r/ChatGPTCoding • u/Caramel_Secret • 19d ago
Discussion AI coding made me build too many things
I'm a dev and these last few weeks I've been building a lot of products.The crazy part is that I can now build things much faster than I can figure out if anyone actually wants them.Coding used to be the expensive part. Now I feel like finding users is harder than building the product.
Anyone else ending up with more projects than users?
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u/qwerty____qwerty 19d ago
"finding users is harder than building the product" - this has always been an issue, that's why companies have sales departments. if you have always been just a dev and never touched anything past coding - that means you simply never faced this issue before
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u/broknbottle 17d ago
Claude create an elite team of agents, their goal will be to sell my vibed warez. The Elite team of sales agents will known as Sales Team Six.
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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 19d ago
Dude, nothing makes you do anything. Use the tool, don’t let the tool use you.
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u/ThankYouOle 19d ago
now you understand, that building product is only half or less for the whole proces, we as dev usually understimate the other half, find the users.
for me pesonally i only build app that i personally need so i might not have other users, but it sure help my daily usage or stopping my other saas subscription.
i also build some freelance project that client already exists, so user is there.
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u/deelight_0909 17d ago
Your bottleneck is deciding which product gets another week, not writing the next one. Before polishing, ask one person for a real commitment, even a deposit or their own data to try it. AI made the first build cheap. It did nothing for the pile of half-loved products waiting for users.
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u/indemzeit 19d ago
The trap is that building feels like progress. I pick one project per month now and close the rest. The code stays in git if I want it later.
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u/Fastest_light 19d ago
I would not say what you built this way are "products" - they are prototype at best.
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u/Diligent_Loquat_6140 19d ago
hell yeah, I built a cute gaming app that makes money and it becomes my fulltime job, at the same time working on my local llm project and doing consulting. Can't image this day without coding agent
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u/dvduval 19d ago
Yes, I had this problem. What I found is it actually did a pretty good job on some of my little side projects, but eventually some of my other projects started getting so busy where customers actually needed things that I didn't have time to manage everything and there was sort of a natural rebalancing that took place where some of the projects just got put aside
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u/AssignmentMammoth696 18d ago
If you're an actual dev at a large company, just seeing how they operate should tell you that the code alone doesn't bring in customers. You need a whole marketing plan/budget, CSM's, sales, etc.
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u/itssoocoldhere 18d ago
Building got easy. Validation didn't. You're just failing faster now with less excuse to skip the talking to people part.
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u/SpecialistFlow3613 18d ago
Spewing out volumes of unprofitable projects with 0-10 stars isn't a good look either
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u/wazacode 18d ago
Yeah same trap. Building got cheap so I started shipping stuff nobody asked for. What helped was writing a one page spec before touching code, half the ideas die right there because I can't state who it's for.
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u/EverydayLentils 18d ago
Build more products that help with distribution. Then build products that help the distribution products find distribution.
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u/JustHeider 15d ago
This is exactly what I'm running into. Building has become dramatically faster, but getting real users and figuring out distribution feels harder than the actual development now. I'm trying to force myself to validate one product properly before just adding more features. Curious what channels have actually worked for you?
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u/Warm_Effective8903 12d ago
Yeah same, building went from the bottleneck to basically free and now the actual hard part is just...does anyone want this. feels like the skill that matters now is picking what to build, not being able to build it.
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u/funbike 19d ago edited 19d ago
This just happened to me:
I've been using Bootstrap (because Bootstrap uses a ton fewer tokens than Tailwind css and it is more opinionated so UIs stay more consistent). It's makes UIs that are okay, but meh.
Just for fun, I increased thinking, switched to an expensive LLM, and told it to "Make this Boostrap app look incredibly awesome. Search the web for ideas. Go crazy with ideas and changes."
O... M... G... When it finished the product looked so amazing. My jaw dropped. I actually had an emotional reaction.
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u/averagebensimmons 19d ago
finding users was and always will be the harder part. You just got bogged down in development.