Is software eating the world, or vice versa? | Hacker News Reader

Is software eating the world, or vice versa?

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43 pointsyarapavan7 comments

Can't help, but think of...

  they lied to us
  this was supposed to be
  the future
  where is my jetpack,
  where is my robotic companion,
  where is my dinner in pill form,
  where is my hydrogen fueled automobile,
  where is my nuclear-powered levitating home,
  where is my cure for this disease

Whether you're adding software to physical items or replacing physical supply chains with software, I think Andreessens point is that software is a high value activity.

While the Internet of Things is about connecting physical objects, the cool thing is that they're connected, and integrated, which requires software to handle the complexity.

However software is becoming commoditised, while hardware is now appearing to involve quite a degree of inventiveness, a characteristic following from the growth in low powered ARM devices, among others.

You can get a Som board with a Texas Instruments Omap 5, say from Phytec, running, well Android or Linux, or maybe a Exynos 5 running, well, Android or Linux. Or a plethora of others doing the same thing, like Raspberry Pi.

From the hardware viewpoint, it could be said that you do indeed eat the OS.

I think it's only the software infrastructure (like operating systems, languages/compilers, libraries and frameworks) that's becoming commoditised. The market for actual solutions remains vibrant as ever. Be it automated car-driving or 3D-printing, or payment gateways, there is no commoditization for apps for new problems.

Absolutely. On these devices the OS or even RTOS's for them are just the basis for further coding to accomplish this different conception of value added functionality. But unlike, say an iOS app, which leverages an underlying software platform ( running even on outstanding hardware ), these hardware efforts leverage the power of the devices and their peripherals. It's all back to C ( or maybe assembler or C++ ), and the code is more and more a facilitator for the hardware's value.

I should make myself clear that I'm thinking about hardware solutions that differ from current consumer products in the main, such as general purpose computers, or tablets and phones and so on.

But you're absolutely right that anything programmable requires software.

Definitively agree that the OS is becoming a commodity, and there's a lot of exciting hardware coming out.

I think the software related value gains in non-tech industries are higher in the stack, on the application and integration levels. Amazon wouldn't be much if not for integration, for example.

It's both.

The world 'eating software' is what is fuelling growth around the world.

Software eating the world is what is causing huge accumulations of capital in the world's largest tech firms, even though the total share of revenue by software companies is tiny.

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