131 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
131 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
[1]
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justin․searls․co
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[2][ ]
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[3]Posts [4]Casts [5]Links [6]Shots [7]Takes [8]Tubes [9]Clips [10]Spots [11]
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Slops [12]Mails
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[13]About [14]Search [15] Subscribe
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[16]Posts [17]Casts [18]Links [19]Shots [20]Takes [21]Tubes [22]Clips [23]Spots
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[24]Slops [25]Mails
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[26]About [27]Search [28] Subscribe
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• [29]Work
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• [30]GitHub
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• [31]YouTube
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• [32]LinkedIn
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• [33]Instagram
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• [34]Mastodon
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• [35]Twitter
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Tuesday, Nov 4, 2025 [36]
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Software is supply-constrained (for now)
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Fantastic [37]write-up by Nowfal comparing AI's current moment to the
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Internet's dial-up era. This bit in particular points to a cleavage that far
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too few people understand:
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Software presents an even more interesting question. How many apps do you
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need? What about software that generates applications on demand, that
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creates entire software ecosystems autonomously? Until now, handcrafted
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software was the constraint. Expensive software engineers and [DEL:their
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:DEL] our labor costs limited what companies could afford to build.
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Automation changes this equation by making those engineers far more
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productive. Both consumer and enterprise software markets suggest
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significant unmet demand because businesses have consistently left projects
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unbuilt. They couldn't justify the development costs or had to allocate
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limited resources to their top priority projects. I saw this firsthand at
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Amazon. Thousands of ideas went unfunded not because they lacked business
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value, but because of the lack of engineering resources to build them. If
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AI can produce software at a fraction of the cost, that unleashes enormous
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latent demand. The key question then is if and when that demand will
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saturate.
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Two things are simultaneously true:
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1. The creation of custom software has been supply-constrained throughout the
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entire history of computing. Nobody knows how many apps were never even
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imagined—much less developed—due to this constraint, but it's probably fair
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to say there's an unbelievably massive, decades-long backlog of unmet
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demand for custom software
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2. We aren't even six months into the [38]Shovelware era of coding agents.
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Exceedingly few developers have even tried these things; the tooling is so
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bad as to be counterproductive to the task; and yet experienced early
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adopters (like me) have concluded today's mediocre agents are already
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substantially better at writing software
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It's long been my view that the appropriate response to the current moment is
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to ride this walrus and leverage coding agents to increase the scope of our
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ambitions. By the time software demand has been saturated and put us out of
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jobs, the supply of programmers will already have tapered off as the next
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generation sees the inflection point coming.
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In the short term, the only programmers actually losing their jobs to "AI" are
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those who refuse to engage with the technology. Using coding agents effectively
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is a learned skill like any other—and if you don't keep your skills current,
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fewer people will want to hire you.
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[39] wreflection.com
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Got a taste for hot, fresh takes?
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Then you're in luck, because you'll pay $0 for my 2¢ when you [40]subscribe to
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my work, whether via [41]RSS or your favorite [42]social network.
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I also have a monthly [43]newsletter where I write high-tempo,
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thought-provoking essays about life, in case that's more your speed:
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[44][ ] [45][Sign up]
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And if you'd rather give your eyes a rest and your ears a workout, might I
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suggest my long-form solo podcast, [46]Breaking Change? Odds are, you haven't
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heard anything quite like it.
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© 2025 Justin Searls. All rights reserved.
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References:
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[1] https://justin.searls.co/
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[3] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
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[4] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
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[5] https://justin.searls.co/links/
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[6] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
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[7] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
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[8] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
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[9] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
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[10] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
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[11] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
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[12] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
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[13] https://justin.searls.co/about/
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[14] https://justin.searls.co/search/
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[15] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[16] https://justin.searls.co/posts/
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[17] https://justin.searls.co/casts/
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[18] https://justin.searls.co/links/
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[19] https://justin.searls.co/shots/
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[20] https://justin.searls.co/takes/
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[21] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/
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[22] https://justin.searls.co/clips/
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[23] https://justin.searls.co/spots/
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[24] https://justin.searls.co/slops/
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[25] https://justin.searls.co/mails/
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[26] https://justin.searls.co/about/
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[27] https://justin.searls.co/search/
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[28] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[29] https://searls.co/
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[30] https://github.com/searls
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[31] https://youtube.com/@JustinSearls
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[32] https://linkedin.com/in/searls
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[33] https://instagram.com/searls
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[34] https://mastodon.social/@searls
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[35] https://twitter.com/searls
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[36] https://www.wreflection.com/p/ai-dial-up-era
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[37] https://www.wreflection.com/p/ai-dial-up-era
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[38] https://justin.searls.co/shovelware/
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[39] https://www.wreflection.com/p/ai-dial-up-era
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[40] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/
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[41] https://justin.searls.co/rss/
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[42] https://justin.searls.co/posse/
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[43] https://justin.searls.co/newsletter
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[46] https://justin.searls.co/casts/breaking-change/
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