There is a funny thing about the software business… people expect that building great software should be getting easier. On the surface, that seems like a reasonable expectation. Software is a maturing field. The tools and technology are improving rapidly. The money to be made is attracting bright and capable people. So, why does making great software seem just as hard as it ever was?

There are two market forces working together to ensure that making software will be hard for a long time—at least as long as software will be worth building.

Market Forces

The first force in play is the fact that as soon as technology improves to allow us to build today’s software more efficiently and effectively, the market will raise the expectation of what it will pay for.

The second force in play is that the world is flat. This is especially true in the software business. Unlike automobiles and silly bands, software incurs no shipping costs; so the market of suppliers is truly global.

Result

Those two market forces mean that as soon as a certain level of software functionality becomes easy to provide reliably (think on-time with no bugs), there is such a large supply of providers that no one will pay enough for that software to make a company profitable. Any software company (or department) that wishes to make a profit is going to have to provide something more: better integration to more complex systems; unseen functionality levels; innovative new platforms;  more immersive experiences, etc.

That pushing of the envelope means that software will be hard as long as there is any money to be made in it. My dad used to say to me “Eric, if it was easy, anyone could do it.” And if anyone could do it, it hardly ever pays well.