Sure, they could have come up with those optimizations without AI... but they didn't. What's your theory for why that is?
If you're the size of Shopify that represents a huge saving in server costs and improved customer-facing latency.
This percentage is meaningless on its own. It’s 4 ms shaved off a 7 ms process. You would need to time a whole flow (and I believe databases would add a lot to it, especially with network latency) and figure out how significant the performance improvement is actually. And that without considering if the code changes is not conflicting with some architectural change that is being planned.
In fact it being easier to get them out there I might care less that they should be marketable and have a chance to make serious money, as opposed to when I was sinking hundreds of hours into them and second guessing what direction I should take the games to make them better all the time.
The art wasn't the problem (the art wasn't great, but I could make functional art at least), it was finding the time and energy and focus to see them through to completion (focus has always been a problem for me, but it's been even worse now that I'm an adult with other responsibilities).
And that hasn't always been the issue, I did release about a dozen games back in the day (although I haven't in quite a few years at this point).
Of course someone may say 'well that's slop then', and yeah, maybe by your standards, sure. These games aren't and never were going to be the next Slay The Spire or Balatro. But people can and do enjoy playing them, and not every game needs to be the next big hit to be worth putting out into the world, just like not every book needs to be the next 1984 or Great Gatsby.
Money, opportunity, status. It is all status games. Think of it as a nuclear war on old order and new players trying to take the niche. Or maybe commies killing whites and taking over Russia?
For me specifically it means two products, one that is something I have been working on for a long time, well before the Claude Code era, and another that is more of a passion project in the music space. Both have been vastly accelerated by these tools. The reason I say “racing” is because I suspect there are competitors in both spaces who are also making great progress because of these tools, so I feel this intense pressure to get to launch day, especially for the first project.
And yes it is very frenetic, and it’s certainly taking a toll on me. I’m self-employed, with a family to support, and I’m deeply worried about where this is all going, which is also fuelling this intense drive.
A few years ago I felt secure in my expertise and confident of my economic future. Not any more. In all honesty, I would happily trade the fear and excitement I feel now for the confidence and contentment I felt then. I certainly slept better. But that’s not the world we live in. I don’t know if my attempts to create a more secure future will work, but at least I will be able to say I tried as hard as I was able.
Then with AWS our infra was moving to proprietary platforms. Now our dev tools are moving to expensive proprietary platforms.
Combined with widespread enshittification, we've handed nearly everything to the tech bros now.
What opportunities? Anything you spend effort over, like PMF and discovery, etc... I can now clone with a few bucks of Claude Code and charge less than you for the same product, at the same quality level :-/
Where is the opportunity here? Technology and knowledge used to be the moat a startup or bootstrapped individual could use to produce a sustainable business.
Why exactly are you excited about producing something that can be cloned for less cost than it took you? Especially as the quality will be almost exactly the same?
If I say "doing $FOO is a losing proposition", and I believe what I say, why on earth would I then move on to actually doing $FOO?
I am pointing out that there is nothing to be gained by joining this recursive race - anything you produce using LLMs I can clone using LLMs, but anything I produce using LLMs can be cloned by someone else, using LLMs.
Why would you assume that I want to insert myself into this recursively descending race to the bottom?
Because they don't yet know that it is a losing proposition?
> and if nobody does it, isn't your original assertion false?
False dichotomy, it isn't an all-or-nothing scenario like you present, it's the fact that there are enough cloners to make every race a race to the bottom in a matter of days.
> Any argument relying on everyone cloning things with LLMs doesn't work if everyone doesn't clone things with LLMs.
Only if you believe your false dichotomy.
The two emotions I personally feel are fear and excitement. Fear that the machines will soon replace me. Excitement about the things I can build now and the opportunities I’m racing towards. I can’t say it’s the most enjoyable experience. The combo is hellish on sleep. But the excitement balances things out a bit.
Maybe I’d feel a sense of sadness if I didn’t feel such urgency to try and ride this tsunami instead of being totally swept away by it.