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schnebbau • today at 10:46 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

I climbed out of the code trenches years ago - I have multiple small companies, I'll be fine.

And yes, they both have moats that will take AI at least 5 years to erode, at which point I'll just retire.

Regarding the dog shit code comment: this is the problem with your whole line of thinking. Customers don't care if the code is dog shit. They care if they get value from the product.

As I mentioned, there will still be some demand for devs who code by hand, similar to how theres still demand for blacksmiths who make ornamental weapons.


Replies

applfanboysbgon • today at 10:52 AM

Dogshit code doesn't give customers value from the product. You can get away with enshittifying your code/product if you already have an iron grip on the market and network effects make it impossible to escape, eg. Windows/appleOS/Android, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. At that point, you're relying on the inertia of community lock-in to replace product quality. However, this strategy does not work if you aren't a FAANG-scale monopolist. If your code and product is dogshit, you will never get off the ground. You need not only a better product but an overwhelmingly superior product to the competition to defeat inertia. And we see this playing out in reality: there are no vibecoded software disrupting the market. At most vibecoded software is carving out a new MLM-style pyramid of vibecoding tools, but it is not replacing hand-crafted software.

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