> I think changing our relationship to technology will probably require making software easier to create, but in my lifetime I’ve seen the opposite come to pass

> I think changing our relationship to technology will probably require making software easier to create, but in my lifetime I’ve seen the opposite come to pass. I don't think I'm disagreeing with Moxie here, but I do like to emphasize that it's less that creating software has gotten harder (which is true in some ways but false in other ways), and more that our standards and expectations for what software should do have gotten higher. If I wanted to make a chat app today, for example, it would obviously need to: 1. run on iOS, Android, and probably also Windows/macOS/Linux or at least desktop browsers 2. have some notion of persistent user identity and message history, including something like passwords and something like an account recovery flow 3. support group communication among these persistent users, hopefully allowing for multiple devices per user 4. be internationalized into many languages 5. with some sort of abuse reporting/detection/response mechanisms and some posture towards law enforcement requests It doesn't need all those things on day one, but it will need them if and when it gets popular. And of course this is without even beginning to think about discretionary features like 6. searching, sending, and displaying animated GIFs If my goal is to build an app that me and my friends can use for fun, of course I don't need to do most of this. But if my goal is to compete for market share with apps that do these things, I 100% have to do all this and more.