| I quite like Jonathan Blow. I think this talk is kind of poor though, I remember watching it a couple of years ago in its full context (linked in the youtube description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko). IIRC it had a bit of a "kids these days" / "they don't make 'em like they used to" feel to it. It's not untrue, but it doesn't really explain anything. IMO, a MUCH BETTER version of a similar point was outlined by Bert Hubert in this article: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ - How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents (Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQccNdwm8Tw) In short, this goes beyond software; it's in general about why the incentives around specialization and outsourcing/offshoring cause innovation and expertise to die out. Bert Hubert takes the example of toasters, but it's of course very generalizable: > The problem is that this is not just a toaster problem. This is a continental problem. All over Europe, this is happening simultaneously, where we’re saying, look, we’re not that much into actually building things anymore. > So we’re just getting everyone else to build stuff for us. [...] We’re just thinking about things and then telling some other people how to do their stuff. > In the end, you cannot survive if all you create is intellectual property. |
I can help with that. It’s a phenomenon sociologists call a moral decline. Typically that term is applied to great empires that die due to one or more internal social factors.
In the case of software it’s likely due to an ever decreasing barrier of entry chasing ever decreasing expectations. Throwing money at the problem has, counter-intuitively, only accelerated the trend.