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.
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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.
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.
I’d love to hear more about your experience, particularly with the point on hyperfocus - this is something I struggle to find a healthy relationship with.
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".
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.
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!
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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-framework
I don't _think_ so, but my understanding of BMAD is second hand. I gather it provides multiple types of agents who play different roles but that those roles are predefined. The frame work I am using lets you "hire" people of any kind of role, based on a job description, a personality, an autonomy ladder and access to tools that you define, and it operates in a session-based mode. It's a bit like having 1 on 1's with different experts and it has helped me immensely with my knowledge and skill gaps on the commercial side.
One of the biggest benefits I see AI bringing is to solo development.
Not because it’ll make you faster (which it can).
But because when it’s 2am and your server is crashing and you don’t understand the error messages and your solo business is melting down, with AI you have a virtual helper to get you through solving tough problems.
Nothing is worse than being alone and things are breaking and you don’t know what to do or who to talk too since you’re solo and don’t have anyone else to troubleshoot with.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 38.8 ms ] threadSeparately, 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.
i assume most people are just against the ad-driven telemetry
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.
- do everything you can to keep burnout at bay
- you do, in fact, need a holiday
- hyperfocus is not your friend, ever; if you feel you can’t put it down, you must put it down
- never delete emails; the one thing you can guarantee is that you will need an email you deleted
- if you look back at your notes and they are not instantly obvious, rewrite them while you still remember what you meant, because one day you won’t
- you might be selling your abilities but you should never rely on them yourself; you do need systems
- you can fall out of love with the thing you are best at
- listen to your friends when they sell your talents; if they say you can do a thing, who are you to argue?
- three days of fully billable work per week is already too risky to gamble on, so:
- you are not charging enough
- YOU ARE NOT CHARGING ENOUGH
- FFS do you even listen? You’re not charging enough
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".
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
Everything else boils down to this.
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.
So add telemetry and a request tracker like https://www.productboard.com/. This is not a solo vs team thing.
Not because it’ll make you faster (which it can).
But because when it’s 2am and your server is crashing and you don’t understand the error messages and your solo business is melting down, with AI you have a virtual helper to get you through solving tough problems.
Nothing is worse than being alone and things are breaking and you don’t know what to do or who to talk too since you’re solo and don’t have anyone else to troubleshoot with.
AI can be your helper in those times of need.