Ask HK: How would a world where AI is able to write any software be?
Less different than you might think.<p>A huge amount of the work in developing software comes down to determining what is to be built and precisely specifying it enough that somebody can build it.<p>An idea person could already convince investors to supply $X and pay $X to a team of developers to develop it but they need to have a vision and articulate that vision sufficiently.  Alternately you are going to pay $Y in resources to run an A.I.,  if $Y &lt; $X than it may be worth it.<p>Many software projects fail because of poor vision, inadequately articulated vision, lack of empathy for users, etc.<p>Fred Brooks,  in this essay<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com&#x2F;refs&#x2F;Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;worrydream.com&#x2F;refs&#x2F;Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf</a><p>makes a strong case that there are enough different kinds of activities around software development that simply reducing coding and design time to zero still leaves a lot of work.  For instance you might want to solve a problem like<p><pre><code>   &quot;build a spreadsheet written in Typescript that runs inside the web
    browser with all the features of Microsoft Excel but much
    easier to use and with all of the footguns removed&quot;
</code></pre>
but you&#x27;re going to have to specify exactly what that is and that&#x27;s a lot of work,  maybe it is 20% of the work to develop the project.  Somebody is going to have to test it,  not least to determine that it is really is easy to use that all the footguns (specified!) are really removed,  that it did not add more,  etc,  the testing might be another 20% of the work (companies like Microsoft often hire an equal number of testers as coders) so you might still have 40% of the work left to do.<p>Note if you want to &quot;port this software to Linux&quot; or something specified like that your best bet is something like<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Proton_(software)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Proton_(software)</a>