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I think the author's point is that modern toolchains make spinning up a basic web app more like following a recipe, and as such is free of many (novel) technica

I think the author's point is that modern toolchains make spinning up a basic web app more like following a recipe, and as such is free of many (novel) technical challenges. As technology goes, it's still complex, but so is building a microwave oven and yet we don't call GE's white goods department a tech company. It's a challenge that's already been tackled and is well understood. If your web app is doing something that's never been done before, which requires the application of scientific principles and so on, like... translating baby babbles into English, then it's still technology, but that would not be because it's a web app.

ggm 6y ago
There is a great spanish saying (I got this from historical fiction) "let no new thing arise" Vonnegut wrote a course for eng. lit creative writing on the 7 canonical plotlines of all stories. ever. I thought "goodness whats the point in writing now" but it hasn't stopped people making good entertaining fiction All code is variations over abstraction, synthesis, loops, decision forks, recursion (tail or not) and all data structures iterate back over lists and arrays, over trees and DAGs. "never been done before" is pretty rare anywhere.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  That's not really true. Unless you're specifically following a recipe, chances are most of what you're doing has never been done before, at least in some aspects of it. But I do think it's a bad way of evaluating this. Personally, I would say that a more important distinction between tech and "tech" is the degree to which the technology makes or breaks the business. For example, for Uber, the tech is an enabler, but the business is made or broken by the cabs, the vetting, the pricing, the number of cabs they can hire, the salaries and benefits they can avoid etc. Sure, the tech has to work, but there is no reason that Uber would be falling behind if their tech went into maintenance mode today - even if their competitors kept investing in new tech. So, Uber is a "tech" company in my book (even though they have spent inordinate amounts of money on the tech before). On the other hand, a company like Cisco must make ever better routers or Arista or F5 or whoever will quickly steal their lunch. So Cisco is a tech company, at least on the NEM side.
enraged_camel 6y ago
Just because the barrier to entry is lower today doesn’t mean complexity is also lower. An app doesn’t have to be cutting edge in order to clear some arbitrary bar of what constitutes “tech”.

ggm 6y ago

There is a great spanish saying (I got this from historical fiction) "let no new thing arise" Vonnegut wrote a course for eng. lit creative writing on the 7 canonical plotlines of all stories. ever. I thought "goodness whats the point in writing now" but it hasn't stopped people making good entertaining fiction All code is variations over abstraction, synthesis, loops, decision forks, recursion (tail or not) and all data structures iterate back over lists and arrays, over trees and DAGs. "never been done before" is pretty rare anywhere.

tsimionescu 6y ago
That's not really true. Unless you're specifically following a recipe, chances are most of what you're doing has never been done before, at least in some aspects of it. But I do think it's a bad way of evaluating this. Personally, I would say that a more important distinction between tech and "tech" is the degree to which the technology makes or breaks the business. For example, for Uber, the tech is an enabler, but the business is made or broken by the cabs, the vetting, the pricing, the number of cabs they can hire, the salaries and benefits they can avoid etc. Sure, the tech has to work, but there is no reason that Uber would be falling behind if their tech went into maintenance mode today - even if their competitors kept investing in new tech. So, Uber is a "tech" company in my book (even though they have spent inordinate amounts of money on the tech before). On the other hand, a company like Cisco must make ever better routers or Arista or F5 or whoever will quickly steal their lunch. So Cisco is a tech company, at least on the NEM side.

enraged_camel 6y ago

Just because the barrier to entry is lower today doesn’t mean complexity is also lower. An app doesn’t have to be cutting edge in order to clear some arbitrary bar of what constitutes “tech”.