That was a joy to read.
I have a lot of thoughts on all this. Some are well formed, others aren't. We are living in very disorienting times right now.
What happens when software becomes superabundant? Who will use the software, if everyone and their dog creates 15 apps a day? Will everything just be a throw-away product, just like the plastic spoons and drinking straws at McDonald's?
I tried to answer some of these questions in my recent conversation with @Gzuuus (and will continue to do so every time I take someone on a @No Solutions walk).
On the bright side: everything is an open-source app now. You can reverse-engineer anything; you can point your clankers at a product, and tell them that you want the same thing, but under an MIT license. That's a positive feedback loop that will continue to accelerate.
On the not-so-bright side: The craft of software development is as dead as riding a horse for transportation purposes is dead. Yes, people still ride horses, but if you want to get from A to B you won't use a horse.
Tradcoding will be a thing. It already is a thing. Writing software by hand, line-by-line, because you like doing it, because you enjoy the craft, or because you're rich and you have too much free time. Fine. But 99.99% of software will be written by clankers. It already is the case, in all likelihood.
What the clankers don't have (yet) is taste and values. And by that I mean: good taste, and outside-of-the-bell-curve values. They don't care about the information they are processing, to paraphrase John Vervaeke. Thus: IF you care and IF you have good taste THEN the clankers are a superpower. If you don't care and you don't have any taste all you'll be able to produce is slop. (By definition.)
This begs the question: where does good taste come from? (And where do we get our values from?)
I'm not sure if it's possible to develop good taste without putting your nose to the grindstone for 10,000 hours straight. Go through he motions. Make all the mistakes. Feel the pain. Blood, sweat, and tears.
How else would you ever be able to learn to care? Or does caring come first, and it is what allows you to endure the suffering?
One of my worries is that, if you're born in the slop, molded by it, you won't be able to develop the taste and discernment necessary to produce good artifacts, software or otherwise.
Maybe I'm wrong and the kids will be alright, but just like we've lost our natural ability to navigate an environment (because we invented GPS) I'm afraid that we'll lose our ability to learn and discern, and by that I mean *really* learn. The kind of learning that is bound to sacrifice. The kind of learning that is bound to sweat, and blood, and tears.
Software development is now effortless, all things considered. I'm not saying that prompting things into existence is trivial, but in the last 18 months that I've been doing it I didn't break a sweat. The hard work is gone. What used to be a picks and shovels exercise is now me sitting in a Schaufelradbagger, moving earth like nobody's business. It's magical. And terrifying. But most of all, it's disorienting.
What should one build, if anything can be built?
Time is still the ultimate resource, no matter how fast the agents can generate code. We *spend* time and *pay* attention, and as always, the most important question is what we should spend these currencies on. So... What to build? There it is again: discernment. And don't ask your clankers, they won't be able to answer that question for you, at least not in a meaningful way.
I have a lot of thoughts on all this. Some are well formed, others aren't. We are living in very disorienting times right now.
What happens when software becomes superabundant? Who will use the software, if everyone and their dog creates 15 apps a day? Will everything just be a throw-away product, just like the plastic spoons and drinking straws at McDonald's?
I tried to answer some of these questions in my recent conversation with @Gzuuus (and will continue to do so every time I take someone on a @No Solutions walk).
On the bright side: everything is an open-source app now. You can reverse-engineer anything; you can point your clankers at a product, and tell them that you want the same thing, but under an MIT license. That's a positive feedback loop that will continue to accelerate.
On the not-so-bright side: The craft of software development is as dead as riding a horse for transportation purposes is dead. Yes, people still ride horses, but if you want to get from A to B you won't use a horse.
Tradcoding will be a thing. It already is a thing. Writing software by hand, line-by-line, because you like doing it, because you enjoy the craft, or because you're rich and you have too much free time. Fine. But 99.99% of software will be written by clankers. It already is the case, in all likelihood.
What the clankers don't have (yet) is taste and values. And by that I mean: good taste, and outside-of-the-bell-curve values. They don't care about the information they are processing, to paraphrase John Vervaeke. Thus: IF you care and IF you have good taste THEN the clankers are a superpower. If you don't care and you don't have any taste all you'll be able to produce is slop. (By definition.)
This begs the question: where does good taste come from? (And where do we get our values from?)
I'm not sure if it's possible to develop good taste without putting your nose to the grindstone for 10,000 hours straight. Go through he motions. Make all the mistakes. Feel the pain. Blood, sweat, and tears.
How else would you ever be able to learn to care? Or does caring come first, and it is what allows you to endure the suffering?
One of my worries is that, if you're born in the slop, molded by it, you won't be able to develop the taste and discernment necessary to produce good artifacts, software or otherwise.
Maybe I'm wrong and the kids will be alright, but just like we've lost our natural ability to navigate an environment (because we invented GPS) I'm afraid that we'll lose our ability to learn and discern, and by that I mean *really* learn. The kind of learning that is bound to sacrifice. The kind of learning that is bound to sweat, and blood, and tears.
Software development is now effortless, all things considered. I'm not saying that prompting things into existence is trivial, but in the last 18 months that I've been doing it I didn't break a sweat. The hard work is gone. What used to be a picks and shovels exercise is now me sitting in a Schaufelradbagger, moving earth like nobody's business. It's magical. And terrifying. But most of all, it's disorienting.
What should one build, if anything can be built?
Time is still the ultimate resource, no matter how fast the agents can generate code. We *spend* time and *pay* attention, and as always, the most important question is what we should spend these currencies on. So... What to build? There it is again: discernment. And don't ask your clankers, they won't be able to answer that question for you, at least not in a meaningful way.
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