There's more to big moated software than just code.
It's full of the results of millions of meetings, decisions, and feedback from users over the course of many years. A.I. can't just one shot all of that in an afternoon.
I'm working on software that's highly driven by A.I. development right now, and while we're going faster than we would if we were developing it by hand, there's still tons of discussion happening between us and the client, disagreements, decisions to be made about UI and layouts and architecture and other things going on, gaps that don't necessarily be caught by A.I. in the moment, etc. It's still taking 6+ months to put together just Phase 1 for a new corporate web application, with a team of 15+ people.
And we also have to be somewhat careful how many AI tokens we are using because it's not cheap (but we're still using a lot).
I think we are just at the beginning. I see it at work and during my side hustles. Time will come and great software ideas are envolving. But also the truth is: A lot of these software is written for personal problems. So, I think, there is a difference between AI solves my special software problem vs. standard software like Office.
1. AI produces a lot of code but very few releases. There have been a lot of articles about how AI has increased code output, but the number of releases on Github for example hasn't increased with the higher coding output. That is because the human review process and shipping is still a bottleneck, and more code doesn't always necessarily mean better software.
2. Which brings me to the next point: AI might have made (arguably) the coding skill more available, but design skills are harder to teach, harder to emulate, and impossible for the AI. Even with all the best AI out there, if you're a poor designer, you won't make a good system. Bad systems don't get hyped up, and as such you won't hear about them.
3. Finally, marketing. Microsoft is a big as it is because it spends billions every year on marketing. Smaller teams guiding AI to make software on the cheap will never be able to compete. You won't hear about them because your company's team in charge of purchasing software is flooded with Microsoft adverts. If not Microsoft, then it'll be the next largest competitor. And so on and so forth. We're not seeing alternatives popping up largely because the people involved in purchasing software are usually not too concerned with finding out the best, they'll take the path of least resistance and buy whatever is cheaper and easier to find. Also there's a question of support, Microsoft Office may be horrible, but if you have a problem with it, you can look at official microsoft documentation or call Microsoft yourself for help. Smaller teams likely won't have the customer support teams to enable large enterprises to use the software effectively.
Microsoft Office and Adobe products had FOSS alternatives before AI ever existed. Between Libreoffice and Google Docs, I haven't touched MS365 products in almost a decade now.
The problem is usually a licensing/compliance/support one. Everyone hates Photoshop and Lightroom, but it's what all of the professional plugins support. Nobody likes paying for Microsoft Word, but it supports Active Directory and the weird document signing formats that some businesses use. There may never be a FOSS replacement for these workflows, regardless of AI coding.
Search Github for anything with a code assistant as a contributor?
> If coding is a nearly solved problem, if AI is making it so easy to make anything, why aren't we seeing the market flood with cheap alternatives to software that we all use daily and hate?
Because that is a business problem, not an LLM and software problem. Perhaps coding isn't the solution for those problems, but companies that can potentially become profitable enough to be competitors to more expensive alternatives. Is a company an alternative to Terraform and Vault? Or OpenTofu and OpenBao, for example. Microsoft Teams won because Microsoft bundles it for free, even though it's garbage. You use it because that's what a CFO or CIO picked.
Code doesn't build systems (for profits and non profits) to continually operate and improve software; people do. Everyone else has mentioned how non-AI alternatives exist. You should ask "Why aren't they used?" and "What would it take for cheaper and/or better alternatives to be used?" LLMs might, but might not be, a tool to change the outcome.
Where have you looked? ShowHN is filled with projects, some really great ones are sadly marked dead instantly. Just because there's not marketing budget to shove every office clone down your throat with advertisements everywhere you look, doesn't mean they're not being built! It means you don't understand advertising/marketing spend, and how that shapes the world that's presented to you.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If someone makes a program for themselves, but doesn't publish it to GitHub and doesn't spend $10,000 on Google and Facebook ads to shove it in your face that it exists so you hear about it, does it even exist? If you're looking for something, go find it! Or are you incapable of doing your own research?
There's more to big moated software than just code.
It's full of the results of millions of meetings, decisions, and feedback from users over the course of many years. A.I. can't just one shot all of that in an afternoon.
I'm working on software that's highly driven by A.I. development right now, and while we're going faster than we would if we were developing it by hand, there's still tons of discussion happening between us and the client, disagreements, decisions to be made about UI and layouts and architecture and other things going on, gaps that don't necessarily be caught by A.I. in the moment, etc. It's still taking 6+ months to put together just Phase 1 for a new corporate web application, with a team of 15+ people.
And we also have to be somewhat careful how many AI tokens we are using because it's not cheap (but we're still using a lot).
I think we are just at the beginning. I see it at work and during my side hustles. Time will come and great software ideas are envolving. But also the truth is: A lot of these software is written for personal problems. So, I think, there is a difference between AI solves my special software problem vs. standard software like Office.
I can think of a few answers for this.
1. AI produces a lot of code but very few releases. There have been a lot of articles about how AI has increased code output, but the number of releases on Github for example hasn't increased with the higher coding output. That is because the human review process and shipping is still a bottleneck, and more code doesn't always necessarily mean better software.
2. Which brings me to the next point: AI might have made (arguably) the coding skill more available, but design skills are harder to teach, harder to emulate, and impossible for the AI. Even with all the best AI out there, if you're a poor designer, you won't make a good system. Bad systems don't get hyped up, and as such you won't hear about them.
3. Finally, marketing. Microsoft is a big as it is because it spends billions every year on marketing. Smaller teams guiding AI to make software on the cheap will never be able to compete. You won't hear about them because your company's team in charge of purchasing software is flooded with Microsoft adverts. If not Microsoft, then it'll be the next largest competitor. And so on and so forth. We're not seeing alternatives popping up largely because the people involved in purchasing software are usually not too concerned with finding out the best, they'll take the path of least resistance and buy whatever is cheaper and easier to find. Also there's a question of support, Microsoft Office may be horrible, but if you have a problem with it, you can look at official microsoft documentation or call Microsoft yourself for help. Smaller teams likely won't have the customer support teams to enable large enterprises to use the software effectively.
This stuff is popping up everywhere.
It takes years for new software brands to be common names. This just started.
There are countless competitors to Photoshop. It's not a lack of software. It's not a lack of "cheap competitors."
Microsoft Office and Adobe products had FOSS alternatives before AI ever existed. Between Libreoffice and Google Docs, I haven't touched MS365 products in almost a decade now.
The problem is usually a licensing/compliance/support one. Everyone hates Photoshop and Lightroom, but it's what all of the professional plugins support. Nobody likes paying for Microsoft Word, but it supports Active Directory and the weird document signing formats that some businesses use. There may never be a FOSS replacement for these workflows, regardless of AI coding.
Search Github for anything with a code assistant as a contributor?
> If coding is a nearly solved problem, if AI is making it so easy to make anything, why aren't we seeing the market flood with cheap alternatives to software that we all use daily and hate?
Because that is a business problem, not an LLM and software problem. Perhaps coding isn't the solution for those problems, but companies that can potentially become profitable enough to be competitors to more expensive alternatives. Is a company an alternative to Terraform and Vault? Or OpenTofu and OpenBao, for example. Microsoft Teams won because Microsoft bundles it for free, even though it's garbage. You use it because that's what a CFO or CIO picked.
Code doesn't build systems (for profits and non profits) to continually operate and improve software; people do. Everyone else has mentioned how non-AI alternatives exist. You should ask "Why aren't they used?" and "What would it take for cheaper and/or better alternatives to be used?" LLMs might, but might not be, a tool to change the outcome.
https://xkcd.com/2347/
Where have you looked? ShowHN is filled with projects, some really great ones are sadly marked dead instantly. Just because there's not marketing budget to shove every office clone down your throat with advertisements everywhere you look, doesn't mean they're not being built! It means you don't understand advertising/marketing spend, and how that shapes the world that's presented to you.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If someone makes a program for themselves, but doesn't publish it to GitHub and doesn't spend $10,000 on Google and Facebook ads to shove it in your face that it exists so you hear about it, does it even exist? If you're looking for something, go find it! Or are you incapable of doing your own research?