I think it's the opposite. When I'm on the edges of Real Difficult Stuff (TM), then LLMs are less of help compared to when I just need basic web applications or similar "beginner stuff". If what you're working on doesn't exists in the training data at all, the LLMs can sometimes be more in the way than helpful, as they don't seem to even "grasp" the problems correctly.

I still get tons of productivity boosts from LLMs, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't stop working with them even though they aren't perfect for everything, they do with a lot of monotonous tasks, like all the stuff you outlined. But the moments I'm working without LLMs, that's the time I'm working very much on "not beginner stuff".

I very actively work using LLMs (no “agentic” stuff) and agree with you - they are only really worth tasking out tedium to.

But a lot of - say a DM feature - is tedium. Something simple like adding reactions, adding read receipts. It’s not hard at all. The LLM easily excels at the task and yet I didn’t have to do it. There are 1000s of those tasks. Handling file uploads, filling out a W9 and emailing it to the user, cron jobs for digest emails. All very easy problems most LLMs can do. There are just countless tasks if you’re building a real SaaS and I don’t want to do them all.

The big problems LLMs can’t do are only as such because there’s no way to put it into a simple, linear instruction. Once you can though, it’s now an easy task (whether or not you use an LLM).

But yeah we’re saying the same thing - let the LLM do the 1000s of tedious tasks you normally wouldn’t be bothered to spend time on.

Build the entire SaaS (which is mostly that tedium) instead of just the MVP thing you need without any niceties. I find it opens up more opportunity, like for example, we are about to hire our first full-time employee because we’re taking on so much more business.

Yep.

Plenty of products attacked this tedium from different angles, from Ruby and Rails to Supabase. And half of NPM. Heck, more than half.

LLMs are doing it a bit better, IMO. I don't have to rewrite the app in <whatever> or install <horrible dependency> to take advantage of it.

The agents are building all these small features, up to a full SaaS; and all the code is excellent?

How much time do you spend in code review?

Ignore agentic stuff, that is marketing. Think about it anyway - why tf would it take all day, responses take seconds. There is no "leave it running" it's a fake concept

because to me this:

"Something simple like adding reactions, adding read receipts ... The LLM easily excels at the task and yet I didn’t have to do it."

Implies to me code gen.

That aside, are you a 'DidntUseIt' sockpuppet, given there are lots of green accounts responding on their behalf..

I still design the APIs, the system, the tests. But the specific implementation of functions, I am freed from. There is a large speed gain there.

I'm sure these will be much better as soon as enough data is in the training set, as always. GPT models used to be horrible at electrical stuff as well, today Astra seems pretty OK at it. It changes as they keep extending what use cases are covered by training data and what they test for and so on.

"Make me this thing there are a million examples of" vs. "make me this unique thing in this exact, particular way".

I don't think there's anything an LLM can't write given enough direction. (It's a one-sentence fuck-it one-off on one end of the spectrum, and it degenerately ends with you giving it exact code and prompting it to echo it back to you on the other.)

But the jobs of making basic apps and web pages are the new WordPress jobs in terms of pay, I'd agree.

HN should give you coldtea's rep. Just trade his and yours.

Interesting because by then codebases might have become so complex that these can no longer be modified, maintained nor understood by humans, so replacing AI with HI (human intelligence) will simply no longer possible.

That then represents a certain vendor lock-in or Mafia stand off: either keeping paying or have all the code go up in smoke.

Certainly not everyone will be facing this dilemma, but it certainly isn’t sci-fi considering the track-record of big tech.

Or perhaps AGI is reached and suddenly AI solves this all by itself.

Maybe you get a dopamine hit from comments like that.

It's also confusing that the term AI has become synonymous with LLMs as it covers other things like text prediction/correction.

So AI can be a tool or a service depending on how you are using it and what you are using it for.

@dang @tomhow If you want to practice fairness for once in your lives

I love the argument that “AI code doesn’t feel like mine :(“ but you’ll use some shit library from 12 years ago??

Are any of you actually developers? Ffs

The danger of vibe coded SaaS:es isn't the customer building the thing themselves, but that the increased competition drives down the profit margin.

Reasonable thing was to pay $39 and forget about it.

Aside - is AI still DIY? We need a new DAIY category for AI empowered works?

I just think devs are coping by thinking that saas startups have any barrier to entry at all. You are now competing with every single person on the planet who wants to make money sitting at home on a computer, and likely the business guy with zero skill or craftsmanship is going to beat you. The only thing with barrier to entry is insanely complex software (e.g., what used to take a genius team of 10 multiple years to make) and or more creative software like video games (where you need extreme care and taste to get something anyone will look at for > 2 hours).

Average saas products require no skill or craftsmanship and literally anyone including our grandmas can make it (assuming they will take a few months at least to chat with an LLM). To be clear I think this is great! More better software, people with smaller needs can have llms build it for them totally bespoke. For those of us with skills we have to move WAY out of our old comfort zone and make way cooler things, a standard saas that takes a few months isn't something we should waste our time on anymore.

No, it's not at all DIY. I cringe any time I see someone say "I made X" and it's vibe coded, because they haven't actually made anything.

Each of those customers, who also have access to LLMs and can therefore bypass his LLM built service by making their own LLM built service. Cameras in phones didn't turn everyone into a professional photographer, it gave everyone the ability to take pics, as badly composited as they are, they fulfill their purpose. On the few life occasions where a professional is needed, you don't go for a smartphone-based photographer, you go for an old school professional photographer. I think software will be the same. These 50 year olds won't be selling to anyone. And if they are, it won't be for long.

Maybe there are cases where those constraints don't degrade utility to the point where your product is now worse than the best open source alternative, but they're few and far between.

And I think the people it doesn't appeal to, I think we need perspectives like theirs.

I find people that are the "unconscious incompetence" stage of software development absolutely love them because they produce output that looks fine to them and they can't find anything wrong with it because they simply lack the ability to perceive quality. For a contact widget that might be acceptable as it will be used a few dozen times so who cares if it breaks, but let's not pretend you can actually build a compliant e-signing or invoicing software without having domain expertise and investing a ton of editing/revision time.

Put more bluntly, a domain expert that, as of currently, refuses to use LLMs can easily start using LLMs in their work, an idiot who uses LLMs cannot easily become a domain expert. Now let's think about who you would rather hire or who do you think will have the better future career outlook. Pretty damning how many people here are willing to reject the idea that domain expertise or ability to write program code yourself is a waste of resources.

Am I allowed to use Mistral 7b locally to build W9 automation or do I still need your permission?

Lol this site!!!!

As a non expert in a domain, LLMs can seem amazing because you don’t know the field therefore have a harder time spotting errors. As an expert they seem pretty dumb or they’re useful as long as you guide them. It’s akin to Cory Doctorow’s argument about the reverse centaur.

Just what the world needed. 100s new SaaS churned by AI.

You might not care about making anything or getting customers but this is HackerNews so get used to people like me

You joined 2 days ago..

Has someone gone and made 3 accounts to make it seem like their take is more popular?

I'm frankly tired of SaaS.

> LLMs

It’s probably worth doing a very thorough audit of how you’re handling user-uploaded files, it’s full of non-obvious footguns.

So why would I take your advice on this topic?

I bet there are 1000 other things you don’t know about file uploads.

The LLM does know, and if I think it looks weird I can research it manually.

It’s called: Being of normal functioning intelligence

And caring about the product and the work (and the money!)

Also, this is a forum where you’re somewhat likely to run into people who worked on Word at Microsoft. That seems like enough of an answer to your question.

Worst people here

But: there's a complex business related project I care deeply about. Due to corporate red tape and office politics I couldn't fix it the way I wanted to when I actually worked there, but after I left, I built the solution I had in mind (mostly out of frustration at first, but it's starting to look like a viable product). And thanks to LLMs, I can tackle it on a much larger scale, build it faster, control it better (to my surprise), and I can also plan the really business aspects around it, including how to sell something like this, which is absolutely a first for me.

So I feel like thanks to Claude, I can actually solve problems more effectively, on a larger scale, and I feel like I'm now working on a higher level than ever before.

Compare it to the step from thinking about memory allocation and loop indices to thinking about algorithmic complexity, performance and memory footprint. From thinking about a single feature request to thinking about how the program can solve a complex business problem. Perhaps I'm more architect than programmer now, but I'm still deeply involved with the code, even if Claude now writes most of it. I'm still having fun. Although that might also partially be because I'm free from that restrictive corporate environment and can actually do what I want. (For now; eventually I do have to figure out how to make money from this.)