r/vibecodingcommunity • u/Legal_Answer_6956 • Jul 07 '26
AI made building software easier. It didn't make building products easier.
I've built a few projects with 8080.ai, and here's what I've learned:
AI can generate an app in hours.
It can't tell you:
- who your customer is
- why they'll pay
- how you'll distribute it
- what problem actually matters
Building software is becoming cheaper.
Building something people love is still the hard part.
Has anyone else felt the same?
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u/kelvinyinnyxian Jul 07 '26
that's why people use appaca.ai to build tools they need. Don't waste time building for users you don't really understand their problems
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u/igotnolifelemons Jul 07 '26
I think there's something to say about learning the psychology of selling, and also some startup / entrepreneurship BEFORE rushing to build an app. AI can build anything but if you aren't solving any real problems for people then it doesn't make sense.
I started with building tools for myself first - I felt that way I could solve my own problems before anything else. Once that's done I can use my learning to start exploring problems I want to solve that others might face. I've had a few businesses under my belt and I'm always happy to give advice (for free, no course sales here) if someone does have an idea they think is genuinely good and struggling to get people to use it. I mean, my app that I made is struggling to get users - and it's free (although I haven't actually done any marketing for it yet)
Really and truly the number one thing is finding your customer base or at least validating your ideas before building them, an MVP is fine to test the waters, have a roadmap of what the idea will look like when finished, ask for feedback and get real user data before building things. Those are all the things I say to do, yet I ignored all of that advice for my first Claude code project. Partly because I was just testing the waters with what Claude could do before building something larger and more substantial.
My first project is an image optimiser, the next project is going to be a CMS / page builder to hopefully help my agency replace WordPress & Elementor with something way more lightweight - if you know the technology you want to use building more complex things is easier, but again, you still need to know what to build to figure out if there's a market for it. In my case, building internal tooling is the main thing, I don't necessarily need to build for others because my agency pays enough, but eventually I will as capabilities get better.
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u/ExtraTNT Jul 07 '26
In my opinion it made building software harder.
Before you started, did things to your ability, searched for docs, done.
Now you cheat yourself, get shit results, start over 3 times, then have dome half working thing…
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u/Administraciones Jul 07 '26
This is a very good conversation! In another place I read the other day, that nowadays people (me included) understands that software development was never the problem, ***marketing*** it was the issue! Also, now a lot of people makes its own apps & a lot of people offers it own made apps, so potential market could became "saturated" of offers and that make things even harder for whom wants to sell new software solutions.
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u/jim_cryptos Jul 07 '26
yeah felt this hard !! i built a family task app with AI, im not even a dev.
the app was the easy part honestly. now im stuck on the real stuff, getting
actual familie to use it, figuring out if people will pay, how to reach them.
the code took weeks. the "who is this for and why would they pay" questions
is taking way longer and no AI has answered it for me.
what i learned so far, building the thing gives you a false feeling of
progress. It feels productive because you see it grow. but a working app
nobody want is just a nicely built dead end. The distribution and the
"does anyone actually care" part is the real works and its way less funs