alt Hacker News> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app.
I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and everything else.
Can AI do all that? Sure, but you must know to ask for all that in the first place. Look what happened to Clawd/Molt.
> It's because building an app went from a $50K project to a weekend with Claude.
Sure, why don't you deploy your vibe coded app over the weekend and see if it falls apart after handling one request per second
This article was written by AI btw
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> see if it falls apart after handling one request per second
Most of the problems you talk about are problems if you intend your software to be used at scale.
If you're building an app for yourself to track your own food habits; why does DB, framework, best practices matters?
People used to do this in an Excel sheet.
Now they can ask Claude to make them a nice UI similar to MFP or whatever.
Data can be stored in a single JSON file.
It's going to take years before they see actual performance issues.
And even though it becomes an issue, right now an AI Agent can already provide a fix and a script to migrate the data.
My only concern really is about security.
But a private VPS only reachable through Tailscale and they're ahead of 99% of the rest.
I think there's different markets though, it's not just the enterprise market, is it? There's a huge market where security audits are not as important.
Personally, for my small business. I've replaced £500 Zapier subscription, £100 Todoist subscription, and I only haven't replaced the rest because I feel like there's not a huge rush. And it's been six months and nothing has fallen apart yet.
You might not think small business is relevant, but it absolutely is.
Oversimplified, Rocket Internet (Samwer brothers) generated billions cloning apps and services. Many other examples exist. Thinking of costs as "almost nothing" is misleading, but the low cost of cloning services and apps is a business model with a strong track record that seems to have accelerated due to AI. Of course, competition within this business model is also accelerating, making profitability more complex, and ethics is always complex in this space.
> This article was written by AI btw
Unless you had an AI write the article, you can't possibly know that. I'm sick of this being randomly thrown around: it's basically mentioned for every article posted. Sometimes the author chimes in to say that no, they wrote it themselves. Other times sure, the article was written by AI. I don't know, and you don't know either.
I vibecoded an app for my business and didn’t need any engineers and it is currently in use for our customers.
I think this is great for everyone to be a developer, the gatekeeping has now been removed and we will see a creative explosion of apps that everyone can build.
The security and maintenance aspect of apps is just a claude skill away to be a solved problem.
Vibe code to production perhaps not, but vibe code for regular personal use doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility already.
Unless there is inherent complexity in the problem (and assuming subscriptions don’t get pricey soon) I can see nontechnical people getting into designing their own apps.
It makes me think of 3d printing. A lot of people got into 3d modeling because of it. And a lot of people publish cute baubles 3d models (analogous to vibe coded ai wrappers?) but there is genuinely useful stuff that people not in the fabrication or 3d design industry create and share, some even making money off of it.
I just can’t think of a way saas margins will stay as high as they are now.