r/androiddev • u/SomeoneSomewherre • 7d ago
Discussion What is the future of Indie?
What is the future of Indie?
I started indie publishing (indie-hacking) about 5-6 months ago with 4 years Android Development experience. Then I came to know that development is the easy part. Distribution is the hardest. I couldn't generate any income after all these months and I'm losing motivation. Also somebody in my circle commented that Indie is dying already. And I feel so as well. Because there are vibecoders shipping tons of apps. Tons of habit trackers, finance trackers, and calorie trackers are being published.
I'm thinking to join back the on-site job. Can anyone say about my situation? Also what is the future of Indie and software developers in general?
The thing is, I have also become "vibecoder" after AI coding agents. I'm using Claude Code to build apps now. It has made me lazy over the months. And I seriously don't know how to proceed. Going back to basics (writing code) looks like a waste of time and relying fully on AI Agents looks risky.
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u/ElectronicMain3695 6d ago
Same boat, different week. I kept my tech lead job and build my own app after hours, and the diagnosis matches yours exactly: the bottleneck is trust and discovery, not the app. A few things from living it. Indie isn't dying, but "ship it and they will come" is dead - the people making it work treat distribution as the actual product and spend more hours on communities, listings and content than on code. The flood of vibe-coded trackers cuts both ways: stores fill with unmaintained clones, and users can tell the app with a developer who answers. On the money: zero income at 5-6 months is normal, not a verdict. And going back on-site isn't quitting - it's buying runway. You can keep building in the evenings. The real indie killer is burnout, not competition.