[ChicagoDave]

The buy vs build discussion has dramatically changed with GenAI. Some enterprise systems need to remain vendor based, but there’s a ton of space for mid-size and smaller companies to build and maintain their own systems and tons of software that were excel apps could be fully realized departmental systems.

[onion2k]

That's a short term view. Any system you build inhouse has to be maintained until you replace it, and often the longer it remains in place the harder it is to do that. You might save a small amount of cash (which might be important at the time tbf) but you're creating a major headache for later. Legacy code is debt, and that includes all your code. It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place.

Everyone who founds a company needs to remember that they're building a system of systems that all interact and influence each other, and you have to balance short term cash flow against long term strategy.

[aleph_minus_one]

> It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place.

It's not uncommon that this maintainer actually wants to get away from maintaining this code, and would actually be quite willing to teach some successor how everything works.

The problem is that it is often hard to find someone who is similarly passionate about this system (often the system only keeps working because the original maintainer invests a lot of energy into keeping it alive), and is thus brutally willing to learn this system inside out. You can't force this mentality from above: either a suitable programmer has this mentality or he is typically not suitable.

[PacificSpecific]

I don't understand why you appear to be downvoted for this (your comment is faded at the time I'm reading this). It sounds like a perfectly reasonable take.

I've certainly inherited and also caused these problems in my younger years.

[RamblingCTO]

Sorry, this take just shows that you probably are not running a business. Having someone dedicate their whole business to a solution to one of your problems will most likely get a better result than you doing a hackjob you can't even maintain. Let alone the maintenance, logistics, complexity, time etc. The economics just aren't there to vibe code even more than 30% of the software you use.

People running businesses want to focus on their core business and are happy to pay for pain points to go away, for money to come in or less money to come out. It's that simple.

[ChicagoDave]

I’ve been a consultant to fortune 100 companies throughout my career and the amount of pain they willingly endure supporting Excel, Access, and .NET/Java applications is astounding. The desire to eliminate these things is high, but there’s no political will over cost and appeasing departmental management.

I think GenAI opens Pandora’s box and all of these decisions change.

[throw77488]

You sound like a salesman. Small business will always choose 1 hour free "hack" fix, over $50k solution with "complexity, maintenance..". Shitty python script with DuckDB running locally on laptop, can get you long long way.