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by jrochkind1 713 days ago
I don't know how/haven't seen an attempt to approach this question by a method other than "my hunch", but as a software engineer "my hunch" is it would cost at least 10-50x as much human labor (not just engineers but designer and UX researchers as well as all the other support roles like project managers etc) to build the software "well" (including more customization for individual enterprises or uses), and that it would become an unsustainable portion of the GDP.

Just "my hunch", but one I reflect on a lot these days.
2 comments
joe_the_user 713 days ago
You could easily reduce the amount of software that exists today by 10-50x and have an adequate amount of software for virtually all purposes.

But this incredibly hypothetical. A lot of software labor today revolving around manipulating the user rather than aiding them so where we'd go with "better" versions of this is hard to say.

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denton-scratch 712 days ago
> (not just engineers but designer and UX researchers as well as all the other support roles like project managers etc)

Oh! I thought you were going to say "testing teams, design reviewers, trainers".

I'm not on-board with this "10-50x" claim for the amount of effort. I'd say maybe 3x the effort, given the developers have been well-trained, the methodology is sound, and the managers' focus is exclusively quality. That last item is one I've never experienced; the closest I came was on a banking project where the entire development team was subordinated to the Head of Testing.

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