Good article. Appreciate the bread (machine) analogy.

One thing to add: software maintenance costs. The build has never been the bottleneck.

The notion that most companies will suddenly institute developers to build all kinds of software inhouse and maintain it is silly. Most companies are not google et al, even in 2026.

The insurance industry built almost everything custom in the 70s and 80s, simply because that was the only option. The more software became commercially available elsewhere the more this effort was pruned back.

Another thing: knowing what to build — another big bottleneck. Most people cannot articulate what they want and even fewer can articulate it at a level that would enable them to build durable software, even with AI. Case in point: the majority of AI-built stuff you see are point solutions or small productivity items, etc. “Systems thinking”, as some people call it, is hard, even for most software engineers.

Yes, you can “rebuild” tools you’ve previously purchased as SaaS but at some point you gotto use your brain to come up with something new. Systems thinking on blank-page challenges is even harder…