I keep seeing versions of this soliloquy on here, sometimes multiple times every day. They make fine blog posts, it's something to say and something to read, but ultimately remind me more of piling into a Tiktok trend than anything else: everybody's doing it, so I will too!

End of the day, much like when photography went digital (and smartphones got good cameras), yes, there were a LOT more photos taken, but the relative proportion of outsized, lauded photographers remained fairly constant. The upshot is that WAY more people are exposed to the possibility of creating excellence than before, the downside is the market gets flooded with utility and mediocrity. Said excellence never goes away, and the same will apply to software.

The very idea that SaaS (or packaged software, or whatever) "will die" because "anybody" can prompt their way to a "personal tool" (as a mainstream exercise) is so far-fetched to me because the only people who will prompt their way to a tool ARE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS!

Professionals who need functionality will always pay for it.

Boomer dads who can barely work a DVR will always pay for it.

Business owners who need less friction and more reliability will always pay for it.

IMO, this "I'll just replace Salesforce with my own personal CRM for $200 for a month of Claude" thing is just a hobbyist's pipe dream lol -- not that there's anything wrong with it, some people will do it, but, man, there's a reason that Netflix is Netflix, and Plex isn't Netflix.

Most small businesses don’t need the complexity of Salesforce and people use Netflix for the content, not the software.

I don’t understand why Netflix needs 3500 engineers. They built what needed to be built already.