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Where to next?

The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero. Or, at best, near-zero.

The cost of integrating services and libraries, the plumbing of the code world, has dropped to zero. Or, at best, near-zero.

The cost of building efficient, reliable, secure, end-to-end systems is starting to drop, but slowly.

Where does that leave those of us who have built careers in technology? Our road diverges. Not into the undergrowth of a wood, but into a dense fog. The future is harder to see than ever. But lets peer forward and see as best we can.

On the first road we can see this as the end to a craft we have loved. The slow end of programming as an economic discipline, as weaving, ploughing, and coopering went before. It is reasonable and rational to feel a sense of loss, and a sense of uncertainty. With the loss of the craft comes the loss of the economic moment where that craft was valued beyond nearly any other. Perhaps any other in history. It is irrational to feel denial. You are here.

On the second road we can see this moment as the beginning of something new. With new tools comes greater opportunity than ever. Greater economic opportunity for those who value that. Greater technical opportunity for those who value that. The most powerful set of new tools since the dawn of computing itself. With these tools come risk, and with risk comes opportunity. With these tools come new industries, new fields of research, and new careers. All bring opportunity.

The First Road

Back at university, I knew this guy. Mostly retired. An absolute wizz at circuit design and analog electronics. Like nobody I’ve encountered since. In the late 1960s, him and some buddies started a hardware company. They’d seen digital electronics coming, the 74 series had just launched. They didn’t like it. No class. No beauty. Unreliable and full of problems. So they started this company betting that serious customers wouldn’t accept the downsides of digital logic, and analog was the way of the future for real automation. Statistically, measured by the ratio of transistors in digital and analog circuits in the year 2026, it’s unlikely anybody has ever been more wrong. Wrong by ten or more orders of magnitude.

He made a small fortune along this path. Not a large one, but enough to keep his children comfortable. The first road will surely have similar winners. The stubborn who stick to the old ways, and hustle to squeeze out the remaining economic value. That value will remain, because the world always changes slower than we would like.

But those that succeed along this road will increasingly be those that acknowledge what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. Picking up the parts of an old world, now gone, but intentionally.

There will still be joy in programming. Just as there’s joy in joinery, knitting, and hiking. You’re not wrong to love programming. I love it too. You’re not wrong to feel a deep sense of loss. I feel it too.

The Second Road

What careers lie on the second road? Perhaps surprisingly, this seems harder to predict. My guess is that there are fortunes to be made exploiting the new technology, building faster, and out-competing a valuable incumbent. There are decades of great companies to build following that recipe. There are great careers in technology and science to be made applying this new technology to old problems, bringing new tools into tricky places, and solving the previously unsolvable. There are both fortunes and careers to be made in solving the problems this new technology introduces, allowing everybody else to exploit it to its maximum potential.

In other words, my best prediction is that the next two decades look like the last four. Hardly a prediction worthy of an oracle.

Today, it seems like the biggest opportunities will be in the third of my opening statements. Building systems remains hard. Can I assume you’re familiar with Amdahl’s Law? That’s what’s going on: a massive speed up on a portion of the problem, but as that portion speeds up it becomes less and less of a contributor to the overall speedup. Lowering the costs of the rest of the problem is work that remains to be done. It’s going to take a long time, because the real world is fully of sticky problems, surprising feedback loops, human stubbornness, and the occasional adversary.

There’s also going to be great value in ideas. Integration and translation are solved problems. Simple analysis, and small scale synthesis are too. But new ideas, real transformative new ideas, remain hard to come by. And, as the lever gets longer, more and more valuable.

Software’s first act is over. The second act won’t go like anybody expects, but I can bet that it’ll be more interesting, more economically valuable, and more mentally stimulating than we can imagine right now.

I can’t wait to be part of it.

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