🗞 What's New: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding

We've got a long one today, and we've brought back Courtland's tweet pick! Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• AI is making writing code faster, but it isn't resulting in higher-quality software.
• Top creators can now get monetized on Snapchat, but it comes with a cost.
• Fintech firm Klarna has essentially stopped hiring altogether, thanks to AI.
• $10K MRR with a productized service. Chris Poka recorded videos and posted them on X and LinkedIn to bring in new users.

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AI-assisted coding’s early promise — generating code at breakneck speed — is running into a stubborn reality: Quality isn’t following quantity.

In this piece, Google engineer Addy Osmani breaks down the subtle factors behind AI’s “70% problem,” showing why it lets developers move faster, without actually raising the bar for what good code looks like. He explains how the very gaps that AI struggles to fill — nuanced architectural decisions, careful error handling, deep domain knowledge — reveal a new set of truths about learning to code, and building software that truly endures.

Read the full article →

With 900M users, Snapchat is quietly the 9th largest social media network in the world. Accordingly, it also has a healthy creator economy.

Now Snapchat's Monetization Program is making it easier for top creators to earn a living... but it's also harder for new creators to get started, since Snapchat has also updated its eligibility requirements.

Read the full article →

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. Unicorn Platform 🦄: Simple landing page builder for makers. I replaced 100% of my marketing and sales team with AI in 2024	▲ 14
	2. Laravel: The PHP framework for web artisans. We released the official Laravel VS Code extension into beta	▲ 12
	3. Lenny's Newsletter: A weekly advice column about product, growth, and careers. I sent out a tech stack survey to my 900K subscribers	▲ 12
	4. Unicorns Club: Create your unicorn profile, and investors will follow you. Unicorns Club 2.0 is live on Product Hunt now	▲ 5
	5. Doxy: Turn Google Docs into your PDF automation powerhouse. The missing link Between Google Docs and mass PDF generation	▲ 2

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski shared that the company stopped hiring new staff about a year ago, with many roles being replaced by AI.

He didn't specify exactly which roles were vanishing from the company, but Klarna said earlier this year that an AI assistant now handles about two-thirds of its customer service chats.

Read the full article →

Chris Poka couldn't break $3K MRR with his agency. Then, he started fresh, building a productized service called Designpulse. Now, he's nearly at the coveted $10K MRR milestone.

All of his first clients came through X and LinkedIn DMs. His suggestion? Try to post every day.

Read the full article →

David Holz, the founder of Midjourney, really embodies the indie hacker mindset, and I'm here for it.

Earn your freedom
to work on the things you enjoy
whenever you want
from wherever you want
alongside people you like
so you can be happy.

—@csallen

Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?

We're constantly changing things up to make this newsletter more useful, so let us know what you think by replying directly to this email. We read every reply!

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Addy Osmani, Stephen Flanders, Katie Hignett, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts.

—Channing