You slipped in "societally-meaningful" and I don't know what it means and don't want to debate merits/demerits of socialism/capitalism.
However I think lots of software needs to be written because in my estimation with AI/LLM/ML it'll generate value.
And then you have lots of software that needs to rewritten as firms/technologies die and new firms/technologies are born.
(The method I have the most confidence in is some sort of mixed system where there is non-profit, state-planned, and startup software development all at once.)
Markets are a tool, a means to the end. I think they're very good, I'm a big fan! But they are not an excuse not to think about the outcome we want.
I'm confident that the outcome I don't want is where most software developers are trying to find demand for their work, pivoting etc. it's very "pushing a string" or "cart before the horse". I want more "pull" where the users/benefiaries of software are better able to dictate or create themselves what they want, rather than being helpless until a pivoting engineer finds it for them.
It's got a lot easier technically to do that in recent year, and MUCH easier with AI.
But institutionally and in terms of governance it's got a lot harder. Nobody wants home-brew software anymore. Doing data management and governance is complex enough and involves enough different people that it's really hard to generate the momentum to get projects off the ground.
I still think it's often the right solution and that successful orgs will go this route and retain people with the skills to make it happen. But the majority probably can't afford the time/complexity, and AI is only part of the balance that determines whether it's feasible.
Yes! This is what I'm excited about as well. Though I'm genuinely ambivalent about what I want my role to be. Sometimes I'm excited about figuring out how I can work on the infrastructure side. That would be more similar to what I've done in my career thus far. But a lot of the time, I think that what I'd prefer would be to become one of those end users with my own domain-specific problems in some niche that I'm building my own software to help myself with. That sounds pretty great! But it might be a pretty unnatural or even painful change for a lot of us who have been focused for so long on building software tools for other people to use.
They only care about their problems and treat their computers like an appliance. They don't care if it takes 10 seconds or 20 seconds.
They don't even care if it has ads, popups, and junk. They are used to bloatware and will gladly open their wallets if the tool is helping them get by.
It's an unfortunately reality but there it is, software is about money and solving problems. Unless you are working on a mission critical system that affects people's health or financial data, none of those matter much.
I'm banking on a future that if users feel they can (perhaps vibe) code their own solutions, they are far less likely to open their wallets for our bloatware solutions. Why pay exorbitant rents for shitty SaaS if you can make your own thing ad-free, exactly to your own mental spec?
I want the "computers are new, programmers are in short supply, customer is desperate" era we've had in my lifetime so far to come to a close.
Hardly any of us are working on Postgres, Photoshop, blender, etc. but it's not just cope to wish we were.
It's good to think about the needs to business and the needs of society separately. Yes, the thing needs users, or no one is benefiting. But it also needs to do good for those users, and ultimately, at the highest caliber, craftsmanship starts to matter again.
There are legitimate reasons for the startup ecosystem to focus firstly and primarily on getting the users/customers. I'm not arguing against that. What I am arguing is why does the industry need to be dominated by startups in terms of the bulk of the products (not bulk of the users). It begs the question of how much societally-meaningful programming waiting to be done.
I'm hoping for a world where more end users code (vibe or otherwise) and the solve their own problems with their own software. I think that will make more a smaller, more elite software industry that is more focused on infrastructure than last-mile value capture. The question is how to fund the infrastructure. I don't know except for the most elite projects, which is not good enough for the industry (even this hypothetical smaller one) on the whole.