alt Hacker News> It’s become readily apparent that LLMs are really quite excellent at building Software for One. Personal apps that side-step all of the complexity and accountability of enterprise software and are custom fit for a single person’s workflow.
> …
> However most of our existing examples of pluggable software are local software: AI agents, developer IDEs, mods for video games, Blender add-ons, CAD extensions. These tend to be professional tools with a high barrier to entry. The web is the most successful software distribution system in the world. It shouldn’t be left behind. My hypothesis is that there is a new opportunity for Extensible Software on the web.
I don't follow. If this is really supposed to be "software for one", why would it need to be on the Internet? Why does it need a client/server model? Why do I care about "distribution"? People develop for web because native development gets painful when there are many flavours of "native". But you only use one of them yourself, and the LLM isn't bothered by its quirks.
Why not just work on designing pluggable local software that isn't so "professional"?
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Smalltalk also had extensibility for one. But it largely missed the explosion of collaboration when open source code became shareable and people can work on it together.
People also shared Hypercard apps.
I think it is less about client/server and more about how ideas can be shared. Sometimes, data might be shared.
Because there is no matchmaker- someone who finds people who have the same problem- and would be happy to buy it from you- on the condition it works for them so a refund is possible.
No huge company, no huge PR department, just one hobbyist/professional selling a ugly, rough around the edges tooling to other hobbyist/professionals.
In my case it's "software for the home" but then I work from home and it's stuff I actually use to help me in my day to day work.
And I had "software only for the home" way before coding with LLMs were a thing and... It's just convenient when it's in a browser. Especially now with technologies like SSE push (where I hardly need any JavaScript anymore).
Also "software for one" can be "software for the home" but also "software for the SME" and the home has Linux PCs, an iOS tablet, an Android tablet, Android phones and the wife is on a Mac Mini.
Also even if it was really "just for me", something has to be said about an app one can access when not at home (which is easy to do when it's a webapp).
> Why does it need a client/server model?
I just use SSE push now: hardly any JavaScript and it works totally fine. Sure it's technically client/server but it's not crazy complicated either.
I've worked on medium-sized desktop Java apps (a few hundreds of thousands of lines of code) that were running on the three usual suspects: Linux, OS X and Windows.
Well... I much prefer to write webapps.
Wife and I have got a SME we run together and we use a Webapp I made to do so (now with the help of LLMs too, but I made the app before LLMs).
Don't get me wrong: I consider JavaScript to be one of the suckiest language ever invented and the amateurism of its ecosystem makes me want to vomit. It's not a love-letter to JavaScript: but browsers are very convenient.
Data point of 1 but I prefer all my personal software to be web based so I can easily access it from my phone, laptop, and desktop and not worry about syncing things or installing or updating when I switch devices. Also makes it trivial to extend access to family members as needed.
It's very rare that I reach for local software these days.