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Craft software that makes people feel something

(rapha.land)
301 points lukeio | 1 comments | 11 Dec 25 13:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.197s | source
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Xenoamorphous ◴[11 Dec 25 16:23 UTC] No.46233361[source]▶
Kinda tangential but in the advent of AI I feel like there won’t be a niche for “handcrafted software”.

When quartz watches came up the makers of mechanical watches struggled. Quartz watches are cheaper, more accurate in many cases and servicing is usually restricted to replacing a battery. However some people appreciate a good mechanical watch (and the status symbol aspect of course) and nowadays the mechanical watch market is flourishing. Something similar happened with artificial fabrics (polyester, acrylic) and cheap made clothes, there’s a market for handmade clothes that use natural fabrics.

Nobody (well, barring a few HN readers) will ever care if the software was written by people or a bot, as long as it works.

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1. cons0le ◴[11 Dec 25 18:32 UTC] No.46235108[source]▶
Watches are a horrible example. The rich buy them because they're a status symbol. Rich people aren't going to start retaining teams of software experts just for status.

"Mechanical watches" also aren't exploding at all. When people cite this, they're citing the overall watch market growing, because the market for million dollar watches is being driven by a very small group of collectors. Its also not sustainable, and will die down in ~10-20 years when these old guys finish dying. The average not rich person could not give less of a damn about mechanical watches. There's no great comeback on the horizon