Implementation Costs Are On The Decline

We are about to witness how software implementation costs are going to start plummeting

Oftentimes when watching some old movie, we see a situation where someone is making a telephone call. They pick up the telephone receiver, then crank the handle, and then utter in an agitated voice “Operator! Operator!”

The movie then cuts to a busy floor populated by telephone operators who are receiving requests to connect callers to some third party at the other end of the line. We see operators pulling out some wires from the giant board and then plugging them into other parts of the board. Once they successfully ‘dial’ the call, they connect the caller to whomever is going to pick up at the other end of the telephone line.

You can imagine that managing such operation was a fairly costly affair. Phone calls weren’t very cheap in the old days (especially long distance calls). Fast forward to today, and we see how talking on the phone with anyone in the world became actually free of charge. So long as both parties have a smart phone with an app like Viber or Messenger or Whatsapp etc., and also have an access to some wi fi signal, they can chat away for hours, not being worried that they’ll be charged even a dime.

How did that happen?

Technological advancements cheapen everything

Back in the days of more primitive technology, we needed ample and expensive human workforce when it came to implementing telephone calls. The implementation was very expensive. With the advancing technology, the implementation started getting less and less expensive. Until such time when today we need not pay anything for the privilege of talking to someone who is not in our vicinity. Magic!

Why am I discussing this? I am using the evolution of the telephone/video call technology to illustrate the fact that we are entering the age of negligible cost of implementing many of the daily chores. As is obvious from the example of making telephone calls, the more primitive the technology is, the more important the implementation of the functionality becomes. Back in the day, implementation was viewed as being very precious, because it was always very expensive.

Cast your mind to not so distant past when photography was also quite costly to implement. To make a photo, we’d have to invest money in the film (i.e., the negative), and then also pay for the film to be developed and printed (i.e., the positives). If we travel even further back in the past, we’ll witness early photographs being done only by a few privileged professionals — photographers. Those crafts people owned expensive equipment, had their own studios, and we had to pay them a handsome fee if we wanted to get a family photo etc.

Today, pretty much everyone owns a smartphone with a very high quality camera built in and an almost unlimited storage. That technological advancement enables all of us to become amateur photographers and to take unlimited number of nice looking photos. All that for the princely sum of $0.00. And hardly anyone ever hires professional photographers anymore.

There are, of course, many more similar examples of engineering/trades/crafts that used to be very expensive to implement and use, and that, with the rapid advancement of technology, have become available to everyone, for negligible price. Technological advancements aggressively drive the implementation prices down.

Why is the software still expensive to implement?

Seeing how many other areas of human endeavour have become very affordable (and with the advent of 3D printing, is going to get much more affordable), why is it that implementing software products remains very expensive?

For some peculiar reason, software as a profession seems to be severely lagging behind all other branches of engineering, trades, and craft. It’s quite shameful to see that today, in the year 2024, we are still building software the pedestrian way. Despite the fact that many bright minds have offered brilliant solutions for automating the software development and delivery process, the mainstream software professionals have chosen to completely ignore such technological advancements.

When it comes to software development and delivery, we are still stuck in the Stone Age. Or, at best, in the Bronze Age. Why is that?

I think many of today’s software professionals are riding on the wave established in the early days of software profession (say 40 to 60 years ago), when any activity to develop software was exorbitantly expensive. Such situation has hardened into the practice that attracted many people to join the software development teams, seeing how relatively easy it was to join the team of elite engineers who were commanding above average compensations for their work.

However, with the commoditization of computing infrastructure, and with the commoditization of the process of crafting software code, those days are numbered. Today, many software professionals are leveraging the assistance of AI agents who are capable of writing, describing, refactoring, and summarizing software code regardless of the programming language.

Finally, we will start seeing how software implementation costs are going to start plummeting, joining the same trend that other areas of engineering, trades, and crafts are experiencing.