Comment by ofalkaed
11 hours ago
Personally I think AI is going to turn software into a cottage industry, it will make custom software something the individual can afford. AI is a very long ways off from being able to allow the average person to create the software they want unless they are willing to put a great deal of time into it, but it is almost good enough that the programmer can take the average person's idea and execute it at an affordable price. Probably only a year or two from when a capable programmer will be able to offer any small buisness a completely customized POS setup for what the cost of a canned industrial offering today; I will design your website and build you a POS system tailored to your needs and completely integrated with the website, and for a little more I can throw in the accounting and tax software. A bright dishwasher realizing they can make things work better for their employer might be the next billionaire revolutionizing commerce and the small buisness.
I have some programming ability and a lot of ideas but would happily hire someone to realize those ideas for me. The idea I have put the most time into, took me the better part of a year to sort out all the details of even with the help of AI, most programmers could have probably done it in a night and with AI could write the software in a few nights. I would have my software for an affordable price and they could stick it in their personal store so other could buy it. If I am productive with it and show its utility, they will sell more copies of it so they have an incentive to work with people like me and help me realize my ideas.
Programming is going to become a service instead of an industry, the craft of programming will be for sale instead of software.
> and for a little more I can throw in the accounting and tax software
As someone who has worked in two companies that raised millions of dollars and had hundred people tackling just half of this, tax software, you are in for a treat.
Sure, that is still a ways off, but being able to hire a programmer to meet my personal modest software needs is almost there. Also, the needs of any company that required a hundred people and millions of dollars is very different from the needs of a small restaurant or the like; anyone with enough ambition to run a small restaurant can manage the accounting and taxes for that restaurant, the same can not be said for the sort of buisness you are describing. You are comparing an apple to an orange orchard.
Edit: Just noticed I said "any buisness", that was supposed to be "any small buisness." Edited the original post as well.
Business*, if your "tax-accounting" manager made THAT mistake with numbers you would be screwed.
4 replies →
I find it interesting but not surprising that this got downvoted. Sure my idea of the craft is different than the article's and of many people but if the craft only there if it is pure hand written code then it is a craft which the vast majority can not afford. I can pay a luthier a few thousand and get my dream guitar and would happily spend that sort of money on getting custom software but that is not going to happen if I insist on 100% handwritten code, just as getting my dream guitar would not happen if I insisted on the luthier only using hand tools.