| To be cynical, software "engineering" has largely been a joke forever. We don't get licensed or inspected outside of very specific fields. Most of it is slapped together quick as an MvP and pumped out with bugs fixed as they're prioritized by managers. Significant portions of our field think simply typing a codebase is just too much work, let alone proving it works. So you're appealing to a quality market that doesn't really exist to begin with. Unlike knives, which always had that high-quality market. Then, artisan products are often made with higher quality materials and have an essence of personalization that gives a "soul" to the object (tsukumogami). The time it takes to make is measured in hours, maybe days. And then you have it. Software just isn't personal like that (and cuter marketing doesn't count, that's a different department). Software can't be made of higher quality parts that feel weighty in your hand. It's just something you interact with. And it takes time to build and requires updates, so the valuation model is a lot less clear. You can argue that you can make less buggy software. But users today refuse to pay for software more often than not. It must be free, or they won't try it. And they rarely appreciate stability as much as they complain about being behind. I just don't see this coming to pass. It sounds like cope, like a telegraph operator saying someone will opt for "artisan messaging" at the dawn of the landline. |