"even in startup land it is about the gimmick more than the code these days"
It was never about the code. It has always been about the idea. The code is just a way of expressing one's ideas. Some people are more expressive, some have better ideas - we need both to succeed. Your comment on moore's law making any idiot a passable coder seems to miss the point - we've increased the number of people who can reasonably express their idea.
And even the high-end coders are able to take advantage of amazing opportunities, particularly in parallel processing on platforms like AWS - solving problems and expressing their ideas in ways they had only dreamed of trying.
I can only imagine that those of us with ideas we hope to try out will continue to delight in moore's law, great free and open code, and yes, winner-take-all economics where we'll compete based on our ideas.
It was never about the code. It has always been about the idea. The code is just a way of expressing one's ideas. Some people are more expressive, some have better ideas - we need both to succeed. Your comment on moore's law making any idiot a passable coder seems to miss the point - we've increased the number of people who can reasonably express their idea.
And even the high-end coders are able to take advantage of amazing opportunities, particularly in parallel processing on platforms like AWS - solving problems and expressing their ideas in ways they had only dreamed of trying.
I can only imagine that those of us with ideas we hope to try out will continue to delight in moore's law, great free and open code, and yes, winner-take-all economics where we'll compete based on our ideas.