I spoke to a friend the other day that wanted some help with his dev project. I was surprised since he isn't a dev and doesn't even have a job in a tech related field. He said he wanted to make a simple thing and was using AI prompts to just fuck about a bit till he had something working. But he ran into some issues and wanted me to give him some pointers to get on the right track.
My man wanted to create a "simple" kanban system. I almost fell of my chair as he explained what he was wanting to create. A non devver isn't going to create basically a Trello clone within a couple of hours and some AI prompts. He started with a frontend and got something hacked together which wasn't really working or a good base to work from. And hadn't even considered he would also need some kind of backend. He never heard of the difference between frontend and backend and just thought apps were apps that did it all.
I explained for what he wanted he would need a team of 15-20 to work for a couple of years to make something good. Not really a thing people do in their free time. I know your nephew created an "app" in a weekend in a hackaton, that doesn't mean the world of software development is suddenly different from how it's always been. He was bummed out, but was happy enough to just use Trello. And he could always keep fucking around with AI devving for fun, just don't expect anything useful to come out of it ever.
Peoples perspective on software development is so weird these days. Especially since AI has come along, people just expect magic.
But it is like magic...? I copy in a bunch of tables etc. from a datasheet and get out code to read and write EEPROM. I use that to read the content of the old BMS and flash a new chip with it. The battery is now working again, after the BMS had a hardware fault in the ADC, destroying the previous pack of cells.
I ask for a simple frontend and I get exactly that. Now I can program ESP32s and perfectly control then via a browser. No me shit interface with some touch pins.
I ask for code to run a simulation on head transfer... answer after some back and forth that is what I get.
What will it be able to give me in 5 years when it is already like magic now?
This is not somebody who can self host anything or setup something for himself. I do not know of any FOSS kanban solutions that are available as a SaaS solution. The available Trello free functionality suits his needs. Is there something wrong with Trello? It's owned by Atlassian, which is an OK company I think?
If you have any good FOSS alternatives, I'd be happy to know about them and forward on the recommendation. But keep in mind most folk are not tech minded and won't get very far with just a Github page.