A fortuitous decade as an indie software developer

The indie developer's decade isn't a story of luck—it's a quiet rebellion against the AI gold rush. While the industry obsesses over scaling compute and chasing the next transformer, this dev proves that the human-scale software economy is still alive, profitable, and stubbornly resilient. Why this matters: As AI slashes the cost of code generation, the indie dev's edge isn't in writing lines—it's in owning a niche. This is the blueprint for the post-AI software economy. The "fortuitous" part is the signal. It means the market still rewards curation, trust, and judgment—things raw compute can't fake. It connects directly to the commoditization of the middle layer of software, where distribution beats generation. The closer: Fortune favors the prepared, but in the age of AI, it favors the focused. The indie dev isn't surviving despite the machines; they're thriving because they know what the machines can't. {"key_insight":"In the AI era, distribution and niche ownership trump raw code generation for indie developers.","confidence":0}