Future of Software II

In my last article, Future of Software, I argued that even though a lot of work that we once did with software is now done by agents, software is still used for consumption, for creation, and for helping humans where they fall short.

In this short article, I talk a bit more about (1) why software for consumption still matters, (2) why there will be more hackable software, and ultimately, (3) why you still need software crafters very much.

People enjoy doing two things on screens: consuming and creating. I talked about creating in the last article; in this one I want to talk about consumption. 60% of the time you use your phone you are scrolling social media, reading essays and books, watching videos, and 30% you are texting your friends and your coworkers, and maybe 10% of the time you are playing games, which is a mix of both. We operate by what we think is true, and we are bounded by what we know. So the software that decides what we take away from reading also decides how we think. I believe there will be better ways to consume and engage with knowledge, since books are a lossy medium for knowledge. I expect we’ll be seeing improvements here.

People only hack their own software when they care about the activity, have time, interest, and an opinionated understanding of what is better. Let’s use note-taking as an example. There are thousands of ways to do digital note-taking, and people develop their own methods of note-taking. That’s why Obsidian is very popular—it’s hackable. I think in the future, more software will be designed to be hackable, so people will enhance the official ecosystem instead of creating a competing product. A hacking example: I hacked Heptabase because I wanted floating cards.

But those who want to hack software make up maybe 1% of a product’s user base. Most of us want to be taken care of. I don't want to hack all of my software. That’s why you still need software crafters. If someone has spent thousands of hours figuring out the best experience for doing something, and is consistently doing it better than how I do it, then I will happily pay them to do it for me. In that sense, software is becoming a meritocracy, and I think that is good.