The next 10 years of software development

"When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it."

Feb 01, 2026

Let me start with the Bezos quote that got me thinking:

It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, "Jeff, I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher." "I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly." Impossible. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it. — Jeff Bezos

It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a user comes up and says one of the following about my software:

I love this; I just wish it performed slower
I love this; I just wish it crashed more often
I love this; I just wish it had more bugs
I love this; I just wish it was harder to use
I love this; I just wish it drained my battery more
I love this; I just wish it showed me more ads

All of the above are points which modern software is actually very bad at. Modern software, on average:

Is rather slow, for what it's doing.
Is not reliable. It's not a surprise if it crashes, it's just frustrating.
Has bugs.
Sometimes unintuitive and hard to use. Being slow makes it harder to use as well.
Sometimes software just kills my battery. I mean the browser is a great example, but it's probably not the browser itself, rather all those React websites.

How can I optimize towards the positives, away from the negatives?

This is the question which I think warrants deep thought.

Certainly not by following the trends set forth by the software industry, which is primarily a fad-driven industry, being in a large part driven by what managers want, not by what craftsmen want.