Does the World Still Need Software?

The question isn’t provocative anymore. It’s unavoidable.

Does the world still need software?

Yes.

But not in the way we’ve been building it for the last two decades.

Why Software Still Matters

Software is still required wherever there is irreversible responsibility.

Money.

Healthcare.

Safety.

Compliance.

Infrastructure.

AI can generate actions.

Only software can enforce consequences.

Large language models don’t replace software.

They operate on top of it.

What the World No Longer Needs

The world does not need:

• Endless CRUD dashboards
• SaaS clones with different color palettes
• Over-abstracted frameworks built “just in case”
• Software written to look modern instead of being necessary

Most of this existed to compensate for rigid systems and poor UX.

AI removes that friction.

What Is Actually Changing

What’s dying is software as static instructions.

What’s growing is software as:

• Constraints
• Policy
• Memory
• Guardrails for AI

In the AI era:

• Humans express intent
• AI executes
• Software enforces reality

That enforcement layer is irreplaceable.

The New Stack

Old world

UI → Backend → Database

New world

Intent → Policy → Memory → Execution

Only two layers must remain deterministic:

• Policy — what is allowed
• Memory — what has happened

Everything else can be probabilistic.

A Brutal Filter for Builders

Ask one question about your product:

Does it exist to collect inputs and show outputs?

Or does it exist to define what must never go wrong?

If it’s the first, AI will eat it.

If it’s the second, it becomes more valuable.

The Hard Truth

The world doesn’t need more software.

It needs less software in the wrong places,

and hard, boring, frozen software in the right ones.

Software isn’t dying.

Unnecessary software is.

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CTO Perspective

As a CTO, the hardest shift today is not adopting AI.

It is knowing where to stop writing software.

AI makes everything feel possible.

Discipline decides what should exist.

Most systems don’t fail because of bad code.

They fail because they never stabilize.

My job is no longer to maximize flexibility.

It is to freeze the right decisions early,

define non-negotiable constraints,

and let everything else remain replaceable.

In the AI era, good engineering is not cleverness.

It is restraint.

If your software exists to enforce reality, it will matter.

If it exists to fill screens, it will fade.