In the past 6 months, I've gone from Copilot to Cursor to Conductor. It's really the shift to Conductor that convinced me that I crossed into a new reality of software work. It is now possible to code at a scale dramatically higher than before.
This has not yet translated into shipping at far higher magnitude. There are still big friction points and bottlenecks. Some will need to be resolved with technology, others will need organizational solutions.
But this is crystal clear to me: there is a clear path to companies getting software value to the end customer much more rapidly.
I would compare the ongoing revolution to the advent of the Web for software delivery. When features didn't have to be scheduled for release in physical shipments, it unlocked radically different approaches to product development, most clearly illustrated in The Agile Manifesto. You could also do real-time experiments to optimize product outcomes.
I'm not here to say that this is all going to be OK. It won't be for a lot of people. Some companies are going to make tremendous mistakes and generate tremendous waste. Many of the concerns around GenAI are deadly,serious.
But I also have zero doubt that the companies that most effectively embrace the new possibilities are going to run circles around their competition.
It's a weird feeling when people argue against me in this, because I've seen too much. It's like arguing with flat-earthers. I've never personally circumnavigated Antarctica, but me being wrong would invalidate so many facts my frame of reality depends on.
To me, the question isn't about the capabilities of the technology. It's whether we actually want the future it unlocks. That's the discussion I wish we were having. Even if it's hard for me to see what choice there is. Capitalism and geopolitical competition are incredible forces to reckon with, and AI is being driven hard by both.