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.
>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.
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
> 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.
I posted more or less the same thing in a comment over on lobste.rs[1] - being able to create your own bespoke software tools, without any developer experience is (mostly) a really cool thing.
This isn't someone being inspired to build something: It's the automated "drive-by" cloning and scammy, dubious nature of these clones that bothers me along with the copying of personas & identities to spam them across social media.
we're already there. When apple announced the iphone, the price of software went from can-make-a-profit-$39.99 on a PC to $4.99 and then $0.99 for a phone app. Which became "that's too expensive" at some point, and then reset to free.
I don’t have data on this. But I’m getting recommended YouTube videos that are 1-2 hr AI generated music, in the genre of background music (coffee listening and focus).
I listened to one. It was pretty good!! There’s no lyrical content, but the production was strong.
In that niche of “music you don’t really pay attention to” I predict AI generated music will only grow.
I love the original article [0]; it seems like Mark had fun building this app. It doesn't seem like he expected it to make him a billionaire. So what's the problem? If you post a recipe on a cooking blog, and someone immediately rips it for their own site, that's a bummer, but like… what are you going to do, patent it?
We software developers are so used to software being difficult, time-consuming and expensive, but that world is gone. We're now much closer to other creative arts like writing, music or photography (and sadly, we're about to be paid like artists too). In a creative field, when someone has a good idea or style, it gets copied. But that's just art.
I do really enjoy working on the site, it's great to have an outlet and playground for ideas and do things just for fun. There never was (and never will be) any commercial angle for this, as I said in a footnote in the "Sloppy Copies" post, I have other motives for writing code and I appreciate I am very fortunate that I have the opportunity to be able to do that.
There's always been a tendency amongst the "priesthood" of any in-group to hoard knowledge and use it to maintain their position. So, regarding the "democratizing" of creating software - I mostly agree with you, and also agree that it's probably a good thing. I think it's pretty neat that someone without any coding experience can create their own bespoke tooling to solve a problem. I have caveats and concerns, but that's a topic for another day.
I also agree with the "that's art" part of your comment. I learned to program by reading other people's code, learned to build infrastructure by watching what my peers were doing, and learned to play an instrument by listening to and copying musicians I admired. Heck, I play in a covers band!
The problem is that this isn't just someone being inspired to create their own thing and put their own spin on it, which could be cool.
Even "nice idea, I'm going to do that and see if I can charge for it" isn't really an issue, free market and all that. This is cloning and copying on an automated, industrial scale, apparently sometimes for malicious, criminal purposes too.
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.
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.
>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.
Your future sounds like the last 6 to 10 years as it is already. I think you're a bit late.
The difference between the past and the future is the scale and ease with which anyone can do it.
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
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.
> 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.
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.
This is the issue.
I posted more or less the same thing in a comment over on lobste.rs[1] - being able to create your own bespoke software tools, without any developer experience is (mostly) a really cool thing.
This isn't someone being inspired to build something: It's the automated "drive-by" cloning and scammy, dubious nature of these clones that bothers me along with the copying of personas & identities to spam them across social media.
[1]=https://lobste.rs/s/qtytfe/sloppy_copies
we're already there. When apple announced the iphone, the price of software went from can-make-a-profit-$39.99 on a PC to $4.99 and then $0.99 for a phone app. Which became "that's too expensive" at some point, and then reset to free.
It has been possible to create full songs in Suno for years now. As far as I can tell, it hasn't affected the music industry.
You've been able to generate full books using ChatGPT for even longer. Somehow, authors continue selling books.
It's almost as if people recognize and will pay for quality creative output from human beings.
I don’t have data on this. But I’m getting recommended YouTube videos that are 1-2 hr AI generated music, in the genre of background music (coffee listening and focus).
I listened to one. It was pretty good!! There’s no lyrical content, but the production was strong.
In that niche of “music you don’t really pay attention to” I predict AI generated music will only grow.
So sad, thanks for sharing.
I love the original article [0]; it seems like Mark had fun building this app. It doesn't seem like he expected it to make him a billionaire. So what's the problem? If you post a recipe on a cooking blog, and someone immediately rips it for their own site, that's a bummer, but like… what are you going to do, patent it?
We software developers are so used to software being difficult, time-consuming and expensive, but that world is gone. We're now much closer to other creative arts like writing, music or photography (and sadly, we're about to be paid like artists too). In a creative field, when someone has a good idea or style, it gets copied. But that's just art.
[0]: https://www.markround.com/blog/2026/03/05/returning-to-rails...
I do really enjoy working on the site, it's great to have an outlet and playground for ideas and do things just for fun. There never was (and never will be) any commercial angle for this, as I said in a footnote in the "Sloppy Copies" post, I have other motives for writing code and I appreciate I am very fortunate that I have the opportunity to be able to do that.
There's always been a tendency amongst the "priesthood" of any in-group to hoard knowledge and use it to maintain their position. So, regarding the "democratizing" of creating software - I mostly agree with you, and also agree that it's probably a good thing. I think it's pretty neat that someone without any coding experience can create their own bespoke tooling to solve a problem. I have caveats and concerns, but that's a topic for another day.
I also agree with the "that's art" part of your comment. I learned to program by reading other people's code, learned to build infrastructure by watching what my peers were doing, and learned to play an instrument by listening to and copying musicians I admired. Heck, I play in a covers band!
The problem is that this isn't just someone being inspired to create their own thing and put their own spin on it, which could be cool.
Even "nice idea, I'm going to do that and see if I can charge for it" isn't really an issue, free market and all that. This is cloning and copying on an automated, industrial scale, apparently sometimes for malicious, criminal purposes too.
That's a far cry from creative copying of ideas.
This is a micro version of people hopping on macro trends (and even more monetised!)
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.