Before AI we had ...

The difficulty of creating software has never been the main challenge, as cheap developers on platforms like Fiverr or UpWork could build an app for $50-$100 long before AI tools existed. It states that the real obstacle is distribution, which causes 99% of apps to fail, and notes that neither cheap human developers nor current AI tools are reliable for handling complex codebases.

Nowadays you will hear a lot of people saying Why should I hire a software developer when I can vibecode it my self with about $100 worth of AI tools? Well they aren't wrong about that But getting an app made and running was never the hard part. Before AI or vibe coding we had platforms like Fiverr/UpWork where people could just pay a third world country developer $50-$100 to build them their app. So getting a working APP or at least MVP was never really very hard or expensive rather its the distribution part that kills 99% of the apps. And for handling complex apps or codebases cheap developers were not reliable then, AI tools are not reliable now