So you think this downturn will be short lived?

When management realise that the vibe coded projects are not maintainable, SAAS will be as popular as ever

It seems that current advantages would compound with AI. I.e., if I am making a SaaS for Popsicle stick makers today, why I am disadvantaged with AI vs a new competitor in the space? I guess the hypothesis is the Popsicle stick maker will vibe code all of the software that they need instead. For that, we need significantly better AI than we have today - perhaps something like a 1000X improvement. Basically, this is a world in which non-technical grandparents can vibe code anything that they want. This means, it understands what you want without you being able to articulate it well in the first place.

That's not a 1000X improvement in current AI. That's more like a 2x ~ 5x improvement in current AI, which is measured in months.

So, within months your prompt can simply be "increase NPV" and machines will do the rest? If not, what prompt will work perfectly in your estimation by the end of the year?

I don't do tea leaves so I wouldn't commit to that, particularly because I think SAAS was oversold in general even before LLMs came out. But I think the idea that the industry as a whole will shrivel away just isn't feasible, even if there is a correction.

The B2B startup motto of "where someone is using Excel to do something other than accounting, there's a startup waiting to happen" has been shockingly resilient over the decades, and I suspect will continue to be.

Paper forms used to be our main competitor.

Paper forms have some amazing features that software really can't compete with. And also some significant downsides that software fixes.

We need a new one: "Where someone is using a vibe-coded internal tool made by the creative department that keeps needing bug fixes, there's a start up waiting to happen."

I've seen some bad some SaaS that management insists is an integration they need and no one else provides. I can easily see some vibe coded projects replace them.

In many cases, it's not a downturn, just a return to reasonable valuations. Other sectors should follow

All of the hype surrounding AI will subside when a SaaS company eventually deploys a moltbot version of their software and the company is driven out of existence due to the chaos that ensues.

So… next week then?

I dont even blame management. I believe most of them are well-aware that much of what is going on right now is pure hype.

However, they dont have a choice. The sentiment of shareholders is that they want their cash (yes it is their cash that managers re-invest on their behalf) to be invested in AI-related projects.

So...... you get what you get, and investors will get what they deserve. But they will still blame the management in the end ;)

They will magically realize this when their huge bonuses will be tied to something longer lasting than last quarter/year performance on some very narrow metric (which has nothing to do with sane stuff like adding long term value to some part of the company).

They are not stupid, far from it, most are (very) high functioning sociopaths. And out and up there its everybody for themselves first.

Yes there’s no point using technically correct words if hardly anyone know them.

Language or the way we use it is often used to exclude "undesired", so there is a point in using them. Not a very nice point, but a point nevertheless.

Sure there is, as long as your audience does.

Agreed, after years of software development only in the last couple of months have I started to think that maybe I need to reskill.

My current role should be ok for a few years, but hard to know if we will need any developers in 5 or 10.

That product came out recently so will be top of mind. And maybe was the final straw for the OP when trying to find something to focus on?

I don't think you'd find any link between countries with latin based languages and theft. Differences in crime rates are going to be much more likely to be based on economic inequality, social policy, enforcement, and how crime is reported

Wasn’t it a copy of Atom?

Yes, Atom was an earlier shot at building a Sublime competitor too.

I don’t know how usage of Atom compared to Sublime, but within my friends and colleagues it was only when VS code got good that people started moving away from Sublime.

I can only speak for $MY_JOB, but I'm pretty sure everyone was on Atom before VSC "got good". Atom had a good plugin ecosystem; what really drove the change was Atom's horrible performance issues whereas VSC was snappy and responsive.

What I believe also influenced the shift was that at that point in time MS had accumulated a decent amount of developer trust by giving us TypeScript and later on by acquiring GitHub. They appeared to care and have the right vision for open source.

Ahh ok, interesting. I bounced off atom immediately but VS code got me.

Nope it started as a Web IDE, going against Atom was their pivot to win market share, there are a few talks from the team if you search for VSCode history.

Let's also not forget one big reason VSCode took over and Sublime lost: VSCode is gratis and (mostly) open-source, while Sublime is proprietary.

With Anthropic or OpenAI they would have had to pay for it, but Google already pay them $20bn+ per year to be the default search engine - so they just knock $1bn off Google's bill for Gemini

What's the difference if Apple gets $20B from Google and spends $1B to another company or just gets $19B from Google and doesn't spend nothing?

I suppose Apple is forcing Google to compete against itself. "Pay us less, or pay us more and we buy someone else’s model."

Also accounting optics means Apple can shows lower revenue but cleaner margins

As long as you buy a macbook to use it on, they are happy

They'd be even happier if you bought one of the Mac Studios or Mac Pro. Please, someone, anyone.

I don’t think they have any trouble selling Studios. Pros, on the other hand…

Yeah studios are pretty boss machines, I know at least two companies that offer studios instead of macbooks to WFH employees if they want.

Also, the cursor changes

I've used Rectangle for years so I can arrange windows more quickly. Not good for arbitrary sizes, more for set positions.

https://rectangleapp.com/

I install Rectangle App on any mac I use. The keybinds are convenient and the auto-sizing/tiling is pleasant as can be.