We Stopped Building Things and Started Building Apps to Talk About Building Things
We used to build things. Software that did something. Products that solved problems. Tools that people used. Now we build apps to talk about building things. Project management tools for managing projects that produce nothing. Communication platforms for communicating about communication. Productivity apps that consume more time than they save. The industry has become meta. We are so busy building tools for building that we forgot to build anything. Look at a modern developer’s setup. They have tools for task management. Tools for note-taking. Tools for documentation. Tools for communication. Tools for code review. Tools for deployment. Tools for monitoring. Tools for managing the other tools. Each tool promises productivity. Together they consume productivity. The time spent configuring, maintaining, and switching between tools is time not spent on actual work. The tools became the work.