logoalt Hacker News

adriandyesterday at 12:28 PM7 repliesview on HN

The president of a company I work with is a youngish guy who has no technical skills, but is resourceful. He wanted updated analytic dashboards, but there’s no dev capacity for that right now. So he decided he was going to try his hand at building his own dashboard using Lovable, which is one of these AI app making outfits. I sent him a copy of the dev database and a few markdown files with explanations regarding certain trickier elements of the data structure and told him to give them to the AI, it will know what they mean. No updates yet, but I have every confidence he’ll figure it out.

Think about all the cycles this will save. The CEO codes his own dashboards. The OP has a point.


Replies

William_BByesterday at 1:44 PM

I'd argue it's not CEOs job to code his own dashboards...

This sounds like a vibe coding side project. And I'm sorry, but whatever he builds will most likely become tech debt that has to be rewritten at some point.

show 1 reply
threetonesunyesterday at 5:13 PM

We perpetually find worse and more expensive ways to reinvent Microsoft Access.

show 1 reply
hrimfaxiyesterday at 1:42 PM

At a certain scale the CEO's time is likely better spent dictating the dashboard they want rather than implementing it themselves. But I guess to your point, the future may allow for the dictation to be the creation.

show 1 reply
htrpyesterday at 5:54 PM

All tech problems are actually people problems.

once the Csuite builds their own dashboards, they quickly decide what they actually need versus what is a nice to have.

show 1 reply
vlugovskyyesterday at 2:14 PM

Totally!

I have also seen multiple similar use cases where non-technical users build internal tools and dashboards on top of existing data for our users (I'm building UI Bakery). This approach might feel a bit risky for some developers, but it reduces the number of iterations non-technical users need with developers to achieve what they want.

ceejayozyesterday at 6:24 PM

> No updates yet, but I have every confidence he’ll figure it out.

"It" being "that it's harder than it looks"?

show 1 reply
jimbokunyesterday at 10:31 PM

Update us when you have an actual success story.