A new class of dev tools is coming

Originally a spontaneous response to a great thread by Lee Edwards

For over a decade, building software is becoming harder, not easier. Complexity growth is outpacing tooling. This results in further specialisation of developers.

Growing overspecialisation is choking the industry. The entry barrier is getting lower but the lane is getting narrower too. Newcomers are at a disadvantage.

The bottleneck is operational complexity. The solution is tooling that does not require specialised knowledge in X to leverage X in full.

The vertical dev / cloud tooling trend is nearly over. Consolidation has already started (look at Github, Gitlab, Datadog). Next comes the era of horizontal abstraction layers and new kinds of platforms.

This new class of tooling will reshape the industry. Present-day developers will become specialised system engineers. A 10–20x bigger class of “new generalists” will emerge on top thanks to low entry barrier.

The time for it is now, because since very recently there’s consensus in cloud / ops and there is no longer a speed disadvantage for those who create horizontal packages. A bunch of great teams are are already building.