, all cheaper? We're now in a market for lemons as far as software goes.
      - user43928 21d ago
        I spent hundreds of hours on this, so there is still some friction. If I told you the exact market and use case, I'd still have a decent head start, but indeed, someone without a job could invest more time than I do. People in a cheaper location can work for far cheaper than I can afford to. With head start I don't meant that the idea is so novel that I need to keep it a secret. However, I believe that if there is an established app that does the same thing, and your app cannot beat it on quality, it will be hard to attract users.

Palomides 21d ago

AI has really revealed the programmers who were temporarily inconvenienced idea guys

user43928 21d ago
Not the case here. When I was young I dabbled in reverse engineering and hacking games for example. I don't think I am less of a 'hacker' or programmer than the next person on HN.
- danielbln 21d ago
  Same here. Loved hacking on things from all angles, still do. The only thing lost to me now is the yak shaving, and good riddance. I want to think in systems, solutions, integration, and first and foremost the higher level problem, not nitty gritty implementation details. Ever since Fable and Sol level LLMs/agents came online, I have ceased to look at the code. I recently launched a project for a client that integrated many many systems, has considerable traffic with low latency requirements and everything just.. works. I've never had to do this little firefighting when launching a project of that complexity and scale. It's been liberating and I was able to focus mostly on polish and QoL improvements of the stack and systems. What a time to be alive for a technical builder.
acedTrex 21d ago
This is BY FAR the worst part of LLMs to me. The idea guys were always incredibly annoying but very ignorable. Now they are constantly in your face but providing the exact same 0 value as always.
RedCinnabar 21d ago
I mean, wasn’t that the case for most of them? Im not a developer anymore, but to me programming was always a means to an end. Sure you can have preferences (static vs dynamic typing, functional vs OOP, etc.), but in the end they should only be relevant if they make you more productive, makes the codebase more readable and so on. Since these nuances are progressively getting less and less important, why would you care about the process?

mycocola 21d ago

My impression with how the wind is blowing is that someone is going to come along, if your app has merit, and duplicate it with Astra/Fable. Then they'd back it with significant ad spend, outcompeting yours.

bradly 21d ago

> I've been working on the project for four months now. I invested hundreds of hours, and I expect to publish my paid app in the AppStore this month. I wish you the best, but you have invested a considerable about of time and I'm guessing token budget for something with no revenue and no customers. That in itself is totally fine, but I'm not sure it gives you the authority to calling people clueless for having a different opinion on the maintainability of 200k unreviewed, llm generated code with no users.

adrianwaj 21d ago
I would be chasing altcoin revenue - those worthless things nobody wants. Hold those but encourage their spending too, with an app, is the road to riches in a world where one's IP can be immediately negated by a disgruntled robotic employee jumping ship. Actually, I don't know if the premise works in the real world, but can't see why "crypto-enabled" isn't adopted at every turn. Altcoins - the snowball lying in wake. Bitcoins were crap too at one point but they have stood the test of time and obscurity. It's about going from HODL'ing to spending for dear life. Something like that anyway. Maybe 3+ years to go before any serious price movement because of dumping pressure being so high from pre-miners and the like. No idea.

vabadus 21d ago

Same experience here. I have published 3 apps this year that have just been ideas I've been kicking around for far too long - I never had the time outside of my day job to work on them. Most modern models write code better than I could, maintain it better, and free me up to focus on creativity and trying to add value.

groundzeros2015 21d ago

I find that it falls apart after the first 1000 or so lines.

djha-skin 21d ago
I used to think this but then improved and found that it was a matter of tooling. Using beads[1] and getting the AI to write its own tickets and wiki articles using GitHub's wiki feature on repos, it can keep track of long horizon projects pretty easily. Then you curate some of the tickets or read through them and have them update the beads or adjust them as they work them. When they want to retain some important piece of knowledge you have them add it to the GitHub repo wiki. Modern AI programming looks an awful lot like traditional product owner or product management roles. 1: https://beads.gascity.com/ https://beads.gascity.com/
- groundzeros2015 21d ago
  I’m not into the personal wiki thing, let alone an AI wiki. This feels like productivity porn.
someguynamedq 21d ago
Then you're really really bad at using it. At the very least it is functional with minimal effort on codebases with 10s of thounsand
- groundzeros2015 21d ago
  Or what happens is that after 1000 lines there are hundreds of decisions it would have to consider to do anything and it doesn’t do that and instead finds the smallest path to insert its latest request.

albertodenia 20d ago

I'm also having the time of my life building products I want to exist. It's like suddenly having the budget to hire a small team and materialize ideas that before would have required many months or years of your time (or taking investment). And yet, I'd be lying if I said I don't miss the flow.

cx42net 19d ago

The way I see it, they are two types of ("technical") peoples: The ones that loves the technicity, the challenge of building something, putting complex things together, the puzzle part of creating something. The ones that wants to have stuff build to use them, were coding was just a mean to an end. (DHH mentioned in his podcast with Lex Fridman, that he is more in this category) For the later, AI is the perfect tool that could come around, removing that barrier that was stopping them to achieve their needs (which you appear to be part of, I'm saying this without no jugement) The writer of the blog post is in the former category.