January 30, 2026
Hype, hope, and hot takes
Software Survival 3.0
Yegge: AI will build it all — commenters say slow down, fix Blender, learn strategy
TLDR: Steve Yegge says AI will soon build most software and lays out who survives, but commenters roast the hype, push for business strategy basics, and argue “refactor, don’t rebuild.” The thread splits between believers in AI everything and skeptics who say real-world costs and maintenance still rule.
Steve Yegge is back predicting a world where AI builds almost all software, pointing to his projects like Gas Town and his “believe the curves” mantra. But the comments section turned into a street brawl. One top reply basically says: “Smart guy, wrong class,” urging Yegge to study business strategy like Stratechery and Porter’s Five Forces before declaring who survives. Another camp mocks the idea of “debating” with an AI chatbot to validate a theory, calling the bots “sycophantic”—they’ll agree if you keep prompting.
Meanwhile, the practical crowd asks: why rebuild the world when you can just fix what’s broken? One commenter uses the free 3D tool Blender as the example: don’t “vibe code” a new app—tune the one people already use. Then comes the heat: a blunt takedown says hype is easy, debunking is hard, and reminds everyone that Stack Overflow’s slide started before AI. Plus, the “buy vs. build” fight lights up—some say companies pay for SaaS (software you rent online) to have someone else babysit the mess, not because they can’t code it.
For comic relief, Yegge’s tale of Marv’s chonk squirrel becomes the thread’s mascot, with folks joking it knows as much evolutionary theory as the hype cycle. Bonus meme: one dev stans Ruby because AI loves low-friction, “do-what-I-mean” code. Panthers, catnip, and plenty of popcorn.
Key Points
- •Steve Yegge reports building multiple AI-assisted systems, notably Gas Town and Beads, to probe AI’s advancing capabilities.
- •He asserts an AI progression timeline: completions (2023), chat (2024), agents (early 2025), and orchestration by early 2026.
- •Gas Town is presented as an early, minimally viable orchestration system built with late‑2025‑level models and ad‑hoc tooling.
- •Yegge argues AI is shifting the buy‑vs‑build calculus, enabling business teams to build in‑house SaaS rather than renew niche vendors.
- •He cites AI pressure on several software categories, including Stack Overflow, Chegg, Tier‑1 support tools, low‑code/no‑code platforms, writing assistants, productivity tools, and IDEs (noting Claude Code).