Item — HN Reader

Adding to the topic rather than dog piling onto the website critique:

I think "the context" the author defines also includes harder to unlock peripheral components that makes software products in 2026 defensible.

For example, security is getting harder not easier. Enterprise trust rides on needing to have up-to-date knowledge on data regulation as well.

Relationships, brand maturity, discovery; all of that becomes rarified as we continue to reduce the actual product launch curve -- but also the "harder to do" hygiene stuff that takes you from a "I vibe coded this in two days, good luck" to a "your successful company can count on us" type of hardening has become progressively more of a baseline requirement.

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In a way, this new dynamic of 'everyone can code' reminds me of the Unbundling -> Bundling -> Unbundling cycle of how entertainment media went from 3 broadcast channels to cable channels to web videos to our current state of bundled streaming services, with no end in sight.

Not to forget DVD shipping eras (Sony should not discontinue physical game sales, someone needs to get us silicon/holographic/terabyte recording media already), the focus is on the bundling/unbundling of software making. Slack + Salesforce vs 'we vibed our own chat and CRM just for us'...aka a Neo-SAP ERP program.

It's a cambrian explosion of software where lots are going to learn in realtime that the code was never the value of a software engineer / software, the value is in the shared understanding of an information system or workflow or business value stream, that parts of which happen to run through digital information systems.

By the time AI is done with us, its market effects mean in order to stay employable/added value beyond just widget-watchers, we will all be business strategy experts, or we will be algorithm-fed-doped-up mindless beasts, Morlocks vs Eloi, not because of AI itself, but because of the current rapaciousness of business leaders and an assumed trajectory where society doesn't adapt to social movements and actions now made possible by the existence of LLMs.

Sidneote: the LLMs themselves are not IMO going to achieve AGI any time soon. There might be a compilation of disparate systems and LLMs form part of 'tissues' of an eventual AGI, but not currently.

> Morlocks vs Eloi

We will either be experts in asbestos chemistry, safety mechanisms, and remediation... or we'll be helping people tweak it for sale as kitchen sponges and pinatas.

Definitely. I wonder if this will be an increasing factor when choosing vendors. Will the security risk drive companies away from small software, due to their use of AI? Will we see a bundling of features in big established vendors?

Will they invest more into in-house security? (Doubting the last one).

For small apps used to deliver a service in my examples, I believe the risk surface is way narrower, which might make it more acceptable. For better of for worse