Even in this day and age, when furniture is being mass-produced, there is still a niche for those who create furniture by hand, without the use of assembly lines and CNC.
The same goes for software development.
The downside is that you need to become the creative, the “ideas man” that can come up with that bespoke solution that AI can never truly provide. And you likely have to do it on your own, or if you are lucky, in a small company whose entire identity relies on bespoke solutions and high-quality, high-cost work.
The vast majority of software developers will never be able to make that jump, just like how hundreds of thousands of furniture-makers in the early 20th century, across North America, were also unable to make that jump. Those turning out bespoke furniture today represent an almost-unmeasurable rounding error compared to the same numbers of craftsman a century ago.
But they still exist. They can still make a living. And so can software developers with the right skills and attitudes.
Is there really a market for mass production of low quality software?
Maybe it’s just never been needed in any of the market segments I work, but it always seems like it’s better to spend 40 hours today to refactor or clean up code then to spend 10000 hours bug hunting spaghetti code. Like sure your perl script worked but for the love of all let’s actually make a project with a maintainer and a code base you can reasonably attach an SLA to plz
Even in this day and age, when furniture is being mass-produced, there is still a niche for those who create furniture by hand, without the use of assembly lines and CNC.
The same goes for software development.
The downside is that you need to become the creative, the “ideas man” that can come up with that bespoke solution that AI can never truly provide. And you likely have to do it on your own, or if you are lucky, in a small company whose entire identity relies on bespoke solutions and high-quality, high-cost work.
The vast majority of software developers will never be able to make that jump, just like how hundreds of thousands of furniture-makers in the early 20th century, across North America, were also unable to make that jump. Those turning out bespoke furniture today represent an almost-unmeasurable rounding error compared to the same numbers of craftsman a century ago.
But they still exist. They can still make a living. And so can software developers with the right skills and attitudes.
Is there really a market for mass production of low quality software?
Maybe it’s just never been needed in any of the market segments I work, but it always seems like it’s better to spend 40 hours today to refactor or clean up code then to spend 10000 hours bug hunting spaghetti code. Like sure your perl script worked but for the love of all let’s actually make a project with a maintainer and a code base you can reasonably attach an SLA to plz