AI and Home-Cooked Software

MRKARAN.DEV

This blog post has a punchy start …

“Everyone is worried that AI will replace programmers. They’re missing the real revolution: AI is turning everyone into one.”

Thanks to AI coding tools it is now easier to write code and build applications than it ever has been before, the barrier to entry has dropped to the point where it has fallen through the floor. You no longer have to be a software developer to create working software. There is of course a very healthy debate to be had about the quality of the software that this might produce, but you cannot escape the fact that writing code just got a whole lot easier.

In this post Karan explores how this changes the economics, and the notion of “Building for One”, where anyone can rapidly build modest applications tailored to their specific needs.

Exciting times.

I’m in Vibe Coding Hell

BOOT.DEV

“tutorial hell”, where learners follow tutorials but can’t build independently, has evolved into “vibe coding hell”, where developers use AI tools (e.g. Copilot, agents) to write code for them. While learners today build many things, their mental models remain shallow, and they depend on AI rather than truly thinking through problems.

To escape vibe coding hell, they recommend turning off AI auto-completion and agents when learning, using chatbots only for hints or explanations, and forcing yourself to struggle through problems so true learning occurs.

This is a totally valid concern, but reflecting on Karan’s post above, it very much depends on your overall goal.

If you just want to create modest apps for your own needs, then vibe-away. There is no need to build a ‘mental model’ of how your application works. But if you want to become a professional software engineer, then yes, you cannot learn by simply typing prompts into an AI tool.

… for now.

BLOOMBERRY.COM

This website tracks the popularity of various AI tools based on the daily install counts from the VSCode Marketplace. This is of course going to be skewed towards tools that exist within the VSCode ecosystem, missing tools like Cursor, or the usage of a given tool as a standalone application (e.g. Claude Code).

However, we do see some interesting trends emerge. GitHup Copilot dominates (which is no great surprise), interestingly, the rate of adoption is accelerating as indicated by the sharper climb in install numbers over the past few months.

copilot installs

Startups in this space like Cline and Augment Code had early spikes, but it looks like they’re quickly decelerating in popularity too. It will be interesting to see how newer entrants like Codex fair over time.

Augment Code: 22.5% of our users are consuming 20x what they’re currently paying

REDDIT.COM

On the subject of AI tooling startups … Augment Code were something of a leader, having built up quite a following. However, news of a significant pricing change which they announced a couple of weeks ago, has had a very negative impact on the community that they have been fostering, hence their need to provide more transparency in this Reddit post.

Unfortunately they have suffered from a generous slug of VC funding which has allowed them to operate their platform at a significant lost, at least for some of their user demographic. As a result, they’ve had to take some radical steps to try and better align the end-user usage with the price they are paying for this service.

I do still wonder what the different is between the fees users are paying and the costs incurred in delivering this service? I’d be willing to bet that even with this pricing reset they are still going to be making a loss.

Just Talk To It - the no-bs Way of Agentic Engineering

STEIPETE.ME

Saving the best to last …

This long post is a stream of consciousness, with Peter sharing his thoughts on AI-augmented software development, touching on models, agents, tools, ways of working, specification-driven development … and .. everything really.

The overall tone is very optimistic, these tools are clearly working well for Peter, with anecdotal evidence of considerable productivity - throughout this post you can feel his excitement. However, I can understand how some people would view this post with skepticism as we’re drowning in similar looking posts from AI-boosters.

One important point here is Peter, and his background. I first came across him a number of years back when I was dabbling with iOS development. Peter was the author and maintainer of PSPDFKit, a popular and complex open source project, he has also featured a number of times on The pragmatic Engineer. He knows his stuff.

Personally I don’t treat Peter’s post as a pattern that I should follow, or tools that I should use. Instead, I see it quite simply as inspiration, an attitude, a willingness to learn and to let go of the things that some of us still hold on to.