Programmers as Creators
November 20, 2023
Similar to the democratization of film creation beyond TV and movie studios in the 80s and 90s, we are witnessing a similar revolution in software development. Sequoia's recent The Next Billion Developers Perspective aligns with this idea, envisioning coding not as a corporate endeavor but as a tool for individual creativity. This future of coding, akin to platforms like YouTube and Instagram, empowers individuals to publish and remix code, unleashing a wave of creativity.
The developer population explosion, from 24 million in 2017 to over 100 million today, is just the beginning. Our aim is to make coding as accessible and user-friendly as popular content platforms. We see a world where code is accessible in smaller, manageable pieces, allowing for greater creative fusion. Sequoia's insights about the increasing ease of becoming a developer and AI's expanding role in coding bolster this vision.
However, better tooling alone won't suffice. To spark the next billion programmers, a shift in the entire ecosystem is needed. We need platforms for discovery, community building, and monetization. In this new era, developers transcend their traditional roles, becoming creators shaping our future. This shift is not just about engineering; it's about leveraging human ingenuity for greater impact.
The focus on tooling and AI-driven software development is just the beginning of what can be a much more powerful revolution. A Cambrian explosion of software is only helpful if we can change how people use software to enhance their lives. We need to change how software is distributed.
One of the new paths forward follows what Indie Hackers and Stripe are aiming for: making it easier for an individual to build a traditional business that is underpinned by software. They build creator tools so developers can focus on development and the rest of running a business can be outsourced. This is like what YouTube did for Mr. Beast: created the one man studio by allowing a dedicated creator to build a business just a good as the big dogs with first class tooling.
Similarly, companies like Replit and val.town are transforming software into a more social, interactive, and composable experience. This mirrors the long tail of content on YouTube. People share bite-sized, niche code pieces for others to use and enjoy. You can fork a single function to play with it or build a composable app of micro-microservices by calling 10 vals on val.town. Lowering the barrier to publish code and then making code more social and composable could lead to so many use cases we can't yet imagine since it's new paradigm. It could be like programming's "Twitter Moment"; just like how everyone became a journalist, everyone can become a programmer.
New technologies require new business models, and I think we're seeing here that the next billion developers (powered by AI) won't fit so neatly into the existing models.