
Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer - kevindeasis
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/07/software-eats-software/
======
55555
I think I get it. Look at their pricing:

[https://gigster.com/pricing](https://gigster.com/pricing)

Most software development shops don't ever scale past a few dozen or a few
hundred developers. As a result, they don't have much project overlap. If you
were able to scale to handle tons of similar projects, and be picky about
which projects you take on, you could re-use 90% of the code needed for each
project without ever dropping prices, essentially charging over and over again
for hours that were only actually worked once.

All marketplace codebases are pretty similar, all dating apps are pretty
similar, all daily deals sites are pretty similar, etc.

I think all their talk of Artificial Intelligence is nonsense to throw people
off their trail.

~~~
mooreds
I read through their terms of service and you as a developer hand all rights
to your work over to them. That's normal.

But there's little mention of the rights of their client. So maybe they are
trying to get a bunch of reusable ip on the backs of consulting engagements,
like every consulting shop ever. But maybe doing it in a more scalable way.

------
kyllo
_Send Gigster your app idea and it sends you back that app._

So you don't have to talk to developers and they know exactly what you want
from your written description of your idea? What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
marcosdumay
It also farms the code around a bunch of non-communicating developers. No,
problems on the horizon, keep running towards that iceberg.

~~~
seivan
Or it could use a really good developer who also can design - on a contract
basis. Several iOS developers can do that well enough to ship an MvP. Even
more can also spin up a backend with an admin interface on Heroku in no time.
Even without any background jobs. I think you guys my underestimate the
concept here.

I am just mad I didn't come up with it first :-/

The developer doesn't need to manage invoice, other peoples schedules and any
questions. That's taken care of by the service in question.

Specific ideas in. App Out.

This would be great for a developer who wants to get an outlet for creative
(design) ideas as well.

~~~
dagw
The problem is that there is often/always a disconnect between what a client
says they want, what they think they want and what they actually want/need.
What separates a great developer from a merely competent developer is being
able to talk to clients and negotiate that disconnect.

A company that simply takes a spec sheet and implements it as written will end
up with many very unhappy clients.

~~~
kyllo
This is why outsourcing fails. Generally, outsourced developers will just
implement exactly what the spec says to implement, no more and (hopefully) no
less. You can't communicate with them synchronously and answer their questions
in real time because they're located on the opposite side of the earth. Time
is money and waiting for your answers would be too expensive, so they just
don't ask questions, instead they make guesses and assumptions about anything
you haven't clearly specified.

Then you slowly realize that it takes about as much time and effort to write a
comprehensive, detailed specification of the software, as it does to actually
write the software itself.

------
codeshaman
I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software
developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their
skills will be required in a decade from now.

That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers,
have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the
workforce each year..

The demand for software may be growing (although that should peak at some
point too), but that doesn't necessarily mean that the demand for programmers
will follow the same trend.

Quite the opposite it seems...

~~~
jacquesm
> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts
> software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if
> their skills will be required in a decade from now.

I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future
but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense
number of people it would seem that we ourselves should not be immune to
becoming superfluous as well at some point. After all programmer is not some
kind of protected status, if it's ok for programmers to automate away whole
segments of the job market why should programmers expect that their jobs could
never be automated away? If anything we should be _more_ aware of such risks
having been in the drivers seat on this one for the last 50 years.

~~~
aidos
More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we
collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more.

Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to
go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an
interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we
disrupt ourselves.

~~~
ssharp
> The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while
> working less / relaxing more.

The world doesn't reward working less. More automation might lead to lower
average work hours, but the reduction comes from people losing their jobs and
not finding new ones.

So, yes, you get to work less, but you almost might go bankrupt, lose your
house and car, and be reliant on government welfare, if you're "lucky" enough
to live in country with a decent safety net.

~~~
christophilus
I think he was saying that automating all the things is good, but we need to
rethink the economic system that we currently have. Imagine the logical
extreme of our current trajectory: a world in which robots/computers do
everything that humans currently do. 100% automation, 0% employment.

This _should_ be a good thing, giving humans unprecedented leisure time and
producing a huge cultural boom. The problem is that in the current economic
system 0% employment means the world would be impoverished, except for the few
that owned the robot/computer production systems.

------
onewaystreet
The real problems with this idea (which isn't new) come after a project has
been delivered: It looks nice but you find a bug. What now? What's the
turnaround time for getting that bug fixed? What's the cost? What about adding
new features? What about scaling? And if you ever want to hire your own
developers they have to learn a codebase that you yourself don't even
understand.

~~~
seren
It is better suited for "throw away" app, for example, something linked to an
event or conference. Or maybe a brick & mortar business that wants a very
basic app, e.g. a bakery wants an easy way to take cakes order. It is not
targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business primarily based
on the app.

~~~
braythwayt
> It is not targeted to people who want to build a long lasting business
> primarily based on the app.

This is a vast oversimplification, but the general idea in business is to
_identify your core value and make that your core competency_.

Whether the rest of the business can be outsourced, or staffed by a low-paid
expendable grunts, or downloaded onto your vendors, is a question of tactics.

If we buy that general idea, we buy that some businesses may have software,
but its not their core value proposition, and therefore that it’s ok to
outsource it.

(I once met two founders who wanted to do a daily deal type business with
high-end fashion items. I know nothing about this business, but I recall they
were adamant that their “secret sauce” was sourcing the product to sell, not
selling it. Thus, they were talking to consultants about building their deals
site for them.)

------
gexla
The idea here seems to be that the value is in the management. Or owning the
problem and delivering the solution rather than having to act as the manager
of your project.

Gigster places itself in two areas which independent developers often fall
down. Selling their services and managing the project. What often ends up
happening is that neither the client nor the developer are able to manage
their parts and the gap in the middle is the disaster.

In return for taking these spots, Gigster is removing the ability for the
developers to build their own businesses. For many of the faceless contractors
who compete with each other on Odesk and Elance, this might be a good thing.

Even if this model were to blow up, it still doesn't touch the top X percent
of agencies / developers who can manage the entire process, deliver and
demonstrably contribute to the bottom line.

If you are going to be an outsourcer, you need to keep your game moving. There
are too many people out there who shouldn't even be landing gigs. Those of you
who are solid, keep rolling.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I know people who built up a business by freelancing on gig sites. It's tough,
but by delivering quality results in a timely fashion, they found a few
clients who were willing to engage them outside of the gig sites at higher
rates. And once you have a few clients, you get more through referrals.

------
viach
I need a simple program that would create startups + landing pages Andreessen
would invest in

~~~
neppo
there you go:
[http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html](http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html)

keep reloading the url to get random startup landing pages.

~~~
viach
Nice. The next logical step would be to generate the ProductHunt listing

------
w1ntermute
> The company finds top-notch freelance developers, designers, and project
> managers with pedigrees from MIT, CalTech, Google, and Stripe, and only
> accepts 5% of applicants.

Why would such individuals be willing to work as a contractor for this company
in a great enough number and at a low enough rate to make this model scalable
and profitable? Something doesn't add up here.

~~~
morgante
Take a look at the pricing page:
[https://gigster.com/pricing](https://gigster.com/pricing)

Gigster is anything but cheap.

------
simonswords82
This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of
people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the
same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution.

I run a software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price
projects and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed
price/scope/timescale projects are _incredibly_ risky, require massive amounts
of project management resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the
specifications for the work are not watertight and the client isn't managed
well.

Knowing the industry very well, and having completed hundreds of bespoke
projects for all sizes and types of clients I have so many questions about how
the Gigster model works. Off the top of my head:

* What language are the apps built in? This is important to me if I want to hire my own people to continue to build out and support the app going forward. I presume the mobile apps are native, so this question is probably more specific to the web development.

* Do I own the intellectual property on the finished app? * What does the support and maintenance agreement look like and provide? And at what cost?

* What does the contract for development look like? The devil will be in the detail here. For example, I'd be interested to know what happens if my project overruns and deadlines are missed.

* What if I want something built that doesn't fit one of their various examples here [https://gigster.com/pricing](https://gigster.com/pricing)?

* Who writes the specification? Who creates the wireframes for the app?

* Who performs quality assurance testing? What happens if the work I receive is excessively buggy?

Bespoke development of software is _hard_ and it's great to see somebody take
this on. I wish Gigster luck but I fear for their sanity as they attempt to
scale.

~~~
cheez
> This type of progression in software development is inevitable. Groups of
> people writing individual lines of code for bespoke apps will one day go the
> same way looms in factories went after the industrial revolution. > I run a
> software company, and we've actually moved away from fixed price projects
> and only provide development on a day rate. Fixed price/scope/timescale
> projects are incredibly risky, require massive amounts of project management
> resource, and can be insanely unprofitable if the specifications for the
> work are not watertight and the client isn't managed well.

These two sentences don't seem to make sense. On the one hand, you say it's
inevitable. On the other hand, as someone who has RUN a software company, you
say you couldn't figure it out. Is that correct?

~~~
simonswords82
It is of course inevitable that somebody more intelligent than me is going to
automate the development of bespoke software.

We don't automate software development, we still do it the old fashioned way.
As such rather than attempt to tackle the problems associated with fixed price
projects, we changed our business model to charge a day rate and reduce risk
that way. We took this approach because we don't have millions of dollars of
investors money in the bank to allow us to trial and error other solutions.

~~~
cheez
Perhaps. A lot of meatspace architecture has been automated as well so you may
be right in your prediction, but I think it will come about more organically
through the use of specialized software tools. Eventually developers/engineers
will be just like plumbers.

------
throaway859028
I've worked on gigster. Throwaway account to avoid this being linked to my
account.

A few thoughts:

1) The talk of an AI to price things marketing fluff. There is no magic AI
that can price, for example, the fact that a client changes his mind, or that
legacy code has unexpected bugs.

2) The reusable component stuff is not fully deployed yet. I think where it
has potential is as app templates. A lot of apps have similar starting points,
and it makes sense to encapsulate those starting points in project templates.
I am doubtful that this will evolve into a magic solution that makes software
engineering easy.

3) The big innovation, from my perspective, is that they are harnessing the
spare work capacity of software engineers. It is very easy for a full time
employed engineer to hop onto the platform and make some extra cash. I think
this separates them from traditional outsourcing shops, or oDesk.

4) Another innovation is that they capture the reputation gains from their
work. Traditionally a freelancer would build relationships with their clients,
the freelancers reputation improves as he does good work. With gigster, you as
a freelancer do not have an external reputation. Gigster gets the benefit of
your good (or bad) work.

Largely because of (4) I would be cautious as a freelancer on gigster. The pay
is project based, not hourly, which means there is high variance/randomness to
the hourly pay.

------
Tiquor
Turning the creation of derivative apps into a unique business model. Which
sounds great as long as people continue to desire creating derivative apps en
masse.

~~~
raverbashing
99% of apps is data entry + usable interface + communication with a rest
interface (meaning, there isn't a lot of 'intelligence' within)

Seems very replicable

~~~
sharemywin
especially when you use MIT graduates to do the actual work. lol...

~~~
gizzlon
What MIT grad want's this job..? My guess is that they exaggerate this quite a
bit. The xyz graduates are probably the founders :)

~~~
morgante
Why wouldn't an MIT grad want to work flexible hours from anywhere in the
world?

~~~
dagw
If all you want to do is sit on a beach an hack on trivial CRUD apps why would
you bother to go to MIT in the first place?

------
roymurdock
Discussion of Gigster (YC S15) "Prolancer" business model from 4 months ago -
188 comments, including responses from the founders:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931596)

------
henrik_w
Two quotes that I like and think are relevant to the discussion:

"Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the
specification." \-- Fred Brooks

"If you don't understand precisely what you need to do, what makes you think
you can tell a computer how to do it?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173640)

For a highly standardized product, maybe the "specifying what you want" isn't
a big problem, but in other cases I think it is.

------
flipp3r
Why invest 10M when he could've just asked Gigster to make a better Gigster?

~~~
sean2
Good question; I think you were going for funny, but you highlighted what they
can and can't do there.

They build apps. So I'm sure sell you 90% of their code, but they can't re-
code their brand name, repeat costumers and the staff that they seem to take
some pride in.

------
cyrusradfar
As much as I want to snark in this thread as well – it's an audacious goal.

When I was in school at Georgia Tech, one of my professors talked a lot about
SmallTalk and Alice. Both were ways to make coding more accessible to a larger
audience.

I can't help but think that the future is going to continue to make
development more accessible to people. I definitely think Gigster has their
work cut out for them; nevertheless, I'm one for the fact that it would be
pretty awesome if I was never asked to 'build a webpage' again.

~~~
mziel
Lots of tools make coding more accessible to large audience. IDE, higher-level
languages, better tooling, libraries/frameworks/modules, stackoverflow.

However this didn't result in less work for the programmers, on the contrary.
Same thing may apply here. Just the pressure points will change.

------
sharemywin
Should be software eats project manager. the code is still done by people.

------
ianstallings
If I was younger, and cheaper, I'd consider working as a freelancer with these
guys. Seems like a possible way to funnel in work while offloading a lot of
the PM responsibilities.

I will say one thing though - fixed pricing on projects is tricky. I would be
interested to see how they set and meet expectations, while also not charging
for overages. It seems like the developer might have to be the one to eat the
costs if it goes over.

~~~
iofj
Exactly, a lot of the freelancer workplaces used to work like this.
Vworker.com comes to mind, but there's a lot of others.

Arguing about work not done was a major hassle.

------
uptownfunk
From a pure economic division-of-labor standpoint it makes sense. However I
thought the modern business approach was to move away from strictly defined
boxes of job roles and have everyone involved with everything (with some fuzzy
focus on a particular role). With the hope that some cross pollination of
ideas results in some synergistic result where the sum is greater than the
individual parts.

However the upshot of this seems to me that now people can focus on ideas and
idea generation instead of having to worry about maintaining programmers. Like
what cloud did for hardware/computing.

What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs
a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you
would get a program that did that. Then what we need is to hook that up to an
artificial neural network that takes human text and outputs new ideas for
apps.

Hey andreesen I'll be taking my $10mm check now. Thanks.

~~~
lojack
> What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and
> outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100"
> and you would get a program that did that.

The problem is normal human text is ambiguous and flawed. Case in point:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=write+me+a+program+that+adds+the+numbers+1+to+100)

Correct, but probably not quite what you intended.

~~~
tormeh
Yeah, but when the latency from description input to program output is in
seconds, then you could iterate on the description quite fast. It would be
like programming, except you don't need to know any algorithms and all the
plumbing takes care of itself.

~~~
sean2
"Write me a web-site that allows users to login using Facebook and sign up for
my mailing list."

It's a program that I think can be written in an autonomous fashion, but I
just wanted to point out that as soon as you start coding non-trivial
programs, testing and debugging you're non-specific language is going to be
hell. So bad that I think you are going to have to write thousands of
sentences, and eventually decide you want a more specific language than
English when you can't determine which of the thousands of words or
grammatical elements you and the computer disagree on.

------
tatx
They mention that the “the client base moved to enterprise” and I think that,
if Gigster is ever reasonably successful, it will end up as a shop making
niche products for enterprises who find it difficult to fit such development
activities into their budgets and schedules. They will then be directly
competing with consultants who today do not provide an 'end-to-end' solution,
so to say, to the development problems plaguing these enterprise companies.

But it is mighty difficult to do this kind of niche work because developers
will then have to spend an inordinate amount of time acquiring relevant domain
knowledge to implement these niche solutions. Hard earned knowledge that will
be useless after the project is complete. And the effort of acquiring this
domain knowledge will often be under-appreciated and underpaid, cause it is
very very difficult to estimate this effort no matter how good an AI have you.

------
brianbreslin
Can someone explain how their AI produces even remotely accurate quotes? Also
what is the price range of these projects?

~~~
scotty79
I can see no reason why asking developers (or whomever) would get any better
estimates than AI does. Trick is that quotes are rarely ever even remotely
accurate. You could probably get better estimates from written description
with random number generator if tuned properly.

------
freshfey
"Within two weeks of its launch in late July, Gigster already had $1 million
in sales booked."

Can someone walk me through how this is possible? As in, what does a company
like Gigster focus on to reach sales so quickly?

~~~
allsmiles
This isn't Roger Dickey's first time starting a business so that certainly
helps. Estimating the cost of their service to be around $5k, to reach $1
million in sales would mean 200 apps shipped. That seems like a reasonable
feat as long as he plays his cards right.

~~~
woah
I don't think it even means apps delivered, started or even necessarily paid
for. I'm guessing that a number of people who could optimistically be presumed
to represent this amount of sales signed up.

------
BatFastard
“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-
aided_software_engine...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-
aided_software_engineering)

Maybe it IS different this time around. I can see for very simple apps this
might be possible. But one of the first questions that often gets asked on
projects that I am on is "Is this even possible?"

~~~
bdcravens
Technology is filled with plenty of idea that have their second comings:
consumer tablets, grocery delivery, etc.

~~~
BatFastard
Totally agree! I have seen VR be hyped 3 times now, lets hope thing on sticks.
Personally I don't believe in computer estimation of anything but the simplest
project

------
cognivore
People who want software built are usually (in my experience, almost always)
incapable of describing what they want. But they know what they like or don't
like when they see it, and then they get ideas for changes. Unless Gigster
(really?) gets that part figured out all they'll be capable of creating is the
next app that sits in the middle of the the app store charts that no one cares
about.

~~~
saiprashanth93
The first two lines of this comment should be written down on every wall of
every dev shop in the planet.

------
orthoganol
I wish the article's author wouldn't sound so naive - why wouldn't he discuss
all the other similar attempts at automating app development, their
shortcomings, and how Gigster is going to find a way to do better? People
might think from reading his article that this hasn't been going on for a
decade+.

------
Bjorkbat
So, core technology is an AI system that, given a project, will automatically
determine how long it will take and what sort of work will be required?

Great, I'll buy a license and tell my buddies here in New Mexico about it so
we can compete with Gigster at probably 25% of whatever they're charging for
apps, because New Mexico is cheap as all hell yet still remarkably beautiful.
Don't tell too many of your friends, we're trying to keep it that way.

But seriously, this is nothing more than a development agency that happens to
have a very cool piece of tech on hand that enables them to essentially
productize development. That's cool. But eventually that same piece of tech
will eventually be replicated and available to freelancers the world over,
probably as a subscription-based service.

It doesn't even have to be that smart.

------
thewarrior
Gigster + [https://stamplay.com/](https://stamplay.com/) (Drag and Drop
backends) + A front end automator is going to lead to the commoditization of
the software developer.

~~~
mattmanser
We've done this before, RAD tools in the early 2000s and then a few years
after that it was workflows.

It doesn't work.

One of the skills of being a programmer is to change a business workflow,
which are often very vague and even very inefficient and open to
interpretation, into a logical workflow.

Business people just don't have that skill, so what happens is that you need a
bunch of programmers to operate the RAD tools. But the RAD tools have a bunch
of restrictions and quirks and don't quite do what is wanted so the programmer
is asked if he can just tweak it a bit.

And soon those little 'tweaks' are taking longer than building the whole thing
from scratch.

~~~
thewarrior
Wow I was just waiting to ask someone who's seen this stuff about this.

I'm planning to create some tools ease CRUD workflows.

I think my point was not properly conveyed. The goal is not to get the pointy
haired boss programming your expense report app. But instead of paying someone
with 4 years of experience , you just use a team of people you trained in 3 -
4 months to do most of the screens using such tools .

Is that unrealistic ?

PS : Yup any code generator needs to have a lot of extensible points so you
can change it.

~~~
mattmanser
I haven't seen any modern ones, but back in the day it was generally a
complete and utter disaster.

And having extensible points doesn't work.

The whole problem is that if they're complicated enough to actually encode a
client's project, they're so complicated that they're really just a visual
programming language.

But that means all the code conditions are hidden in drop-downs and
checkboxes. But in reality that's the logic, those options are the code, but
you can't easily read the code. If you can't read the code, you can't
understand the code. So increasingly no-one has a clue what the system is
really doing and you have to test it like crazy.

It also makes it very hard to know what has and hasn't changed and even if you
can diff it somehow you often can't even understand what the change means.

Other problems include the 'extensible points' not being atomic enough, or too
atomic, or badly documented, or badly coded, or just plain insanely coded. And
if there's a bug you've got to wait for the code generator to be fixed.

And finally you are locked in to your vendor. Which becomes a big deal.

What happens is that you'll start writing your own code to fix these problems,
or edit the auto-generated output somehow (if you're lucky enough to be
allowed to) and it'll rapidly turn in to a complete mess that only 1 or 2
people really understand what's going on and it takes a month to do changes
that should take a day or two.

ORMs are the closest we get to auto-code generation and there's a reason we
stop there. We learnt from bitter experience. And even they can be dangerous
in the wrong hands.

Still, I guess we've got to try again every now and then, one day someone
might nail it.

------
alphadevx
“project management is the place where the most human error happens.”

Note sure about that. I mean PM's don't write bugs, right?

~~~
benburton
When their requests lack clarity and specificity, they definitely do.

~~~
Agathos
And sometimes the requirements are clear, specific, and wrong.

------
Agathos
Hasn't software been eating software development ever since the first compiler
was written?

~~~
tim333
Kinda. Things like compilers increase software produced per hour but the total
quantity of software demanded is open ended.

------
srameshc
Isn't this called outsourcing ? But still someone has to write the code.

------
gizzlon
Does anyone understand the pricing? :
[https://gigster.com/pricing](https://gigster.com/pricing)

~~~
SimpleXYZ
Those are the prices to build clones of those sites (I think).

~~~
gizzlon
yeah, that's what I though at first as well, but Instagram on the Web >
Facebook on the Web? =?

Tinder > Facebook ??

~~~
tim333
I guess that's a pretty simplified Facebook rather than the 20m+ LOC actual

------
joeyspn
I wonder why you can't pick design related skills in the signup form... is
this just for devs and PMs?

------
philfrasty
I constantly have this Facebook-Ad for the last couple of weeks that says „We
build your MVP for 5k“.

------
erikb
It's the right track, but we haven't met the goal yet.

------
mbrutsch
Now if someone would do this for the desktop...

------
OpenDrapery
interesting that this wasn't titled "Software Development Eats Itself"

------
stuartmalcolm
The COBOL vision lives on..

