The buy vs build discussion has dramatically changed with GenAI. Some enterprise systems need to remain vendor based, but there’s a ton of space for mid-size and smaller companies to build and maintain their own systems and tons of software that were excel apps could be fully realized departmental systems.
That's a short term view. Any system you build inhouse has to be maintained until you replace it, and often the longer it remains in place the harder it is to do that. You might save a small amount of cash (which might be important at the time tbf) but you're creating a major headache for later. Legacy code is debt, and that includes all your code. It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place.
Everyone who founds a company needs to remember that they're building a system of systems that all interact and influence each other, and you have to balance short term cash flow against long term strategy.
> It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place.
It's not uncommon that this maintainer actually wants to get away from maintaining this code, and would actually be quite willing to teach some successor how everything works.
The problem is that it is often hard to find someone who is similarly passionate about this system (often the system only keeps working because the original maintainer invests a lot of energy into keeping it alive), and is thus brutally willing to learn this system inside out. You can't force this mentality from above: either a suitable programmer has this mentality or he is typically not suitable.
I don't understand why you appear to be downvoted for this (your comment is faded at the time I'm reading this). It sounds like a perfectly reasonable take.
I've certainly inherited and also caused these problems in my younger years.
Sorry, this take just shows that you probably are not running a business. Having someone dedicate their whole business to a solution to one of your problems will most likely get a better result than you doing a hackjob you can't even maintain. Let alone the maintenance, logistics, complexity, time etc. The economics just aren't there to vibe code even more than 30% of the software you use.
People running businesses want to focus on their core business and are happy to pay for pain points to go away, for money to come in or less money to come out. It's that simple.
I’ve been a consultant to fortune 100 companies throughout my career and the amount of pain they willingly endure supporting Excel, Access, and .NET/Java applications is astounding. The desire to eliminate these things is high, but there’s no political will over cost and appeasing departmental management.
I think GenAI opens Pandora’s box and all of these decisions change.
Yeah, and we'll see them fail trying to roll their own excel. It's such a stupid economic decision to even think of that ... I can't even. So I heavily disagree, still. Software doens't need to be perfect, it needs to be good enough and the economics need to work.
You sound like a salesman. Small business will always choose 1 hour free "hack" fix, over $50k solution with "complexity, maintenance..". Shitty python script with DuckDB running locally on laptop, can get you long long way.
If someone chooses the 1h free hack, sorry, you're doing business wrong and focus on the wrong things. A mindset that keeps you small. You gotta invest in stuff that makes you money and solves your problems. If that's what makes me sound like a salesman, again, I don't think you own a business as well or are struggling to make a living with that.
Theres a whole lot between "I waste my time and do non-scalable things" and "I need an enterprise contract as a SMB".
> Shitty python script with DuckDB running locally on laptop, can get you long long way.
Yeah ... no. You do you, but if you want to get your business to a good size you need proper tools. Like a chef needs a good knive, your business needs good tools as well. That's not to say that a quick DIY integration is off the table, but the one thing you don't get back is time, not money. So when you waste time by doing shit that can go away with minimal investment, you're preventing your business from getting traction.
Sorry but that's a coder mindset. "I can do this myself". That's what's keeping you stuck. You need to think about every decision as an investment. Time vs money. What's the ROI for all alternatives? Then you decide on what moves the needle. It's that easy.
The calculation is simple: every minute you do stupid stuff like coding shit, you can't sell to someone paying you to make things. So you lose twice by doing something yourself: a) you can't sell your services or time in the mean time and b) you add complexity and maintenance to your very complex business life as well. For me, the biggest problem is too much to do and not enough time. So to scale my business I need to reduce complexity. If I can throw reasonable money for that to go away: good, I'll do it. Most business owners I know think like that. That's business, not sales.
There are so many good SaaS for cheap or even with a good free tier that get you started that it's just incredibly junior to just build it yourself.
