I am absolutely seeing an explosion in apps. The reason you might not see them is because the app explosion is entirely custom and in house.

I talked with a friend last week, who has never coded before in his life, who built an absolutely incredible fit-for-purpose app for his own job. He gave me a demo and it blew my mind. It will never go beyond his walls, and he will never buy SaaS that only kinda fits what he needs.

I see things like this happening. The proliferation isn't public because why sell it? Just build the thing to make your domain job easier and save thousands per month cancelling SaaS subs.

The ROI of AI is starting to show, but it isn't in terms of growth or selling new things - it's reducing spend across the board on software and tools.

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thegrim33 a day ago | parent | next [-]

From their profile, this person makes a living selling AI programming products, by the way. Who could have guessed. There's a pattern to be noticed, even.

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runako a day ago | parent | next [-]

Whether that person is talking their book or not, there absolutely has been an app explosion. Github & the app stores have all reported as much over the last year.

I also have repeatedly experienced the phenomenon of nontechnical people having built custom software to run their businesses. A lawyer friend was first, sending me a link to his GitHub(!), where he has built a custom client intake/practice-management application to work as the firm works. He's not the only non-technical lawyer I know who has shared vibe coded apps with me.

I personally build many, many single-use apps than I ever would have before. Gnarly debugging sessions can be greatly simplified by inserting a custom piece of disposable tooling/etc. I am not a Mac programmer, but I now have custom Mac apps to solve problems that only I want solved. Do these count?

Honestly, I would be a little surprised if anyone posting on HN did not have some personal exposure to the explosion of apps.

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QuercusMax a day ago | parent | next [-]

On the Home Assistant and Jellyfin reddits you'll see tons of vibecoded dashboards and plugins people are putting together - and those are just the ones people are sharing.

I personally have been building a bunch of little personal apps for my home that aren't worth the effort of sharing - like a customized dashboard of the Trimet buses closest to my house. The cost to build the initial good-enough version was literally 5 minutes plus another 10 to test and deploy.

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eru a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The closest parallel in history I can think of is the proliferation of spreadsheets in the 1980s.

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disgruntledphd2 a day ago | parent [-]

Yeah, this feels like the right comparison. AI, like Excel makes it much easier for people to build useful tools.

And like Excel, software people are gonna end up complaining about the quality and having to maintain these applications.

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Ferret7446 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I assume the new wave of apps are going to be maintained by LLMs. Maybe one day the LLMs are going to complain about the quality of the code written by previous inferior LLMs?

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eru 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes. Though with Excel for most business users the choice was between

- lobby the IT department for at least a quarter, then wait at least one quarter, and at the end you get a buggy implementation of your idea that doesn't quite work

- or: spend a weekend hacking together a quick and ugly, buggy spreadsheet prototype of your idea that doesn't quite work.

	▲	disgruntledphd2 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> - or: spend a weekend hacking together a quick and ugly, buggy spreadsheet prototype of your idea that doesn't quite work. I mean, based on my own experience with AI tools, this feels like the standard output.

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binarymax a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Who’s “this person”…me? I don’t make a living selling AI programming products. I make a living building knowledge systems, mostly around search engines and data wrangling.

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conductr a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m seeing this too. I compare it to spreadsheets in terms of getting broad application building tools to the layperson

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gpderetta 14 hours ago | parent [-]

It is really the second coming of Excel. And it is a good thing (probably?)

	▲	conductr 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Probably net positive. But just like spreadsheets, it’s likely that having tools created by a layperson that does not properly secure or test the system is probably going to occur, cause some unfortunate issues, and steal the headlines. Similar to when an excel formula error results in a flash crash of financial markets and such. It’s huge and sucks but there’s also countless value being added daily all around the world with little fan fare.