The cost of running a business is the maintenance of the original idea behind the actual start of the company. The value of the company is that continuous maintenance. The cost of starting the business is small, and the cost of having the idea is zero. If the idea was good enough, the business will go into maintenance mode up until it’s sold, merged or liquidated.

Do people believe that the value of a company is the original idea and the concept of actually starting a company based on that idea? Rarely. People understand that the value in the company lies in its current state and future perceived trajectory.

The same thing is true about software and software development. People tend to believe that the value is in the idea or concept of software, where in reality the value of software is, just like with a company, the continuous maintenance of that concept combined with usage and perceived future value. Code is a liability - if you can run your company without a single line of code, you don’t have to maintain a single line of code. The cost is always in maintenance, so the less code you have the better.

This blog post titled “You can’t tell people anything” is something I often share and return to. The problem is that people think they understand, and when they get the chance to test your idea, new feature, or product, they will say, “Ah, you meant like this; why didn’t you say so?” - and that’s what you’ve been doing all along.

With generative AI, we can finally tell people. And we can show them, invite them to step into our ideas and actually try them out. And, maybe most importantly, we can reject ideas and fail fast. But if we decide to go with an idea and actually launch it, that’s when the cost of running a business will start or increase. That’s when the maintenance phase will begin.

The real test of Vibe coding is whether people will finally realize the cost of software development is in the maintenance, not in the creation.