The Implications of Software Abundance
There's an explosion of new tools and services that allow technical people to build software much faster and more efficiently and allow non-technical people to build basic mobile apps, web apps, or scripts that automate specific tasks. In the next few years, we will see an explosion of new software being built. In this post, I'll explore what kind of tools and services are causing this and the implications of more software products being even more abundant than they are now. First, the tools.
Github Copilot and ChatGPT and other AI
Github Copilot was released a little more than a year ago - It's an extension inside a developer's IDE (code editor) and makes suggestions about what it thinks you want to write based on the context of your code. If you like the suggestion, you press your tab button, and it fills it in for you. I've been using it for a year, and it's still a magical experience. The tool has made me significantly more productive as a developer, allowing me to write more software. Github Copilot, however, is not an option for non-technical people and it's not great for debugging code and generating more complicated code.
That's where ChatGPT can come in and help. With good prompting, ChatGPT can create whole programs for non-technical people. Someone created a Twitter bot solely using the directions and code from chatGPT. ChatGPT also helps you debug your code, so you can just copy/paste the error messages with your code and it'll provide suggestions so you can fix it.
There is also AI that can now generate beautiful product designs for you (galelio.io). So, both technical and non-technical people who aren't particularly design-oriented will soon be able to get excellent, completed product designs that they can then implement with code or with the help of AI.
Replit Bounties
Replit bounties is a product released by the code IDE company called Replit. It allows anyone to post a "bounty," which is a task to build new software, to the Replit community of talented, hungry, and mostly younger programmers. Replit Bounties makes it easy and fast to build new software if you don't have the skills or time to build it yourself. It's an excellent product that will increase the amount of software in production.
Given the onset of these tools and services, what does it mean for the future of startups and product building?
Creative, unique ideas go up in value.
In the startup and software world, there's been the adage that ideas are low in value and execution is high value. For a while, the "idea guy" has been looked down upon. With software abundance, this will flip. Great ideas will become more important than execution because execution may be relatively easy thanks to the above tools and services.
Essentially, deciding what to build will be of utmost importance. You have to make sure that the idea is unique, provides a ton of value, and that customers are willing to pay for it.
Marketing and distribution matter more
With more products being built, getting people to know about and try your products becomes even more critical. In the future, marketing and sales skills may be more sought after than deep technical expertise.
Sure, AI will help with marketing and distribution too, but software founders will still have to think deeply about how to market their products so a lot of people notice them, how to build up email lists, grow social media followings, or sell into businesses.
Delightful user experiences and deep technical expertise go up in value.
It should be noted that while most prototypes and simpler software are not particularly hard to build with AI, fully finished products that delight users or products that have really deep technical complexities and can scale to millions of users will be hard to build for a while. These types of products will stand out in the sea of mediocre products. It will be important for developers and founders to focus on delightful user experiences and not shy away from building technically complex products.
More software -> more businesses -> more problems solved & more jobs -> growing economy -> better world
More people being able to create software businesses is a fantastic thing for society. At the core, for a business to be successful, it needs to solve a problem. So, more businesses being created means more problems being solved in the world. Businesses are also the primary way people get employed, so unemployment numbers should decrease. These factors lead to economic growth and increased productivity, leading to a better world.