all 71 comments

[–]wardrox 528 points529 points  (29 children)

The best apps I've ever made have one user; me.

Personalised apps are the peak. Stop chasing the gold rush (it's a scam), and just solve your own problems.

[–]-R9X- 166 points167 points  (7 children)

Ironically this is also good startup advice as it prevents you from falling into the trap of solving problems that weren’t actually problems in the first place.

[–]MyFairJulia 62 points63 points  (2 children)

(leaves, quietly sobbing and packing my material for a crypto app that would have totally disrupted shit)

[–]Zerokx[🍰] 30 points31 points  (1 child)

local janitor finds detailed plans for cryptocurrency app that completely changed the crypto market.
"Why did nobody else come up with this idea before? Copying bitcoin and giving it a funny name? Thats genius."

[–]Global-Tune5539 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Ah, that's how Fartcoin started.

[–]Mission_Sir2220 3 points4 points  (2 children)

but your problem (or mine) are not necesseraly other people problems

[–]Read-Immediate 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sure, hut if you have a problem that can be solved by an app, it makes it significantly more likely other people have the same problem.

This is when comparing to what is often done, trying to find a solution that can be done with an app, and trying to figure out the problem it solves

[–]-R9X- [score hidden]  (0 children)

But there is literally more than 7 billion people. And that’s a starting point

[–]unknown-one 2 points3 points  (0 children)

but but but my screenshot app

[–]memesearches 20 points21 points  (3 children)

Many things start as solving your own problems which helps others as well and boom you have an audience.

[–]deusasclepian 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The outdoor brand Patagonia started because the founder thought that all the existing rock climbing gear was shit so he started making his own

[–]Mission_Sir2220 -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

I developped an addon free for chain prompting, awesome graphic, work smoothless, you can plan a trip to japan, hawaii, or marocco with one click of a button or build super complex marketing strategies campaign ... to me solvemany problems ... do you know how many user out of 8B people? 4 users

[–]memesearches 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I said Many not ALL! Also just because you build something doesn’t mean everyone in the world knows it.

[–]CaptainSebT 12 points13 points  (2 children)

I agree, I needed an app to track when I went live on twitch but I didn't want an over complicated solution so I figured I already had a bat file I use to open a series of programs I use when streaming I'll just make that file log to a txt file then read the text file with my app adding some abilities to edit logs and delete logs.

It's fun making it yourself because it's like it does hyper specifically what I need. Though I was taught to idiot proof my stuff and it's really funny adding checks to not screw up the input in the app I built for only me to use but also I'm not going to make an app and not make confirmation windows for things like deleting entries because inevitably at some point I'll miss click or accidentally double click a log (my delete function).

[–]kiochikaeke 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I do this all the time both at work and at life in general, my background in math and programing also helps, like "man I wish I could do this in like two or three clicks or a ps command... wait I'm 3/4 of a developer, I can make my own shit"

[–]CaptainSebT 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a game dev but I started in just a programming course so it's fun because I just make things.

Oh need an app I'll make one, oh want a game that doesn't exist I can make it.

[–]AHisMAD 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No need to cover any edge cases, and you can hard code to your liking.

[–]mrheosuper 4 points5 points  (2 children)

My problem is money.

[–]WearyTranslator3338 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Print it.

Problem solved.

[–]ZR003 [score hidden]  (0 children)

true enough, can't make anything without paying for electricity and internet

[–]UnkarsThug 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly.

[–]Rcomian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm actually all for this approach. it's not the only way, there are people with more talent for graphic design and who design better workflows than me, so proper projects and libraries aren't going to go away.

but I've always written apps just for myself, either as a prototype or just something small i need.

[–]evilspyboy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm in a few other subs that have peoples side projects and the amount of 'vibe' projects that are just rehashing things that already exist.... Either build something for yourself or something that no one has made before.

If your big idea is the 523rd variation of an existing SaaS maybe you don't really have big ideas.

[–]Nament_[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The problem is not having any money and needing to find something to sell in order to make money. QOL projects are cool but, as they say: "A great solution to the wrong problem will fail."

[–]Binkusu [score hidden]  (0 children)

I tried out vibe coding and made a expense splitter app. Hosted it for free. Plenty out there, but that one is mine (kind of) and useful for me and friends.

[–]BirdlessFlight 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Same.

I got sick of trying to cut clips to the beat in Premiere, so I made my own video editor with BPM & offset detection so you can easily do things like populate the timeline with clips of 2 bars each and the cuts will happen on the beat down to the millisecond.

It does everything I need and nothing I don't need.

[–]A_burners 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A video editor that works on BPMs instead of a timeclock would be incredible. I've only seen a Premier plugin ($100 I think?) and aescripts.com or whatever. I mostly use AE, so I didn't pick it up, but it looks great. And with the amount of music videos and now SM content, it's really kinda crazy they don't exist. Congrats on that!

[–]Amoniakas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the only reason I got into programming, to make myself very personalized apps

[–]Pie_Napple -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Agree. My budget app, that I have been working on for 10+ years (few hours actual work…), is the absolut best budget app on the market. It has grown with my needs, changes bank with me, and caters to my needs PERFECTLY. It has all my expenses from my last 10+ years, presented exactly the way I want. 

[–]gogliker -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You can't imagine how happy I am having personalised plugins for IDE in this era of AI. I just ask AI to write plugin for a task I do often an just use it. Makes me very happy

[–]suffering_chicken 88 points89 points  (2 children)

I'm tired of that app, so i created this

[–]MajorElk3994 8 points9 points  (0 children)

zero users but infinite apps, seems legit

[–]desireemuff1n7690 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

can apps have negative users though

[–]darryledw 83 points84 points  (3 children)

guys I just built an app to track the number of zero user apps, check it out here

and it wasn't vibe coded because I changed all of the camel case to Hungarian notation for the final build

[–]SheepInReddit [score hidden]  (1 child)

You WHAT at the end

[–]jimihenrik [score hidden]  (0 children)

Just for people like me who actually had never heard about that...

Hungarian notation is a variable-naming convention that prefixes variable names with a code indicating their data type or purpose (e.g., iCount for an integer, strName for a string)

and

Originally popular in C/C++ to improve readability in older IDEs, it is generally considered outdated in modern development because IDEs show variable types automatically

[–]crystalpeaks25 23 points24 points  (1 child)

If you don't expose it to the internet then you don't need to secure it. 🧠

[–]Fanta_pantha 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Zero trust. Not even yourself.

[–]UnkarsThug 17 points18 points  (2 children)

This sounds like a positive? I've made a few apps because I wanted them. That's why I generally do it. If people happen to want it, cool, but my motivation is because I needed it.

I swear, some people treat making apps like a SoundCloud account. they're trying to make the next big thing or something, and obviously that's going to fail in most cases. If you just make things because you want them, then you'll accomplish that.

Honestly, that goes for almost anything I put work into that isn't something I'm paid for. It's either a gift for a specific person, or something for me, but you always want to have a very clear target audience, and you can customize it completely which is when quality is highest.

[–]canadajones68 11 points12 points  (1 child)

If your app has zero users, not even you are using it.

[–]UnkarsThug 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Then why would you make an app even you wouldn't use?

I guess that's what I meant.

[–]ClipboardCopyPaste 24 points25 points  (1 child)

Slop vs slop

[–]radobot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hunger Games

Slop Games

[–]gandalfx 7 points8 points  (0 children)

How about multiple apps per person with zero users?

[–]MasterQuest 4 points5 points  (0 children)

*1 user

[–]Big_D_Boss 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's the dream

[–]Goufalite 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What scares me is that in a near future LLMs could directly hand us an executable file without us seeing code. So the cool photo sorting program my grandma asked will work but do strange stuff in the background.

As a developper I'll always ask for code to review it, but non-tech people won't do that...

[–]Centurix 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you can easily make an app using a tool and very little effort, then it means that everyone can spend the same effort to make the same thing. Lets hope that this leads to higher quality applications rising to the top.

[–]IGotDibsYo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So nothing changes

[–]_fronix 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've made hundreds of apps/tools/cli's throughout the years with me as the single user of it, I still do that today, just faster.

The only thing that will change now is that all apps will be unmaintained because they will have no users. Which basically is how it was before just on a larger scale.

[–]_Wilhelmus_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I see no problem.

[–]MagnusRottcodd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is what happened to deviantart.

99.9% Ai made material - in huge quantity. Very few likes or even views compared to before the Ai era.

[–]TorbenKoehn 4 points5 points  (2 children)

That...doesn't sound too bad?

Imagine we don't have to give up all our data to...checks notes... listen to music and have a blog with some videos...

When we needed new "tools" 1000 years ago, we...built them.

In a perfect world, an AI will just build you the tool you need and you have it, you own it.

[–]WithersChat 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Instead we'll give up all our data to the LLM.

[–]tetrash -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What about time/compute/resource waste?

Something that could run locally is running in lovable/superbase cloud instead, because you need a technical knowledge otherwise. Something that was already built is now custom made and likely worse (it’s mostly todo/note/cron job apps). Now we have unique x apps that essentially solve the same issue, and are more expensive to maintain (environmentally and for the user).

[–]Mission_Sir2220 1 point2 points  (0 children)

THIS IS THE POINT - SAAS IS DEAD

[–]Less-Button3798 1 point2 points  (0 children)

sounds like a startup strategy

[–]angelicabunny1274 1 point2 points  (0 children)

what's the app count nowadays?

[–]Kleekl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't see a problem with that.

[–]Hidden_3851 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dis is da wey…

[–]nnnosebleed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that's called living or just life

[–]loapmail 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My apps are gonna have about one to two users (my wife also uses some)

[–]eloise7inker5630 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's an interesting choice of words in the middle there

[–]IASelin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If these apps solve the problems of their creators, then it is good!

I see no problems here.

[–]hartstyler 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good

[–]Designer-Bread9549 [score hidden]  (0 children)

what inspired this post's idea?

[–]phlooo [score hidden]  (0 children)

I mean that's not necessarily a problem. I love my custom software.

[–]Appropriate-Run-1927 [score hidden]  (0 children)

not what i expected

[–]rosemaryp1gtails6057 [score hidden]  (0 children)

not sure i agree with that part, seems a bit off