Update: Latest Code Is Cheap Now, But Software Isn't

The barrier to entry for building software has collapsed. The barrier to building something that matters hasn’t moved an inch.

Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5 have poured fuel on the hype. LLM tools existed before, but they’re better than ever now, so a lot more people are paying attention. But we’re not entering a golden age of SaaS. We’re entering an era of personal, disposable software—where engineering shifts from writing code to shaping systems, and engineers are still required for exactly that reason.

Claude Code is taking over my feed right now, and for good reason. What’s interesting isn’t just that developers are jumping on it—it’s that "builders" and makers who previously relied on platforms like Lovable or Replit are migrating to it.

Don’t get me wrong, those tools are still perfectly viable for shipping fast. But we’re seeing a clear shift as people rediscover the inherent beauty of a CLI-first workflow. When you move the interaction into the terminal, the abstraction layer thins out. You aren't just following a managed UI's happy path; you're the one in control.

What are people actually building with these tools? If you look around, the answer is: almost everything. In fact, we’ve reached a point of saturation. On one hand, we are witnessing the true democratisation of software creation. The barrier to entry has effectively collapsed. For the first time, non-developers aren't just consumers of software - they are the architects of their own tools.

In the past, if you had a specific problem, you’d spend hours searching for a SaaS product that solved 80% of it. Today, the workflow has shifted. People are opening a CLI or a voice interface and simply describing what they need. We’re seeing a surge in "personal software":

This is a massive shift. Software is becoming a personal utility you generate, rather than a commodity you buy.

We’re entering a new era of software development where the goal isn't always longevity. For years, the industry has been obsessed with building "platforms" and "ecosystems," but the tide is shifting toward something more ephemeral. We're moving from SaaS to scratchpads.

A lot of this new software isn't meant to live forever. In fact, it’s the opposite. People are increasingly building tools to solve a single, specific problem exactly once—and then discarding them. It is software as a disposable utility, designed for the immediate "now" rather than the distant "later."

What makes this viable today is a specific

Source: HackerNews