> This! Groups with strong software skills (like HN) miss how LLMs unblock people who previously were unable to build what they wanted because they lacked the software skills.

That isn't me. I have the software skills. The problem is not lack of ability building complex stuff from scratch, I do it over and over again, and I have had my own products in the past.

The problem is that LLMs do not actually improve the psychology of sustainable lone freelancing, which is more burdened with the problem of actually owning the entire problem and its consequences than someone vibe-coding their fun ideas in the lunchtime safety of their salaried job or even a single developer within a corporate team setting (because they can quit and walk away when they hate it). If you're still getting paid as you fix it when it breaks after deployment, you're in a different world; it doesn't matter to me how empowering LLMs are in that context!

When you are up against people who are bluffing/bodging, or small agencies who think coding is just a little step up from web design, or over-extended hobby coders working in the evenings, LLMs have a very different set of impacts on your life. I can't just run an experiment with some LLM code and roll it out, because I have to face the customer directly and because nobody is going to pay me to fix it; I am not on a salary that allows that kind of experimentation.

So I am left trying to work out how to use LLMs to catch up with the above people who are, without losing control.