Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

Had the cost of building custom software dropped 90%, we would be seeing a flurry of low-cost, decent-quality SaaS offering all over the marketplace, possibly undercutting some established players.

From where I sit, right now, this does not seem to be the case.

This is as if writing down the code is not the biggest problem, or the biggest time sink, of building software.

The keyword is "building". Yes costs may have dropped 90% just to build software. But there are 1000 other things that comes after it to run a successful software for months let alone years.

- Maintenance, Security

- Upgrades and patches

- Hosting and ability to maintain uptime with traffic

- Support and dealing with customer complexities

- New requirements/features

- Most importantly, ability to blame someone else (at least for management). Politics plays a part. If you build a tool in-house and it fails, you are on the chopping block. If you buy, you at least can say "Hey everyone else bought it too and I shouldn't be fired for that".

Customers pay for all of the above when they buy a SAAS subscription. AI may come for most of the above at some point but not yet. I say give it 3-5 years to see how it all pans out.

Good points but this list is missing the most critical problem which AI does not solve; exposure.

What you've listed are the easy parts that are within people's control. You didn't list the most critical part, the actual bottleneck which is not within people's control.

The market is now essentially controlled by algorithms. I predict there will be amazing software... Which will end up ignored by the markets completely until their features are copied by big tech and nobody will know where the idea originated.

Building is absolutely worthless in the context of a monopolized marketplace.

Agreed. What you call exposure others might call distribution or attention.