If AI coding is so good … where are the little apps?
show us the widgets! show us the shovelware!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz_lG6SmgK0&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20250909-if-ai-coding-is-so-good-where-are-the-little-apps - podcast
time: 5 min 44 sec
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/09/09/if-ai-coding-is-so-good-where-are-the-little-apps/Open linkView original on awful.systems
Note also that genuine labor saving stuff like say the Unity engine with Unity asset store, did result in an absolute flood of shovelware on Steam back in the mid 2010s (although that probably had as much having to do with Steam FOMO-ing about the possibility of not letting the next Minecraft onto Steam).
As a thought experiment imagine an unreliable labor saving tool that speeds up half* of the work 20x, and slows down the other half 3x. You would end up 1.525 times slower.
The fraction of work (not by lines but by hours) that AI helps with is probably less than 50% , and the speed up is probably worse than 20x.
Slowdown could be due to some combination of
footnote: "half" as measured by the pre-tool hours.
I think it’s simpler. It’s some sort of 80% 20% thing. Or whatever percentages you like.
AI makes it easy to get to 80%. The last 20% (or 5%, whatever) is a huge burden and a lot of effort. And the AI isn’t quite good enough to tackle it yet.
This does not replace anything you said tho. That stuff is also true.
I actually had this thought recently, that the vibecoder is the new 10xer, but in the derogatory sense of your company's cowboy coder whipping up beautiful messes for everyone else to drown in.
I think I've come across 1 web tools that mentioned it was made with Ai.
The tool was really useless, and didn't work.