Software could become as ordinary as reading and writing

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 15:01

   To zoom out a little bit from software, I think Cloud Code did a cultural change a few months ago where it democratized building software. You can see shop owners building their own software for themselves or even programming microcontrollers to control the light when someone opens the door. Do you see in the future building software becoming a skill like I know Microsoft Office? So it's a thing that everybody can do, not just people in the tech industry?

2. 15:30

   Oh my God, yes, yes, yes. I think it's going to be even more than that. I think it's going to be, I don't know, it's going to be a skill like, yeah, like I know how to send a text message. I think, you know, like I read, my two genres are essentially sci-fi and tech history. This is what I read a lot of. And I think in tech history, there's one thing which I think to me is the clearest parallel for what's happening right now.

3. 15:52

   And this is in the 1400s, the printing press in Europe. And what happened was before the printing press, essentially 10% of the European population was literate. They knew how to read and write. They were often employed by like kings and lords that were not literate. And their job was to, you know, their job was to read and write. And this is not something that everyone knew how to do. The printing press was invented.

4. 16:16

   Then there were two more presses. And in the 50 years after the first printing press, there was more literature published in Europe than in the 1,000 years before. and over the same period the cost of literature the cost of a book went down like a hundred x and then you know it took a couple hundred years because you know learning to read and write is hard you need education systems and government and everyone can't be working on farms and so on but over the next few hundred years literacy globally went up to like 70 percent and so you know now we can all read and write and you don't need a degree in reading and writing to know how to read and write although still there are professional writers and that is the thing that you can do. So I think the thing that's about to happen, and it's going to be much faster than

5. 16:55

   50 years, is software will be a thing that is fully democratized that anyone can do. And, you know, there's a lot of corollaries to this. So for example, let's say you're writing accounting software. The best person to write accounting software, I think maybe even today, is not an engineer. It's a really good accountant. Because they know the domain really well. And coding is the easy part. It's knowing the domain that's the hard part. And I think this is just obviously see the future.