Post-Scarcity May Lead to Tech Stagnation: Software Engineering Scale Refutes Misunderstanding of General-Purpose Tools
CatAstro_Piyush · x · 2026-08-01
Author bzogrammer shares an article that was buried two years ago and adds his evolving views: people generally misunderstand general-purpose tools. Computers are universal Turing machines, but they haven't quickly solved every problem; McCarthy's 'summer project' prediction in the 50s was hilariously wrong. Today, software engineering is one of the largest and best-paid professions, contrary to expectations. The article argues that the bottleneck of the computer age is not compute but ideas for using it; without new thinking, material abundance is swallowed by waste, inefficiency, and overproduction.
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