August Mueller on why he is not worried about being replaced by AI.
Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about what Acorn should be. In a time when anyone can come up with an app idea and ship with little effort, what is going to make Acorn stand out?
I’m starting to think that’s going to be personality and feel and polish, but turned up a notch. That’s what I used to do when I started writing apps, but in some ways I have really toned it down in favor of OS alignment.
Does an AI know how to do that? Does a coding assistant know that an app is really a giant collection of details?
Maybe I’ll even have fewer competitors in the long run, or at least not as many new competitors. Because at some point it’s not about how good a programmer you are (and I’ve always been a middle-tier programmer), it’s about discipline and vision.
I’ve got feelings because anyone can put an app together now, so what’s the point of me? But at the same time, I can focus on what I want to focus on and hopefully charge forward and maybe everyone else will get tired of little vibe coded apps because you still have to know exactly what you want to build. And you can’t build something you can’t think of. And I know how to think and I have ideas.
And I have discipline and I know how to ship. And in my experience, that’s what has always mattered.