The Death of the Software Developer :: AI Makes Me Sad

The Death of the Software Developer

2026-07-18

We’ve all seen the stories. Someone “buys” a book, audiobook, TV show, movie, video game, app, whatever, and then later complains that they can no longer access it. Maybe the platform it was purchased from lost the rights to that thing; maybe some music or art it used ran into a copyright dispute; maybe the user’s account was unceremoniously banned; maybe the whole platform just disappeared overnight. Whatever the reason, the overall effect is obvious: when you “buy” something digitally through a DRM-laden platform (think Nintendo eShop, Playstation Store, Kindle, Audible, Google Play, Apple App Store), you do not actually own it. What you are actually purchasing is the right to use that thing up until the platform decides you no longer can for some reason. To make matters worse, non-ownership is more and more becoming a feature, not a bug. After all, why would a platform settle for one-time payments to rent out DRM-locked products when they can convince users to pay them every single month instead? And thus we enter a new era where everything requires a subscription. Want to buy a movie? Why bother when you can stream it on Netflix for “free”? Want to buy a game? Why bother when it’s available for “free” on Apple Arcade or whatever Microsoft is calling their game streaming service now? A lot of media these days isn’t even available in any form outside of these subscription platforms.

We’ve also seen complaints from the other end of those transactions. App stores aggressively forcing software publishers to use billing mechanisms that skim 30% of all revenue; app updates being held hostage for failing to comply with unclear, draconian, and often arbitrary requirements; platforms banning accounts without recourse and destroying entire businesses overnight. Distributors who use these platforms may fear and hate them even more than their customers.

So the obvious question would be, why do people use these platforms in the first place? The answer is equally obvious: exposure and convenience. If you write a mobile app and try to distribute it through channels other than the official app stores, your potential user base becomes a fraction of a percent of what it would be otherwise. If you’re an iPhone or Android user, and you want to install an app, doing so by any means other than the official app stores requires jumping through a series of deliberately burdensome hoops. The platforms do everything within their power to make sure both producers and consumers get locked into their ecosystems. If you want to sell a physical or digital product online, doing it through Amazon will give you a customer base larger than anything you could ever hope to imagine otherwise. If you want to buy something online, and you’re one of the roughly 80% of internet users (in the US) who already pay for Amazon Prime, of course you’re going to check there first. After all, even if you found some random online shop that sold the thing you want, are they even reputable? Do they offer free shipping? Do they have a nearby warehouse and a fleet of delivery vehicles to ensure it will arrive overnight? Will they allow you to return it if it doesn’t meet your expectations, sending it off to a landfill somewhere in exchange for a full refund? Why even bother with the hassle of finding out?

I don’t know if the enshittification of online commerce was inevitable. I like to think that something could have been done—laws created to prevent it, and meaningful punishments dished out for anti-consumer behavior. I think the European Union seems to be trying to clean up some of this mess, but here in the US the current political situation does not foster much hope on that front. The unfortunate fact is that we reward these anti-consumer behaviors. We continue to use and bolster the platforms we’ve been walled into, enriching the corporations and people who run them. But what other choice do we have? To make things worse (in the US, at least), the more wealth the corporations amass to throw around, the more power we give them to dictate laws and policies in their favor. Unless something changes (unlikely), things will only continue to get worse.

That word “inevitable” is often thrown around these days in reference to LLMs and software development too. If you don’t use LLMs as a software developer, you’ll fall behind, doomed to obsolescence. You will be eclipsed, living in squalor beneath the insurmountable volume of code being produced by your LLM-using peers. The idea of humans still writing code in the age of AI is brushed off as outdated and quaint, using condescending terms like “artisanal coding.” Fine. I get it. But let’s pause this freight train for a moment to consider where it’s taking us.

In the world before LLMs, to be a software developer was to be a producer. You wrote code, crafted a game or an app or a library to do a thing, and...