Sloppy Copies

CrzyLngPwd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Every time something like this comes up, I find myself saying "It's going to get far worse".

That's the pessimist take.

The upside here is that it's become extremely easy to make these kind of single-purpose hobbyist apps, and it's only going to get easier.

Yes, selling software may be dead. But instead you'll just prompt your own software for whatever niche problem you're personally solving.

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CrzyLngPwd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's an optimistic take.

The downside is that since everyone can do it, without understanding the "it" properly, security issues will be boundless and not understood, being rooted will be commonplace, and what you thought was safe and secure will be widly broadcast.

For most people, though, prompting your own software is beyond the realm, since they have day jobs to attend to, groceries to buy, children to herd, and lawns to mow, and they will be oblivious to the scams, fakes, and charlatans who have vibed up something to look useful but only aimed at getting hold of personal info and credit card details.

The future is scammy, at best.

	▲	Legend2440 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>security issues will be boundless and not understood Again with the optimistic take, but I do not think this will be an intractable problem. LLMs are becoming good at finding security vulnerabilities. This would certainly be a radical change in how the software ecosystem operates. But I think you are ignoring the advantages of more flexible, abundant, customized software.
	▲	pixl97 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Your future sounds like the last 6 to 10 years as it is already. I think you're a bit late.

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altmanaltman an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

sorry you mean the upside is that selling software is dead? I really find it optimistic to think everyone even whats to "prompt" their own software. That seems like a nightmare compared to quality software developed by experts that you can trust instead of inshallah and AI

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Legend2440 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of for-sale software.

If anyone can make an app from a spec, how can you profitably sell an app? A million people will make their own copy tomorrow.

	▲	pan69 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of for-sale software. We're seeing the end of "simple" for-sale software. Like OPs CRUD app, a UI front-end on-top of a database, of which there are a gazillion examples so some AI can easily synthesize some approximation of whatever requested variation. The selling of software was always in the "moat", not how fast you were able to churn out CRUD apps. We used offshore that to a more viable economy, but now we're offshoring that to an automated process. We're not seeing the end of for-sale software, we're seeing the beginning of the end-to-end solo founder.
	▲	lesam an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Except this isn't 'an app from a spec', it's the potemkin village of an app whose goal is to get ad impressions and a credit card number.

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kyletns 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So sad, thanks for sharing.

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alansaber 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a micro version of people hopping on macro trends (and even more monetised!)

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PaulHoule 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Hacker News in 2026 is the probably the worst place in the world for this! Blame those PCs who cosplay as NPCs in every discussion about Claude Code.