John Jeffers,
solo developmentproduct engineeringcoding agentsopen source
This is a good small-project reality check because it treats solo development as both a creative advantage and an operational liability. You get taste, speed, ownership, and the joy of building the exact tool you wanted. You also inherit support, QA, product judgment, design blind spots, release discipline, and every future maintenance bill.
The Hacker News thread adds the useful AI-era tension: agents make the solo developer faster, but they do not magically supply a team. They can review, patch, and polish small annoyances, but they do not fully replace other humans who notice positioning, user research, burnout, sustainability, and the wrong assumptions you cannot see from inside your own project.