"SaaS is dead” is just a bunch of bullshit.
The idea that everybody is going to build their own software and be happy with it is a tech bro bubble take. Or a sales pitch from tech CEOs selling you tokens.
I just spent a full day building my own video editing Mac App in Codex. And it is becoming incredibly good and useful.
Anything I throw at Codex, it builds it. Most changes are done within a minute. But that’s not where the hours go.
I ask for a feature, I wait, I try. I realise it doesn’t quite work how I imagined it. I figure out why (which takes skill), and then I figure out what to prompt next to fix it.
Over and over.
This is not easy. You need to understand how to describe what you want and need properly. And then you need to be able to judge whether the result is actually good. Having access to the best model in the world doesn’t automatically give you those skills. And the model can't know what I need for my specific workflow. It can't predict that. I need to describe that, after conceptualizing my own workflow in my mind.
I’ve been obsessed with software for 20 years, studied UX/UI design, I teach software, consult companies on their interfaces, and built multiple webapps. And it's still challenging for me.
So it is really cool that this is possible, and I absolutely wasn’t able to do this a few years ago, but it's still quite an exercise for my brain to get it right.
Now imagine doing all of this without that experience. How is a normal person going to pull that off? It can't. They don't have the same prompting and software judgment skills. That's what 20 years working in software gives you.
Will a big part of the group that works in tech build their own software? Sure, but most of the world is not part of that group. And software isn't just used by tech bros.
So tech bros that are promoting this idea of "Saas is dead" are just in their own bubbles and assume everybody is like them. But that's not how it works. And the next model doesn't change that.
Most people just want software that works so they can get on with their actual job. And we haven't even talked about the lack of free time that the modern human has.
So I don’t buy the “SaaS is dead” BS anymore. It just doesn't make sense.
The idea that everybody is going to build their own software and be happy with it is a tech bro bubble take. Or a sales pitch from tech CEOs selling you tokens.
I just spent a full day building my own video editing Mac App in Codex. And it is becoming incredibly good and useful.
Anything I throw at Codex, it builds it. Most changes are done within a minute. But that’s not where the hours go.
I ask for a feature, I wait, I try. I realise it doesn’t quite work how I imagined it. I figure out why (which takes skill), and then I figure out what to prompt next to fix it.
Over and over.
This is not easy. You need to understand how to describe what you want and need properly. And then you need to be able to judge whether the result is actually good. Having access to the best model in the world doesn’t automatically give you those skills. And the model can't know what I need for my specific workflow. It can't predict that. I need to describe that, after conceptualizing my own workflow in my mind.
I’ve been obsessed with software for 20 years, studied UX/UI design, I teach software, consult companies on their interfaces, and built multiple webapps. And it's still challenging for me.
So it is really cool that this is possible, and I absolutely wasn’t able to do this a few years ago, but it's still quite an exercise for my brain to get it right.
Now imagine doing all of this without that experience. How is a normal person going to pull that off? It can't. They don't have the same prompting and software judgment skills. That's what 20 years working in software gives you.
Will a big part of the group that works in tech build their own software? Sure, but most of the world is not part of that group. And software isn't just used by tech bros.
So tech bros that are promoting this idea of "Saas is dead" are just in their own bubbles and assume everybody is like them. But that's not how it works. And the next model doesn't change that.
Most people just want software that works so they can get on with their actual job. And we haven't even talked about the lack of free time that the modern human has.
So I don’t buy the “SaaS is dead” BS anymore. It just doesn't make sense.
