> There are legitimate reasons for the startup ecosystem to focus firstly and primarily on getting the users/customers. I'm not arguing against that. What I am arguing is why does the industry need to be dominated by startups in terms of the bulk of the products (not bulk of the users). It begs the question of how much societally-meaningful programming waiting to be done.

You slipped in "societally-meaningful" and I don't know what it means and don't want to debate merits/demerits of socialism/capitalism.

However I think lots of software needs to be written because in my estimation with AI/LLM/ML it'll generate value.

And then you have lots of software that needs to rewritten as firms/technologies die and new firms/technologies are born.

I didn't mean to do some snide anticaptialism. Making new Postgreses and blenders is really hard. I don't think the startup ecosystem does a very good job, but I don't assume central planning would do a much better job either.

(The method I have the most confidence in is some sort of mixed system where there is non-profit, state-planned, and startup software development all at once.)

Markets are a tool, a means to the end. I think they're very good, I'm a big fan! But they are not an excuse not to think about the outcome we want.

I'm confident that the outcome I don't want is where most software developers are trying to find demand for their work, pivoting etc. it's very "pushing a string" or "cart before the horse". I want more "pull" where the users/benefiaries of software are better able to dictate or create themselves what they want, rather than being helpless until a pivoting engineer finds it for them.

Basically start-up culture has combined theories of exogenous growth from technology change, and a baseline assumption that most people are and will remain hopelessly computer illiterate, into an ideology that assumes the best software is always "surprising", a paradigm shift, etc.

Startups that make libraries/tools for other software developers are fortunately a good step in undermining these "the customer is an idiot and the product will be better than they expect" assumptions. That gives me hope we're reach a healthier mix of push and pull. Wild successes are always disruptive, but that shouldn't mean that the only success is wild, or trying to "act disruptive before wild success" ("manifest" paradigm shifts!) is always the best means to get there.