Fast Fashion, Fast Software

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, recently tweeted (X'ed? 🤷‍♂️) that we were about to enter the "Fash Fashion" era of Software. The implication: With tools like Lovable, Bolt, Replit and co, people will just quickly vibe-code a piece of software, only to discard it soon thereafter.

And I'm sitting here and don't want to live in that world. It's bad enough that clothes these days barely last beyond the third wash. But what does that even mean for software? With clothes, the idea is that it is so ridiculously cheap to make them that there's no point caring for them and maintaining them, especially when they'll go out of fashion in a second. But with software? Unless we're talking about disposable entertainment like the umpteenth clone of Candy Crush, these things hold a lot of our data, which we'd then have to migrate. I don't want my to-do app to disintegrate once I add one too many items, or my CRM to implode when I want to import a contact with a spécial chäracter.

Vibe Coding was never meant for things that seriously see the light of day. It's neat to be able to throw together quick one-offs when they're truly one-offs, like a one-time script for a one-time maintenance task.

In my view, the integration of AI on the user-facing side makes it even more important that the backend has rock-solid engineering.

The other part where the analogy breaks down is in terms of quantity. People passionate about fashion own countless garments, for each mood and occasion. Fine. But would install twenty different to-do apps and use alternate between their usage? That makes no sense.

So instead of fast fashion, we should look at, of course, slow fashion. Buy less, but better. Same with software. Build it well so you don't have to throw it away.