Software is a Tool

John Carmack (creator of Doom, Quake, and many other great achievements) made a great point on Twitter when asked what he thought about AI obsoleting coding jobs in the future.

Software is just a tool to help accomplish something for people

Personally, while I enjoy coding, I enjoy helping people more. And AI, no-code tools, or other future tools will not miraculously solve all the problems people have.

Technology improvements allow engineers to build more complex things faster. This is true in every industry, from robotics to software. The products we can create now were impossible 20 years ago. And what we can make 20 years from now will be even more impressive.

But as the tooling gets better, so do user expectations. A SaaS MVP today needs to be about ten times better than one a decade ago.

Who wins? Users do.

This technological advancement eats up the low-hanging fruit of MVPs and products. For example, you can't build a SaaS that calls your phone to remind you of appointments as your entry point to a new market. Why? Because... my phone has a free reminder app that does that. And a calendar.

But with better tools, we can now make MVPs that solve harder problems faster.

The tools unlock new possibilities.

That's why you're here. That's why I am. To take advantage of better tooling to help people solve interesting problems. Ignore the hype and focus on the practical.

Problems, in general, are never going away. So let's take advantage of the best tools we have to solve them.