This is clearly the "build it and they will come" bullshit. I had hoped the Hacker News crowd would be the first to recognize that demand doesn't just "appear."
Supply and demand are just two sides of the same coin. To Apple, the iPhone is supply. Apple supplies iPhones to meet consumer demand. But the iPhone is also Apple's demand. Its production of IPhones determines how much other things it will be able to buy.
To consumers, the IPhone is something they want (demand). But their demand is determined by what they supply. A programmer ability to pay for (demand) an iPhone depends on his ability to supply programs that someone else wants.
"Build it and they will come" is truth as long as you're building something someone wants. A farmer who decides to plant corn or soybeans will have a demand for his crop, because people want corn and soybeans. The price/demand fluctuates based on how badly they want it.
Programming is no different. If you build something people want, they will come. The problem is that programming has so many degrees of freedom and it's so scalable that it's a lot easier than farming to supply something that no one wants.
