[simpaticoder]

>Yours actually works and is higher quality, because you know about things like TTFP and INP and "not putting your Supabase god-token in the client"? Oh, you sweet summer child: I take no pleasure in this but I need to tell you that these things don't matter anymore. Quality is not a metric anyone cares about in 2026.

Quality will matter the most in 2026. Specifically because the barrier-to-entry for making software is down there will of course be a lot of poor quality software, which will break, expose customer data, be bloated, etc. Customers will have more options, and this will allow them to be more discerning. Open source, clean code, low dependencies...these are things that can be evaluated by HN crowd types, but it's also something that an LLM can evaluate.

We are entering into an age of software taste. For those of us that have developed taste over the years, we become the taste makers in that we care how things are built, and know what we're looking for. This applies on the supply side, when our taste drives the LLM, and on the consumption side, when we can help the masses evaluate what to use and what not to use.

NB: this is all speculation expressed as fact, in keeping with the OP's style.

[ileonichwiesz]

Just like the tide of fast fashion caused people to seek out local-sewn clothes made from high-quality materials, right? Right?

Quality isn’t a differentiator if the market is saturated with indistinguishable garbage. Everything is made in sweatshops out of the cheapest plastic available, and I don’t see why software isn’t next in line.

[BoxFour]

Actually: There’s been a noticeable uptick in the last decade+ of better-made clothing for shoppers who are open to paying somewhat higher prices. Not boutique prices, but also more expensive than H&M.

For a long time the stereotypical “young professional” look was tied closely to just a few mainstream retailers (Banana Republic for example), but over the last ~15 years a wider range of smaller or more specialized brands has entered the space: Alex Mill, Spier and Mackay, etc.

But even ignoring that your analogy doesn’t quite fit since price plays a significant role in clothing purchasing decisions: Fast fashion succeeds largely because it is cheap.

If reasonably priced, higher-quality alternatives were accessible people would buy them. It’s partly why certain brands have grown in popularity (Carhartt, for example).

[mbgerring]

Yeah it actually did do this for me. I will not purchase new clothing at all unless I have some understanding of the supply chain and where it was made, with a strong preference for clothes that are at least cut and sewn in the US. I won’t tolerate buying clothes, or really any textile product, if I can’t be relatively certain it will last me at least five years. A flood of cheap, unreliable shit did actually make me more discerning.

N of 1, obviously, but this isn’t as outlandish as you wanted to make it seem here.

[ileonichwiesz]

I’m not denying this has been the case for some people. I myself have switched to pretty much exclusively wearing trousers from my favourite tiny brand that cuts and sews them <100km from where I live, and I’m privileged enough to always try to choose quality over price. But quality products have been getting much harder to find in the past years, and I was under the impression we're mostly outliers.

Looking at my family and friend group’s spending habits, it feels like everything is purchased either from Temu or from one of those super-low-price-super-low-quality stores that have been taking Europe by storm these past couple years (i.e. Action, Tedi, Pepco). It’s kinda maddening.

[switchbak]

Exactly - it turns into a market for lemons, where the customer is unwilling to make a bet or even invest in an evaluation if there's an overwhelming amount of crap and little ability to differentiate. Amazon is turning into this with QWENFOING everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[tormeh]

Well, the affordable luxury segment has done quite well over the last couple of decades.

[lelanthran]

> Customers will have more options, and this will allow them to be more discerning.

Lets assume this is true - how on earth are they to determine that your code doesn't have any glaring security holes but the 2h vibe-coded app has more holes than the Swiss is able to put into their cheese[1]?

I really want to know how customers can tell the difference between very pretty crap and your stuff?

-------------

[1] Yeah, I know it doesn't work like that.

[pixl97]

Yep, choice can paralyze.

What these customers are going to do is do a summary discard of almost all the choices but say 3 to 5 and go from there.

The problem is now how to be consistently on that top list. And that's marketing's problem.

[CubsFan1060]

You may be right about taste, but I think it takes a different dimension in the future.

"Dear Claude, please make me a clone of <fancy new saas> but make <these changes specific to my tastes>".

For many things, it's probably not "select the one of 100 that fits my taste", it's probably going to be to just make your own personal version that fits your taste in the first place. And, probably, never share that anywhere.

[anonzzzies]

It already happened mostly outside the AI slop; only if you have marketing money you will succeed and your clients usually cannot distinguish bad from good; if you have VC money and 1B$ valuation you must be doing something right no?

I walk into products being garbage and basically broken (upgrade bottom doesn't work, email always broken, support form goes to dev null etc) and most products I try are b2b and many are enterprise SaaS.

Only yesterday, I am in the EU, I wanted to try out some enterprise software of a company with VC money valuated at billions, so I signed up for a demo which needed me to validate my email. But that email didn't arrive. I tried with 4 different addresses (different providers including google and ms): nothing. So I forgot about it and went on with my day; hours later, 1 hour after the west coast US woke up, I got all 4 emails with expired links. So I guess while sleeping, their system was broken. No worries, things happen, but they happen all the time and it doesn't matter how much money they have. They also often just refuse to fix things because why would they.

I threw out Canva because they refuse to fix fundamental issues and keep blaming the customers or play dumb 'oh we never saw this happen!' while you can just do a search and find heaps of people having the same issues. etc. Quality does not matter, at all. Deep marketing pockets do.