Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 123 posts

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#21

Post by uptownfunk »

From a pure economic division-of-labor standpoint it makes sense. However I thought the modern business approach was to move away from strictly defined boxes of job roles and have everyone involved with everything (with some fuzzy focus on a particular role). With the hope that some cross pollination of ideas results in some synergistic result where the sum is greater than the individual parts.

However the upshot of this seems to me that now people can focus on ideas and idea generation instead of having to worry about maintaining programmers. Like what cloud did for hardware/computing.

What we need now is a simple program that takes normal human text and outputs a program. Input "write me a program that adds the numbers 1 to 100" and you would get a program that did that. Then what we need is to hook that up to an artificial neural network that takes human text and outputs new ideas for apps.

Hey andreesen I'll be taking my $10mm check now. Thanks.

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#22

Post by aidos »

jacquesm wrote: post #11
codeshaman wrote: post #8

I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers, have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the workforce each year.. The demand for software may be growing (although…

> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense number of people it would seem that we ourselves should n…

More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more.

Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we disrupt ourselves.

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#23

Post by padobson »

codeshaman wrote: post #8

I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers, have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the workforce each year.. The demand for software may be growing (although…

Automation is constantly eating the need for human labor, but every time that happens, the entrepreneurship barrier to entry is reduced.

We spent the last 50 years working to making the biggest barrier to entry for entrepreneurship (wrangling labor) irrelevant.

Time was, you needed a factory and a labor force. For the last 10 years, you needed a laptop and coding skills. Soon, you won't even need that.

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#24

Post by [deleted] »

codeshaman wrote: post #8

I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future where software developers are next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. That is compound by the millions of youngsters who grew up with computers, have unlimited access to unlimited teaching materials and are entering the workforce each year.. The demand for software may be growing (although…

[deleted]

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#26

Post by jacquesm »

aidos wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm afraid this is a glimpse into the not so distant future. And that puts software developers next in line after taxi and truck drivers - uncertain if their skills will be required in a decade from now. I'm fairly sure that programmers will be employable for the foreseeable future but in a way this is fair play, we - the programmers - did this to an immense number of people it would seem that we ourselves should n…

More automation more of the time! The world needs to focus on how we collectively become more efficient while working less / relaxing more. Having said that, I think automation of software development has a long way to go before it's particularly effective. Though it's certainly going to be an interesting space to watch. It's somehow weird to imagine a future in which we disrupt ourselves.

All those working on AI are effectively working very hard to put themselves out of business, it's a funny version of poetic justice.

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#29

Post by viach »

neppo wrote: post #12
viach wrote: post #5

I need a simple program that would create startups + landing pages Andreessen would invest in

there you go: http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html keep reloading the url to get random startup landing pages.

Nice. The next logical step would be to generate the ProductHunt listing

Re: Software Eats Software Development as Andreessen Invests $10M in App Outsourcer

#30

Post by cyrusradfar »

As much as I want to snark in this thread as well – it's an audacious goal.

When I was in school at Georgia Tech, one of my professors talked a lot about SmallTalk and Alice. Both were ways to make coding more accessible to a larger audience.

I can't help but think that the future is going to continue to make development more accessible to people. I definitely think Gigster has their work cut out for them; nevertheless, I'm one for the fact that it would be pretty awesome if I was never asked to 'build a webpage' again.

Post reply on HN