[hathawsh]

Yes, but I think we have a somewhat different idea about the market forces. My impression from your essay is that you believe app developers will add APIs that enable personal tools, and only then will local software crafting take off.

My belief is that it is happening already: local software crafting is happening now, before the tools are ready. People aren't going to wait for good APIs to exist; people will MacGyver things together. They'll scrape screens (sometimes with OCR), run emulated devices in the cloud, and call APIs incorrectly and abusively until they get what they need. They won't ask for permission.

A lot of software developers may transition from building to cleaning up knots.