Software Moats with AI

AI is enabling people who previously didn't have the background to program efficiently to do so. Coding efficiently was a moat software engineers and companies had exclusive access to. AI changed the game, and drives us to focus on the real problem and solution space that software was solving. When writing code, the code itself is just text in a file that does nothing. Customers never cared about the code itself, unless the customer asked for code specifically. When running the code, that is what usually solved the problem. Effective software engineers (and now arguably effective AI users) are solving real problems and adding real value. The heart of engineering with or without code, with or without AI is understanding those problems and the people who have them. Understanding people and their problems, enables identifying the best solutions, something AI is not good at. Most interactions have nuances and protocols that are not recorded as digital data. This is something humans will always manage better than LLMs. LLMs still need direction and that direction is best served by the needs of people.