Software engineering has been on a quest to make everyone a programer for at least as long as I have been the business (>40 yrs). As that has progressed the quantity of software produced has increased and the quality decreased (with both good and bad consequences). I would expect that to accelerate with similar consequences.
1. NonProgrammers will be able to create superficially working programs for some unmet need. Good if that need does not have a large enough market to attract investment. Bad if that superficially working program exposes them to security risks or bugs that can lose them money.
2. We see a lot more BS software - Social media, Scam and Advertising. This will be due to lowering the barriers of entry since expensive competent people will not have to be involved. Expensive competent people generally have better things to do with their time.
3. New programming fad - Spec-Driven Development (SDD). IMO that will be a mixed bag. Imagine creating a spec, feeding it to Claude code one day, making a small tweak (or possibly no tweak) some n days later and getting an entirely different code in return. We will spend the next 10 years developing new strategies for just about every thing we do without really doing it much better.
4. Running our code will become more expensive and software ownership will decrease. My friend handles an extremely large corporate account for MS. Before Office 365 they did 5 million a year with MS. A couple of years after adopting Office 365 $25 million a year. AI providers will definitely do more rent seeking by convincing people that they need their service to compete, locking them in, increasing the rent.
strangattractor•3w ago
1. NonProgrammers will be able to create superficially working programs for some unmet need. Good if that need does not have a large enough market to attract investment. Bad if that superficially working program exposes them to security risks or bugs that can lose them money.
2. We see a lot more BS software - Social media, Scam and Advertising. This will be due to lowering the barriers of entry since expensive competent people will not have to be involved. Expensive competent people generally have better things to do with their time.
3. New programming fad - Spec-Driven Development (SDD). IMO that will be a mixed bag. Imagine creating a spec, feeding it to Claude code one day, making a small tweak (or possibly no tweak) some n days later and getting an entirely different code in return. We will spend the next 10 years developing new strategies for just about every thing we do without really doing it much better.
4. Running our code will become more expensive and software ownership will decrease. My friend handles an extremely large corporate account for MS. Before Office 365 they did 5 million a year with MS. A couple of years after adopting Office 365 $25 million a year. AI providers will definitely do more rent seeking by convincing people that they need their service to compete, locking them in, increasing the rent.