On using LLMs to write software

I asked the internet about which products are built without any AI, and a few have already been mentioned in the comments (go check out it – new Pagecord beta feature!). It's a pretty interesting topic! I think if you have the passion, the time, the skill, and the patience, it would be a very nice way to work. Certainly on an established product. It's how I worked for over 25 years as a software developer in some form or other, but I was never a hardcore geek or programming genius. I worked with many people who were, and they inhabited a higher plane of software engineering that I could ever reach. Trust me, I tried.

These days I use coding LLMs to help me build Pagecord, but I'm a conductor and supervisor with very high standards, not a vibe coder. Claude may produce the initial code, but I batter it into submission until it's as perfect as I think it needs to be. I like working this way because I have ambition as well as impatience. These LLMs allow me to accomplish things on a grander scale in less time than it would take to hand-crank, and this suits me down to the ground. It also gives me the reassurance of 24/7 technical support, which as a solo founder running a product for customers around the globe, is nothing short of a miracle to these wise old eyes.

I'm very curious to see whether my status as not a software artisan will hurt Pagecord in the long term. I've learned over the years that many Pagecord customers hold strong opinions against AI, big tech, and the US of A, so my LLM use could be a problem. That said, I've yet to see evidence that would cause me to ditch companies I use like Cloudflare and Anthropic. I may be wrong, and time will tell.

At the end of the day, I'm trying to make the best indie blogging product I can, with the limited time and resources I have to spend on it. I think what I've built is really good. I use it pretty much every day, and I genuinely love it. Coding LLMs have helped me accomplish this, and I genuinely don't think I could have achieved this without them, so that's why I use them.

I'd love to hear what you think, on coding LLMs or the artisan software approach, in the comments or by email.