I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
There's this unspoken assumption in the dev community that a tool needs to be technically impressive to be worth building. Like, if you can't explain the architecture in a way that gets nods at a conference, it doesn't really count.
And then there's the other extreme—the AI slop wave. Products that seem sophisticated but solve nothing. Demos that work great until you actually try to use them.
Both of these things make me tired in the same way.
The stuff I actually reach for every day isn't clever. It's just... there when I need it. Does one thing. Gets out of the way.
I think a lot of builders (myself included, for a while) conflate "hard to build" with "valuable." But users don't care about the insides. They care whether the 15 minutes of friction is gone.
That's kind of become my personal filter when I'm evaluating ideas now: is there a real person who has this annoyance, and does fixing it actually free up something for them? Not "is this technically interesting." Not "is this AI-powered." Just—does it help.
Curious if others think about it this way. Especially when you're building smaller, focused tools—how do you justify the simplicity to yourself (or to others)?
Top comments (8)
On DEV, there is a lot of articles where they over complicate a specific topic or have too much content to read to the point where it is overwhelming for me.
I tend to look for articles that are "easy" to read, but also the project that is really impressive. All articles are created uniquely and it all comes down to writing whether it connects to the reader or not. I feel like now, articles are generated with AI with terminologies that I do not understand and seeing a lot of fluff where it can be reduce down to one paragraph. I do agree that a tool needs to be helpful, but it's not a bad idea to share something random on DEV. It's a small community after all and everyone here is really supportive.
Not everyone here is "AI". I am not AI lol, but I do get where you are coming from where AI is everywhere and it is difficult to determine what to look for.
Thanks for sharing Marvson!
That's what an AI would say! 😁
I'm with you.
Man im constantly thinking this to myself. I get it. Everyone has the capabilities to put out a lot of work so everyone is going balls to the wall with every single idea that comes to them. I get that aspect of getting some work done but at the same time it is literally the same cookie cutter template for making the writing more glamorous and technical sounding. I use it to make my own work and ideas more clear because it makes sense to me in my head but on paper it sounds like a person who has mental problems. I wish people would meet halfway using AI by adding their own style and feel to the posts. There so many ways you can make it your own while having the clean organized aspect ai provides but people literally let models control the ideas, the creation, and even the posts about that work they are doing without any of the human parts added in. It’s just an Ai circle jerk. No creativity at all and to create something genuinely orginal, you have to have some kind of creative drive
I wouldn’t even bother myself to think that small simple stuff could make a viral software product. Would be too naive unless there’s some other edge involved.
But I do like building these small niche products for specific use cases. They take up to 30min to build and fit my needs exactly.
AI slop and architectural complexity are not opposites. They are two sides of the same problem. Both help us avoid the hard work of genuine understanding. The deeper issue is that AI slop is recalibrating our cognitive taste buds. Like fast food slowly erasing your ability to taste real ingredients, hyper polished AI content is atrophying our capacity to tolerate productive discomfort. The texts that confuse you and force you to pause, those rough edges are what AI cannot convincingly fake. They are the human fingerprint.
So maybe the test for a small tool is not just whether it removes friction. Maybe we should also ask whether it preserves just enough irreplaceable friction. Some friction is not a bug. It is the rough surface where thinking grips. If a problem truly matters, solving it should feel a little gritty. Otherwise we might just be letting AI live an unexamined digital life on our behalf.
I totally get you 💯 I'm also tired of articles that are missing personal style and instead are bloated with watery speech and "clever" words; very often unnecessarily long. I want concretes! Better a short article that is straight to the point, than a longer one where I need to put extra strength to find the essence.
As for tools, I cannot say too much myself, as I am a technical writer, not a developer. I know some tools, but I haven't written any code myself... till recently. I started thinking about taking part in the dev challenge, especially since I have an idea that could be helpful for people in their daily lives. AI came as a great help in guiding me on how to set up my first app, and I did it! 🎉 I'm super curious where it will lead me :)
Upto AI era , every developer and business owner got a speed boost on developing. But it came with some drawbacks :) AI helped many business oriented people enter the market to validate their idea. If you inspect any specific application in a developer's point of view somethings may seem wrong but I believe every AI slop also help all the ecosystem to evolve faster, by faster trial and denial.
ahhh... human talks. I'm join in.