We Will Have 50,000 Jiras and No Better Software

We are about four years into the new AI era and patterns of the new normal have started to emerge. We are seeing enormous amounts of copies of existing software. We are not really seeing software get better. Let me start with what could have happened — and then what I actually see happening. What Could Have Happened The optimistic version is simple. AI removes the mechanical cost of writing code. The bottleneck shifts from "can we build this" to "what should we build." Developers with real understanding of software — its weight, its tradeoffs, its failure modes — finally have the time and energy to act on that understanding. We get leaner software. Faster software. Software that does not need four layers of abstraction to render a button. The idealistic version goes further. The barrier drops low enough that people who understand problems deeply but could not previously build solutions can now build them. Domain knowledge finally beats framework knowledge. We get software shaped by the