Quoting Laurie Voss
- ID
- 24212
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 14 Sep 2026, 10:34 PM
- Fetched
- 14 Sep 2026, 11:24 PM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/14/laurie-voss/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 14 Sep 2026, 11:24 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
Laurie Voss argues that as AI drives the cost of writing, reviewing, and operating code toward zero, the remaining durable cost is figuring out what people actually want, defining it precisely, and making it pleasant to use. Since that cost is per-piece and doesn't transfer, it becomes the entire job as the volume of software explodes.
Why it matters
For builders shipping with AI tools, this reframes where to invest effort: less on implementation mechanics, more on requirements clarity and UX. If you're a developer or founder, the competitive moat shifts toward product taste and precise problem definition rather than raw coding throughput.
Discussion angle
Is Laurie Voss right that product definition becomes the whole job, or is he underestimating the cost of operating AI-generated code at scale? Share examples where AI wrote code fast but the real bottleneck was specifying what users wanted.