Domain expertise has always been the real moat

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      "title": "Domain Expertise Has Always Been the Real Moat | Aaron Brethorst",
      "excerpt": "The hard part of writing software has never been the writing. It was building a working model of the domain in your head first. Before you could ship a payroll system you had to understand garnishments and pre-tax deductions and what happens when someone’s pay period straddles a rate change. Before you could ship a transit app you had to learn what a GTFS feed is, why a trip and a route aren’t the same thing, and how a bus that’s “on time” can still be wrong. The code was a transcription of that understanding. Acquiring the understanding was the job.\n\nAgentic AI severed the link between the two. You can now produce the software without ever building the model, and that breaks an assumption the whole profession was organized around.\n\nThe standard take, including my own from last year , is that these tools amplify senior developers because senior developers have judgment. True, but incomplete. What I’ve watched happen since is more specific and more interesting: the binding constraint has moved from can you build it to can you tell whether it’s right .\n\nThink about who can actually use one of these tools well. Picture two people.\n\nThe first is a domain expert with no real software ba",
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          "by": "steve_adams_86",
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          "text": "Such a good example of this I encountered recently:<p>I was on a fishing trip. I asked the charter if he’d want to check out a free app I work on (<a href=\"https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca</a>) in case it might be useful for his work.<p>I don’t know how people on the ocean use ocean data. I don’t really know what they want to know, or why. I wasn’t totally prepared for the incredible onslaught of questions and information pertaining to how people use the data or what we can do with the data, and it was so cool and exciting to get that perspective.<p>It was a good reminder that models are not the same as the systems they abstract, and knowledge to develop them has almost nothing to do with using them. This guy was a wealth of knowledge about how they use weather data on the water. In a sense, he knows more about the data than I do (even if he doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t understand it in its digital representation), and would be far better equipped to make a useful application for people like him if he could program.<p>I found myself thinking people like him could actually do amazing stuff with LLMs if they sat down and got their ideas out on a screen. I’d really like to interview people on the water daily some day to refine the product if we ever have the funding. That domain knowledge is highly, highly specialized and people know things you’d never guess after living in a complex domain for decades.",
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        "body": "Such a good example of this I encountered recently: I was on a fishing trip. I asked the charter if he’d want to check out a free app I work on ( https://oceanconnect.ca ) in case it might be useful for his work. I don’t know how people on the ocean use ocean data. I don’t really know what they want to know, or why. I wasn’t totally prepared for the incredible onslaught of questions and information pertaining to how people use the data or what we can do with the data, and it was so cool and exciting to get that perspective. It was a good reminder that models are not the same as the systems they abstract, and knowledge to develop them has almost nothing to do with using them. This guy was a wealth of knowledge about how they use weather data on the water. In a sense, he knows more about the data than I do (even if he doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t understand it in its digital representation), and would be far better equipped to make a useful application for people like him if he could program. I found myself thinking people like him could actually do amazing stuff with LLMs if they sat down and got their ideas out on a screen. I’d really like to interview people on the water daily some day to refine the product if we ever have the funding. That domain knowledge is highly, highly specialized and people know things you’d never guess after living in a complex domain for decades.",
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        "raw_body": "Such a good example of this I encountered recently:<p>I was on a fishing trip. I asked the charter if he’d want to check out a free app I work on (<a href=\"https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca</a>) in case it might be useful for his work.<p>I don’t know how people on the ocean use ocean data. I don’t really know what they want to know, or why. I wasn’t totally prepared for the incredible onslaught of questions and information pertaining to how people use the data or what we can do with the data, and it was so cool and exciting to get that perspective.<p>It was a good reminder that models are not the same as the systems they abstract, and knowledge to develop them has almost nothing to do with using them. This guy was a wealth of knowledge about how they use weather data on the water. In a sense, he knows more about the data than I do (even if he doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t understand it in its digital representation), and would be far better equipped to make a useful application for people like him if he could program.<p>I found myself thinking people like him could actually do amazing stuff with LLMs if they sat down and got their ideas out on a screen. I’d really like to interview people on the water daily some day to refine the product if we ever have the funding. That domain knowledge is highly, highly specialized and people know things you’d never guess after living in a complex domain for decades.",
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          "text": "The software generalist described in this post has domain expertise as well. In software.<p>If you’re a great generalist software engineer today, you aren’t jumping to some random domain to escape AI. Software is your domain. You’re sticking with it as it expands and transforms.",
          "time": 1780178394,
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        "body": "The software generalist described in this post has domain expertise as well. In software. If you’re a great generalist software engineer today, you aren’t jumping to some random domain to escape AI. Software is your domain. You’re sticking with it as it expands and transforms.",
        "is_op": false,
        "author": "burnto",
        "raw_body": "The software generalist described in this post has domain expertise as well. In software.<p>If you’re a great generalist software engineer today, you aren’t jumping to some random domain to escape AI. Software is your domain. You’re sticking with it as it expands and transforms.",
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          "text": "Not just domain expertise. The hard part has always been marketing, distribution, risk appetite, motivation, grit, and patience.<p>There are plenty of things which are &quot;trivial&quot; to produce with no moat and yet are still million dollar businesses. Kebab stands. Water bottles. Barber shops. Movers.",
          "time": 1780177986,
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        "body": "Not just domain expertise. The hard part has always been marketing, distribution, risk appetite, motivation, grit, and patience. There are plenty of things which are \"trivial\" to produce with no moat and yet are still million dollar businesses. Kebab stands. Water bottles. Barber shops. Movers.",
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        "author": "znnajdla",
        "raw_body": "Not just domain expertise. The hard part has always been marketing, distribution, risk appetite, motivation, grit, and patience.<p>There are plenty of things which are &quot;trivial&quot; to produce with no moat and yet are still million dollar businesses. Kebab stands. Water bottles. Barber shops. Movers.",
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          "text": "This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring.<p>Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.",
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        "body": "This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring. Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.",
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        "raw_body": "This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring.<p>Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.",
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          "text": "Good post! Also, in my opinion, domain expertise is actually more interesting than pure coding ability. Coding, for me, has always been a means to an end. I&#x27;m equally happy with a spreadsheet if it solves my problem, and in fact I hate most apps.",
          "time": 1780176353,
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        "body": "Good post! Also, in my opinion, domain expertise is actually more interesting than pure coding ability. Coding, for me, has always been a means to an end. I'm equally happy with a spreadsheet if it solves my problem, and in fact I hate most apps.",
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        "raw_body": "Good post! Also, in my opinion, domain expertise is actually more interesting than pure coding ability. Coding, for me, has always been a means to an end. I&#x27;m equally happy with a spreadsheet if it solves my problem, and in fact I hate most apps.",
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        "text": "Such a good example of this I encountered recently:<p>I was on a fishing trip. I asked the charter if he’d want to check out a free app I work on (<a href=\"https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oceanconnect.ca</a>) in case it might be useful for his work.<p>I don’t know how people on the ocean use ocean data. I don’t really know what they want to know, or why. I wasn’t totally prepared for the incredible onslaught of questions and information pertaining to how people use the data or what we can do with the data, and it was so cool and exciting to get that perspective.<p>It was a good reminder that models are not the same as the systems they abstract, and knowledge to develop them has almost nothing to do with using them. This guy was a wealth of knowledge about how they use weather data on the water. In a sense, he knows more about the data than I do (even if he doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t understand it in its digital representation), and would be far better equipped to make a useful application for people like him if he could program.<p>I found myself thinking people like him could actually do amazing stuff with LLMs if they sat down and got their ideas out on a screen. I’d really like to interview people on the water daily some day to refine the product if we ever have the funding. That domain knowledge is highly, highly specialized and people know things you’d never guess after living in a complex domain for decades.",
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        "text": "The software generalist described in this post has domain expertise as well. In software.<p>If you’re a great generalist software engineer today, you aren’t jumping to some random domain to escape AI. Software is your domain. You’re sticking with it as it expands and transforms.",
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        "text": "Good post! Also, in my opinion, domain expertise is actually more interesting than pure coding ability. Coding, for me, has always been a means to an end. I&#x27;m equally happy with a spreadsheet if it solves my problem, and in fact I hate most apps.",
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