Moolah Diaries - A Month Later

It’s been a month since I went all in on using Moolah so time to check in on how its going.

Firstly the bugs - there are still some but generally in the functions I’m actually using there aren’t many and things are generally pretty polished. Most importantly regressions are rare so as I work through fixing things it keeps getting consistently better. Most of the issues now are more of the UI polish kind of problem. I’m not a UI designer and the AI is definitely not a UI designer, so getting any level of polish is pretty challenging. Again, the flows I actually use and quite smooth and work well for me. That’s pretty much inline with how the web based version of Moolah worked too - quite nice for me, but very much tailored to me and a bit obscure to everyone else.

What is interesting is the amount of functionality that just gets added but not really used. It’s so easy to come up with an idea and let AI loose implementing it that I have tended to do that. Actually getting it to the point where it really works and I’d actually trust it requires more attention though. Net result is there are a bunch of features that are promising and would make my life easier, but haven’t actually been finished off enough to be used. In fact every so often I throw some idea at the AI and it just points out it is already implemented but not actually hooked up.

There are some definite wins though - Moolah native has multi-currency support that Moolah web never did and it extends to stocks and crypto. So far I’m only using the currencies and stocks support but since I’m paid in USD its nice to be able to track the actual USD amount that is received and then the trade to convert it to AUD accurately. Similarly, stocks are tracked and automatically pull daily prices rather than needing me to grab a snapshot of the total value each day so I have a historical record. Crypto support is there and I think good enough to actually use but having multiple wallets across different chains made it a bit complex to track prior to the account groups functionality that landed recently. The biggest barrier however is how to manage the switch over from one tracking mechanism to the new one. With 10+ years of data it can be a challenge…

Overall it’s been a pretty huge success and I still haven’t read any of the code. For anything that is intended for an audience of one, vibe coding is a perfectly good way to approach it. You need to be prepared to iterate on it with the AI a bit - it’s definitely not just one shot - but you really can build something that can really solve your needs and be nice for you to use. Even without programming experience an advanced user could really use AI to build applications - and AI is way better at building web apps than native so there’s even more potential there. That’s exciting - it’s a return to the more manipulatable, content-creation focussed computing of my youth. In more modern terms content creation has been very possible and a big focus, but its been more on creative output (writing, film, music etc) than on creating computer programs themselves.

Does this replace “real” software development? Could you create software that is good for other people to use? Not with AI by itself but if you know the domain and have at least a decent sense of UI design, then probably. There are certainly apps being created by non-programmers that are seeing good adoption and that doesn’t surprise me. I’m certainly not fearing for my job, and I don’t think most programmers should, but if you’re an average to below average developer just churning out relatively simple stuff you’re in trouble. It’s possible that new developers will find it very difficult to build up the experience they need to get into the industry, but it’s also possible that AI will provide a new pathway to convert power users into professional programmers. A large number of our existing programmers actually got started that way - developing stuff for fun and using that experience to bootstrap careers.