Comment by cornholio

Comment by cornholio 12 hours ago

6 replies

> Each of these could cost you $20-50/month in SaaS subscriptions.

Sounds to me that's a bargain, for half an hour in wages I get a battle tested solution built by real humans with real human feedback in the real world, instead of some unmaintainable oneshot AI approximation with zero support. I would easily waste more than that trying to wrestle some prompt into doing what I need, and even when it finally does it's still spaghetti code that will eventually fall behind surrounding reality and lock my precious data into a custom abomination.

Clearly the value proposition here is not replacing SaaS solutions but creating very customized solutions that simply don't exist as a product - just like spreadsheets in the previous era. A spreadsheet does not pretend it is a programming language, it just solves the data processing problem the user has in a visual and intuitive way.

This is to me the most glaring issue with vibe tools, they do seemingly advanced stuff but their users don't really understand the result they get, they are just firing their harpoon and get dragged wherever the whale will take them.

north_creao 11 hours ago

Thanks for your value prop advice, that really provides us some deep insights.

> Clearly the value proposition here is not replacing SaaS solutions but creating very customized solutions that simply don't exist as a product

This is true, I was thinking we should also target on SMB professionls who don't have IT department to customize a product solution for them. But they face the barrier that they generally don't have PM knowledge to craft what to build, do you have any thoughts on that?

johnecheck 12 hours ago

A spreadsheet is a programming language and I will die on this hill.

  • cornholio 12 hours ago

    That's the point, spreadsheets get users to solve issues algorithmically without forcing them to learn programming, but allowing them to understand and control the solution.

    Full stack vibe tools solve some 1st order approximation of the problem, but then leave the user clueless to how adapt and evolve the solution without learning programing - and in fact are harder to maintain and debug even for those who do know programming. Re-applying the same tool is widely understood as a guaranteed disaster in the long run, current vibe tools can't really maintain their own creations.

nikolayasdf123 12 hours ago

> Each of these could cost you $20-50/month in SaaS subscriptions.

or maybe don't. all founders I know are cutting on every single dollar. zero-subcriptions is a trend now.

enneantic 4 hours ago

> I get a battle tested solution

I'm sorry but what do you mean by that? Isn't "battle tested" the opposite of a new product?