3 ms·
There is tons of stuff to do. Lots of technologies out there that need to be invented and commercialized. Tons of inefficient processes in business, government,
by sanderjd 9mo ago
There is tons of stuff to do. Lots of technologies out there that need to be invented and commercialized. Tons of inefficient processes in business, government, and academia to improve.
None of this means that it will be the kinds of professional specialized software development teams that we're used to doing any of this work, but I have some amount of optimism that this is actually going to be a golden age for "doing useful things with computers" work.
- knollimar 9mo agoI still think it's more likely to be more of the same thing but with less people. One man shops being the ideal, and I don't think there will be proportionately more of them
- sanderjd 9mo agoThis doesn't mesh with anything that has happened in the development of computing, or technology in general.
- knollimar 9mo agoI dispute technology in general. There are plenty of examples where industrialisation led to a drop in quality, a massive drop in price, and a displacement of workers. It hasn't happened in software yet. I suppose this has to do with where software sits on the demand curve currently. I'm imagining a few more shifts in productivity will make the demand vs price derivative shift in a meaningfully different way, but we can only speculate.
- sanderjd 9mo agoI think you are misunderstanding the point I'm making. I agree that "writing code" is likely to be commoditized by AI tools, much like past industrialization disruptions. But I think there is going to be more things to do in the space of "doing useful things with computers", analogous to how industrialization creates new work further up the value chain. Of course it often isn't the same people whose jobs are disrupted who end up doing that new work.