Did you look at the parts and content, or just leap to this assumption?
My first couple days with Fusion had similar outcomes, and this is totally credible. There are extremely talented YouTubers that have information-dense guides through many features. It's totally plausible with that and having a mentor showing you a tool to succeed here.
Why add negativity to something cool? There is a build log! It's well done and tangible! It's not slop! Celebrating is always more fun than humbugging.
I am building an app that is for a niche market, and I wouldn't have started without LLMs.
The hard part of this app is great design, requiring intentionally designed workflows and lots of real world testing. The code isn't the interesting part and now code isn't taking most of my time. It's great!
Once the design is nailed down and workflows tightened up, I don't expect much active development and can focus on distribution and marketing.
As a solo dev, this feels totally doable but ask me in 6 months.
This is a timely observation and feels right to me. I needed to get a relatively simple batch download -> transform -> api endpoint stood up. I wrote a fairly detailed prompt but left a lot of implementation details out, including data sources.
Opus 4.7 built it about 90% the same way I would, but had way more convenience methods and step-validations included.
It's great, and really frees me
up to think about harder problems.
Malcolm Gladwell's description of that accident and amplification is simplistic and not very accurate. There were many errors made that caused that accident, including ATC failing to follow protocol.
English is the language of aviation because in 1951 the countries with the most living pilots and aircraft spoke English. It is not because of any trait particular to English.
Merely for the viability part: I use the $20/mo plan now, but only as a part-time independent dev. I will hit rate-limits with Opus on any moderately complex app.
If I am on a roll, I will flip on Extra Usage. I prototyped a fully functional and useful niche app in ~6 total hours and $20 of extra usage, and it's solid enough and proved enough value to continue investing in and eventually ship to the App store.
Without Claude I likely wouldn't have gotten to the finished prototype version to use in the real world.
For Indy dev, I think LLMs are a new source of solutions. This app is too niche to justify building and marketing without LLM assistance. It likely won't earn more than $25k/year but good enough!
My first couple days with Fusion had similar outcomes, and this is totally credible. There are extremely talented YouTubers that have information-dense guides through many features. It's totally plausible with that and having a mentor showing you a tool to succeed here.
Why add negativity to something cool? There is a build log! It's well done and tangible! It's not slop! Celebrating is always more fun than humbugging.