alt Hacker NewsSince software is still a winner-takes-all market, the mass-production property of software doesn't really matter.
In such markets, what you produce is either worth nothing or worth millions of dollars. For as long as it's the case that well-constructed code (with or without LLM help) is more likely to be in the latter category, the economics of software don't really change.
Even before LLMs, you could've commissioned a half-assed clone of any app you wanted from a 3rd world consultancy for a few thousand dollars. LLMs are basically Bangalore-as-API.
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> Since software is still a winner-takes-all market, the mass-production property of software doesn't really matter.
Fairly sure software dev was always an iceberg. Most software and most software devs aren't working on horizontal software, but on vertical software, in cost centers. Sales for that kind of software don't scale as much.
I think part of the reason software was winner take most was the difficulty of making software.
I remember hearing a story that in the past movies were so technically difficult to make that any movie that got made had a good chance to be a profitable hit. But as movies got cheaper to make, more movies got made. Nowadays movie studio execs have to really calculate out the audience and expected revenue for any new movie and balance that against the budget and the cost of the studio's failed movies.
I think a similar dynamic may happen in software