Thorsten Ball – What I believe about the future of software development

https://thorstenball.com/blog/2026/09/19/what-i-believe-about-the-future-of-software-development/

Comments

KuyawaSep 28, 2026, 12:44 AM
I agree with everything he says, but plenty of people still today don't see the writing on the wall

Yesterday I asked DeepSeek to clone Prince of Persia in Swift and the result is more than awesome [1]. I didn't write a single line of code, didn't check it, not even the main entry point. I don't know if it delivered swift, assembly or brainfvck, it just works, played three levels testing it and was taken back more than three decades ago when I first saw it

We are at a tipping point in software development, apps are worth nothing, market share is the most valuable currency now. If you think you have a secret app that can fly you to the edge of the universe and back through a wormhole, it can be copied and it will, at a faster speed than you built it first and heavily optimized on every new AI model release, in any language and for any platform

You trust the result because of the output, you use it, you run it, you don't care about code review or unit tests, AI does it all for us and does it perfectly

Bugs? Of course, but they are fixed faster than we can type them in the chat box. And things will only get better, way better

[1] https://github.com/kuyawa/prince

silverForkSep 28, 2026, 1:59 AM
There will be no difference between ideology and software. Code will never be neutral. Just express it and there is a code for that and it can become executable unless it needs a physical agent. Passive defaults in code will become a way to program people. Monopolizing physical assets will be the driver for software development.
jleyankSep 28, 2026, 12:37 AM
Without some kind of testing you have no way of catching errors or problems that arise without any effort on your part. Things like compiler or os changes, network or other environmental issues or platform changes. Gotta have checking before the user clicks…