Copying GPL code, with global search&replace of the brand names, has always lowered the cost of software 'development' dramatically.
Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
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Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#12This article mentions cost to ship, but ignores that the largest cost of any software project isn't consumed by how long it takes to get to market, but by maintenance and addition of new features. How is agentic coding doing there? I've only seen huge, unmaintainable messes so far.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#13Then why is all my software slower, buggier, and with a worse UX?
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#14Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…
Author here, thanks for your kind words!
I think it's about looking at what you're building and proactively suggesting/prototyping what else could be useful for the business. This does get tricky in large corps where things are often quite siloed, but can you think "one step ahead" of the product requirements and build that as well?
I think regardless if you build it, it's a good exercise to run on any project - what would you think to build next, and what does the business actually want. If you are getting closer on those requests in your head then I think it's a positive sign you are understanding the domain.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#15> written an entire unit/integration test suite in a few hours
It’s often hard to ground how “good” blog writers are, but tidbits like this make it easy to disregard the author’s opinions. I’ve worked in many codebases where the test writers share the authors sentiment. They are awful and the tests are at best useless and often harmful.
Getting to this point in your career without understanding how to write effective tests is a major red flag.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#16Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…
Nobody knows the answer.
Answers I see are typically "be a product manager" or "start your own business" which obviously 95% of developers can't/don't want to do.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#17Good write-up. I don't disagree with any of his points, but does anybody here have practical suggestions on how to move forward and think about one's career? I've been a frontend (with a little full stack) for a few years now, and much of the modern landscape concerns me, specifically with how I should be positioning myself. I hear vague suggestions like "get better at the business domain" and other things like that.…
Don't chase specific technologies, especially not ones driven by for-profit companies. Chase ideas, become great in one slice of the industry, and the very least you can always fall back on that. Once established within a domain, you can always try to branch out, and feel a lot more comfortable doing so.
Ultimately, software is for doing something, and that something can be a whole range of things. If you become really good at just a slice of that, things get a lot easier regardless of the general state of the industry.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#18Then why is all my software slower, buggier, and with a worse UX?
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Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#19> I'm sure every organisation has hundreds if not thousands of Excel sheets tracking important business processes that would be far better off as a SaaS app.
Far better off for who? People constantly dismiss spreadsheets, but in many cases, they are more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow, and are more or less universally accessible.
Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?
#20Ai saves me like an hour per month tops. I still don't understand the hype. It's a solution in search of a problem. It can't solve the hard coding problems. And it doesn't say when it can't solve the essay ones either. It's less valuable than resharper. So the business value is maybe $10 a month. That can't finance this industry.