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- Hacker News
- I'm a big believer in the philosophy "Make the thing you want, and chances are it's what others want also". I'm also a big believer in whole-hog vibe-coding. So none of these cons resonate with me. The code is slop, hell yeah it is! And it works GREAT. The users? It's me, and anyone who sees me using it and gets jealous.by phendrenad2
- I should probably create my own project at some point, but most of what I do is building mini shopping malls or integrating large machinery equipment. Someday, I'd like to make a project that other people actually use.
As an independent developer, the advantage is that I can do a lot of different things. It's hard to go deep into one area, but I can work across many different kinds of projects—building drones, inspection equipment, testing gear, shopping malls, red-team work for security companies, smart farm control systems, home trading systems, apartment wall pads, POS, WMS, data collection for academic papers, and more. I've worked on quite a variety of projects and stacks. That's the upside. The downside is that it's hard to develop the same depth of expertise as a team-based developer. In reality, most of the work is just reading manuals and implementing things according to them.
Right now I'm working on creating a programming language, but I'm a little worried because everyone seems to be building languages with LLMs these days. Ultimately, a language needs to offer enough value for users to actually want to try it, and I'm not sure I can create something compelling enough to attract interest.
The machinery equipment work I usually do depends on factories expanding nearby, but lately the area I live in has been declining, so there's not much of that work anymore. Someday I'd like to build a project that people remember. But unlike Western developers, I'm far from the mainstream of programming, and my skills aren't that great either, so I'm not sure what to do or what would even be a good direction.
If I joined a company, I'd have to leave my area, but then rent would be hard to afford, and my workflow would be so different from theirs that I'm not sure it would work out. I feel like I've designed my career poorly. And it's not like I'd be able to get hired in this job market anyway
by jdw64 - I've spent most of the last two or so years working solo (engineering wise) professionally. I'd say the biggest con is that it's lonely. I've gone weeks without talking to people at work. I think that would drive most people crazy :).
I'd say responsibility is the same for me as I've only worked at small companies as a generalist. But yeah I suspect if you come from big tech land, being the everything person might be super tough to get used to.
by goosejuice - > But... I don't truly know what my users want. There is no telemetry of any kind in Luxury Yacht. I like being able to say that, but it means I have no idea how many people are using it, or how they're using it. I don't know what features are the most important to other people.
So add telemetry and a request tracker like https://www.productboard.com/. This is not a solo vs team thing.
by esafak - Most projects don't need telemetry. They need better logs.
On the backend... Why wouldn't you log every request that hits your server, and why wouldn't you already know what those requests mean? Why would you let your frontend make direct requests to any other server when you can just proxy it yourself and maintain control?
On the frontend... What's so hard about wrapping all your event listeners and periodically sending those logs back to your server?
That's not even scratching the surface, but even something this simple and easy to implement is already miles ahead of most free-tier telemetry offerings, and you retain full control.
by sublinear - I don't want to add telemetry. And I think this is where the solo vs team thing matters. I can just say "no telemetry" and I don't need to argue with anyone about it. I make the decision and live with the consequence.
I don't really need to know how many people use the app. It would be cool to know, but not necessary.
If someone wants a feature, or a fix, they can open an issue.
by johnj-hn - Founding a company, or just working on any project with a very small team (Less than 5 people) has all of the same issues the author wrote about here. At least they did for me. I resonated a lot with this. ---
Separately, I hope the author of this project is able recognize how this project might be able to grow sustainably. Its a hard thing to know that you won't be able to work on something forever, and either building a community who wants to maintain a core project or having some company pay to maintain it could be a good idea. Linus isn't going to be around forever, but I expect that linux will outlive him by a good margin.
by twosdai - I imagine that this will happen organically if Luxury Yacht ever grows to the point that I can't maintain it alone anymore. Although given that it's such a niche thing, with a relatively limited scope (relative to your Linux comparison) I don't really see this happening.
The more likely outcome is that something happens to me and I can't maintain it anymore. But if there's sufficient interest in keeping it going, anyone can fork it and pick up where I left off.
by johnj-hn - A version of this I've been enjoying is mostly solo dev but with a biz-guy partner. I mostly just build software but have a partner who will go find out how people are using it, what they want, handle inbound, and be there to chat about ideas even if we're not getting into the technical weeds.by rgbrgb
- All the pros listed really resonate with me. I don't develop software as a career anymore, but do it as a hobby. I wouldn't take on a second developer partner for any of my projects. I guess it would feel like working on a beautiful, personal painting and recruiting a second artist to paint half of it. Maybe that works for others, but it's just not how I see myself creating a work. I'd accept small patches to fix bugs, but for the actual overall thrust of my projects, I'll probably always be lone-wolf.by ryandrake
- I feel the same way. I have hired a number of people over the years for various jobs who I’ve enjoyed working with. But it was out of a desire to capitalize on various situations, move faster. When it comes down to it, I am happier moving slower and alone, and the end result is always better.by majicDave
- I feel like your con about not making the right design choices isn't a con. Solo development doesn't mean throwing out the principles that help you learn. Prototyping and beta releases exist to validate design choices without needing a team to debate them. If your software has users they become the sounding board. You mentioned only asking your friends about your ideas. The best part about prototypes and betas is that you get to build something, use it, and see if you like it before committing. If the idea doesn't get traction, throw it away!by neovintage
- Yeah I understand what you're saying here. Some of that is just me dealing with imposter syndrome. I pretty much know what a good app looks like, and I have definitely been through a lot of iterations to get Luxury Yacht to where it is today. Thanks.by johnj-hn
- For me the Best Pros is "That one random-internet-comment is a good usability improvement, ask LLM to do the small change and commit immediately."
Smaller ideas need not be approved, or held back by schedule pressure from bean counters. Just Do It. :). It's the small corrections which end up polishing the product as good as "professional usability studies".
by ramshanker - A team can do the same, it's based on management structure, not the existence of a team.by satvikpendem
- Yeah, the small bits of sand in the gears is something that is hard to sell when you allocating engineering effort. But it adds up over time.
It makes the difference between a tool that is a pleasure to use and one that causes dread.
by mooreds - The sharpest con for me is blind spots: solo you're the author, the reviewer and the QA, and all three share the same wrong assumptions. Same goes for weaknesses: on a team someone covers what you're bad at, solo nobody does. LLMs patch this surprisingly well on the technical side - it's a reviewer that didn't write the code, but much less on marketing, positioning, all the stuff outside the editor.by vadchen
- this issue resonates for me very much, as a one person startup experimenter in 2026 like a whole bunch of other people. I have a day job with lots of human interaction, but I've been trying to find the edges of what's possible as a single person on my fun side project, and I still haven't found them. I built a product in 3 months, and then wondered if I could commercialise it in another three, which I've now done. The unlock for me was an agent framework a friend made that allows me to "hire" collaborators that don't just take orders, but push back, do research and challenge my thinking. I've made a virtual head of product, a virtual head of marketing, a chhief of staff, etc, and can only say I've been blown away by what they've added to my thinking and my capabilities. They totally reframed my approach to building my web site, choosing a commercial back end, and commencing the marketing journey. It's not magic, but it encodes a management philosophy that resonates with me and I still have no idea where the limits are with what I can do alone... https://github.com/normannoble/agent-frameworkby james_ross
- The rule to remember about solo development: Alone I can go faster, together we can go further!
Everything else boils down to this.
by lelanthran - “We need to go far, fast”
- Team just eats your runway, and adds shit ton of overhead.
Plus it is much healthier to have a social life outside of work. Talk about something else, no algos!
by throw939393 - The problem is when you have the wrong team. It's way too easy to partner with the wrong person, and not even know until years later.
I'm finding that yes, it takes longer on my own, I can have AI do much of the stuff for me that I don't want to do.
- Together we can go further, but the more of us there are, the least we can deviate from the paved road.by marcosdumay
- Perhaps. I think AI changes the equation here. Honestly, AI changes what "solo developer" even means.by johnj-hn