I’ve been considering that this might be an outcome of AI-written software and it’s the one aspect of all this that I’m actually unequivocally happy about.

Most software written at companies is shit. It’s whatever garbage someone slapped together and barely got working, and then they had to move onto the next thing. We end up squashing a never ending list of bugs because in a time-limited world, new features come first.

But that only really applies when the cost of good software dwarfs that of barely-functioning software. And when the marginal cost of polishing something is barely longer than it took to write it in the first place? There’s no reason not to take a few passes, get all the bugs out, and polish things up. Right now, AI can (and will) write an absolutely exhaustive set of test cases that handles far more than a human would ever have the motivation to write. And it will get better.

If a company can ship quality software in essentially the same time as it can ship garbage, the incentives will change rapidly. At least I hope so.