| ▲ | chao- an hour ago | |||||||
>I... am bearish on non technical people building software. I can't bring myself to be bullish or bearish in such broad strokes. Over the years, I have met and worked with a number of people who were "non-technical", but who nonetheless built their own internal rough software tools with a cobbled-together combination of spreadsheets and SaaS services, connected by something like Zapier. They are a particular kind of person, but I would not call all of them them "technical". They are experienced in their business domain, are detail-oriented, and are persistent in making improvements by any means they could. I have seen those people be supercharged by AI app builders like Replit and Lovable, even if I don't personally have a need for either. This might be a matter of definitions: Is such a person "technical" because they value systematizing human processes and put effort into it? Or is such a person "non-technical" because they are not experienced in software engineering best practices, or programming in the conventional sense? In addition to the nature of the user, I suspect the fulcrum that success and failure rests on for these kinds of apps and tools is long-term maintenance. How frequent? How involved? How breaking are the changes? On this topic, there is a quote I think about a lot (paraphrased, and I forget who said it, or I would credit them): >AI app builders mean that anyone can experience the joy of building software, but also that they will experience the joy of maintaining software. | ||||||||
| ▲ | edgyquant an hour ago | parent [-] | |||||||
I have seen and worked with a number of “non technical” people ship apps and automations over the last year that are making real money so it’s past the point where you can be bearish. Sure these people are probably just a class in themselves and not “the average person” but they never would have done this if they had to write code by hand | ||||||||
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