When I was a kid, we all marveled at the notion of the Star Trek computer that you’d just talk to and that would answer all your questions. It seemed impossibly fantastic and categorically impossible. Well, we have that now. In one episode, Captain Kirk used a universal translator to communicate with an alien (never mind that the aliens always seemed to speak English..). Today, everyone’s phone can do real-time translations between all the most commonly spoken languages on the planet.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m bullish on agentic coding. I think it’s marvelous, I think it will bring about an increase in software development jobs, and I think it will bring about unprecedented growth in the production of software. It’s that last point I want to explore a bit more deeply, because I think an explosion of software is coming.
Thomas Watson, the legendary IBM CEO, is often misquoted as saying, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” The true story is that he went out to talk to 20 customers, hoping to sell five IBM 701 computers, and ended up with 18 orders. Of course, today, computer sales are measured in the hundreds of millions.
We are currently in the “loving the thought of getting 18 orders after expecting five” stage of software. We are just getting started.
