The market for utility software like this predates the internet, we used to pass them around on floppies. It was never subject to particularly high QA or scrutiny. It just has to be "adequate."
But it's never displaced the market for highly-produced, highly-planned, "central" software pieces that the utilities glue together and help you work with, etc.
The growth of that software-as-big-business has only enlarged the need for utilities, really, to integrate everything, but it's a tough space to work in - "it's hard to compete with free." One classic move is selling support, etc.
Might be tough to do non-LLM-driven software development there - the selling support for your LLM-created-products model is still viable, but if there's an increase in velocity in useful utility creation or maintenance, possibly the dev headcount needs are lower.
But does anyone know how to use LLMs to make those giant ones yet? Or to make those central core underlying libraries you mention? Doesn't seem like it. Time will tell if there's a meaningful path that is truly different from "an even higher level programming language." Even on the edges - "we outgrew the library and we have to fork it because of [features/perf/bugs]" is a pretty common pattern when working on those larger projects already, and the more specific the exact changes you need are, the less the LLM might be able to do it for you (e.g. the "it kept assuming this function existed because it exists in a lot of similar things" problem).
What I hope is that we can find good ways to leverage these for quality control and testing and validation. (Though this is the opposite of the sort of greenfield dev demos that get the most press right now.)
Testing/validation is hard and expensive enough that basically nobody does a thorough job of it right now, especially in the consumer space. It would be wonderful if we could find ways to release higher quality software without teams of thousands doing manual validation.
But it's never displaced the market for highly-produced, highly-planned, "central" software pieces that the utilities glue together and help you work with, etc.
The growth of that software-as-big-business has only enlarged the need for utilities, really, to integrate everything, but it's a tough space to work in - "it's hard to compete with free." One classic move is selling support, etc.
Might be tough to do non-LLM-driven software development there - the selling support for your LLM-created-products model is still viable, but if there's an increase in velocity in useful utility creation or maintenance, possibly the dev headcount needs are lower.
But does anyone know how to use LLMs to make those giant ones yet? Or to make those central core underlying libraries you mention? Doesn't seem like it. Time will tell if there's a meaningful path that is truly different from "an even higher level programming language." Even on the edges - "we outgrew the library and we have to fork it because of [features/perf/bugs]" is a pretty common pattern when working on those larger projects already, and the more specific the exact changes you need are, the less the LLM might be able to do it for you (e.g. the "it kept assuming this function existed because it exists in a lot of similar things" problem).
What I hope is that we can find good ways to leverage these for quality control and testing and validation. (Though this is the opposite of the sort of greenfield dev demos that get the most press right now.)
Testing/validation is hard and expensive enough that basically nobody does a thorough job of it right now, especially in the consumer space. It would be wonderful if we could find ways to release higher quality software without teams of thousands doing manual validation.