I haven’t looked at OpenClaw but I get the impression anyone could build it. It doesn’t do anything technically impressive, does it?

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joe_mamba 5 hours ago | parent [-]

>anyone could build it

Then why hasn't anyone else done it before?

With hindsight, it's always easy to say anyone could have done it too, but there's more to product success than just coding and shipping an app out the door.

The first iPhone was built using COTS(commercial off the shelf) parts that Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola also had access to, and SW tools they also had access to, yet Apple won and buried the other companies because their end-product was way more popular with the customer base. I'm sure engineers from Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola also said "we could have done exactly the same thing with the right leadership" when they saw that.

I also say "I could have done that" when I see how the maker of Flappy Bird became a multi millionaire, or how any other top 100 AppStore slop app has 100+ million downloads.

Coding skills are dime a dozen these days. A lot of people can do 95% of these things now. The differentiator between failure and success, comes with the 5% rest: network effects, market know-how, promotion, timing, outreach, UI, UX, luck, etc.

	▲	LPisGood 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I agree it was a good idea and there’s more to product success, but you were specifically talking about coding skill level. There are some things I could easily say I (and many others) could not build even in retrospect. Solidworks, for example is beyond a lot of people’s skill level and very difficult to build. Flappy bird and open claw, not so much.
	▲	gavmor 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Many people have! Nanoclaw, LocalGPT, Moltis, Thoth, Q-Claw... the list goes on.
	▲	Dylan16807 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Well your previous comment sure made it sound like you were talking about level of coding skill.