Super Idea
A Super Bowl ad that captures the joy of discovering you really can build software now, even if you couldn't before.
Yesterday, as you might expect, there were a bevy of Super Bowl commercials about AI. To me, the one that really stood out was this one:
The ad is fun, and it really captures the joy of discovering that you really can build useful software now, even if you couldn’t before. It’s downright revolutionary.
Now, Base44 is selling a particular product that aims to help people do that. It seems like a nice product! It probably removes some decisions you’d have to understand and make, and streamlines some things that are tricky (for example, they help you get an app in the app stores, which is pretty useful).
On the other hand ... do you need another product for that? I mean, beyond the foundation model / coding assistant? Every layer you add in software adds some cognitive burden of particular things you need to learn, and it can box you in to a particular way of thinking about things. Part of the magic of the underlying LLM technology here, though, is precisely that it unboxes and unbinds you. No matter what road you’re going down, no matter what you want to do or how you want to approach it, it can go there.
Personally, I get that feeling every day building apps with AI models directly, and I don’t see much value in a pretty layer on top. But what do you think?