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The reason is that the underlying technology evolves, and software itself goes through cycles of innovation. Software stays just flexible enough to adapt to the changes and absorb the innovations. It finds this balance "by itself" because software exists in a competitive market, and one where an equivalent of "economies of scale" dominate. Really, it's "economies of attention." All the tools that most people use today are in-use because they were able to (1) adapt to many use-cases while also (2) adapting to changes in their environment and (3) absorb new ideas.

The market learned a long time ago that "high level" text-based languages with libraries are the sweet spot, and many other things about how they are.

People are constantly trying to crystallize higher-level ideas—build some version IKEA or lego, or whatever. It may be that one day this will work. Certainly we see consolidation around strategies as time goes on. But so far, higher-level systems cannot adapt to enough use cases while also adopting to changes in technology and absorbing innovations.

The type of IKEA the author speaks about is Web2.0 software. I was around when we invented all that, and it wasn't that long ago.

Now we're already living through another radical change that software will adapt to—agentic software. If we all used IKEA software, much of it would be thrown out the window in the transition, and we'd lose the value accrued in those systems.

Instead, systems that have been adapting for decades are adapting like they always have. Python, the language of engineering just adds libraries. C/C++/Rust, the anti-IKEA, have new uses. GPU stuff is repurposed for ends never imagined. Nobody uses JQuery anymore.

It's a brutal state of affairs, really. Werner Herzog says it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5xBtaL3YI