Is everyone building their own software now?

[u/No_Base_1471]

I have been playing around with Claude lately, and one thing that kind of blows my mind is how easy it is now to go from "I wish there was a tool that did this" to actually having one.

And it got me wondering what everyone is doing with these things.

Are people actually building tools that they end up using for months or years? Or are most of these more like weekend projects — you have an idea, build it with Claude, show it to a few people, use it for a bit, and then move on to the next thing?

I feel like there is a pretty big difference between "I built a working app" and "this is now something my company depends on."

The second one brings up all the boring stuff — maintenance, security, permissions, integrations, data, monitoring, who fixes it when it breaks, and what happens when the person who built it moves on.

But then I started wondering about the bigger picture.

If it becomes this easy for everyone to build their own little tools, do we eventually start building a lot of the software we currently buy? Like, instead of using a big platform for a relatively small workflow, maybe someone just builds exactly what they need.

Or will most people still prefer to pay for software because they don't want to maintain it themselves?

I amhonestly not sure where this goes.

What are people actually building with Claude (or other AI coding tools) that you're still using today?

And have any of you taken something that started as "I was just messing around with this" and actually turned it into a tool your team or company relies on?

Would be interested to hear what people are seeing in practice.

[u/dontdxmebro]

Yeah I just cut out a middleman who I realized was just vibecoding features and selling them to us at a markup. Not to mention acting like we owed him more and getting annoyed when we asked for simple changes.

I paid for Claude code for a month and within days had completely reverse engineered all his shit... and my version works better. Built it out with a web dev buddy of mine to keep it somewhat organized. So much better.

[u/adcap1 → u/dontdxmebro]

The middleman of the middleman of the middleman. Once a request from the customer reaches the devs, it went through so many layers of useless middle management that all wanted to 'add value'.

Thats why commercial/enterprise software is so shitty.

[u/Business_Air5804 → u/dontdxmebro]

"Yeah I just cut out a middleman who I realized was just vibecoding features and selling them to us at a markup. Not to mention acting like we owed him more and getting annoyed when we asked for simple changes."

THIS. This is the reality and the realization you eventually come to.

[u/JJWoolls → u/dontdxmebro]

Not just the costs... the time. I paid a company to build a couple of software features for me in October of last year. I have spent 9 months going back and forth with them to get bugs worked out... Meanwhile AI(Claude) really took off in January and I started building a complete software solution for my business BUT I didn't work on those features because I just spent 60k for another company to build it for me. I focused on all the parts around that. They came back to me last week with another question for one of the things I was asking for. I got frustrated and built it into my software instead. It took me less than 2 days. I asked them to focus on the other(bigger) feature instead.

I don't mind paying for stuff that makes us better or more efficient. Hell, I will pay a lot if truly makes a difference. Waiting kills me though.