One of the biggest rejoinders I hear against AI is "If AI has sped up software development so much, where's all this new software we were promised?" The punchline is usually, "The tools have underdelivered". There's plenty of vibe-coded and solo-shipped projects flooding our timelines, but where's the wave of new, Professional Software?
I think that question measures the wrong output, and Professional Software not arriving faster is a feature, not a bug.
At it's core, Professional Software Development is still mostly a conglomeration of human-driven processes. Teams that run agile spend time doing some form of:
Writing the code was the part of the process that got the most attention because until recently that's where talent was the most scarce. But making that part "easier" hasn't let teams running agile condense their sprints from 2 weeks to 2 days. Rather than reduce the overall time to ship, we've increased the amount we can ship in a same-shaped window, and thus increased the potential density of the products we're shipping. There's a surplus of scope.
But are all these steps still important? I could point an agent at, in theory, every step that I lined out above:
I could have all of these running 24/7 and never even have to worry about the seemingly arcane process of Agile ever again. But by automating these steps, I'm not thinking about these steps anymore. Collapsing the process may reduce the amount of time it takes but it also decreases the built-up knowledge of the product as a whole, which goes far beyond just the code.
But how do you know the research agent truly found original inputs? How do you know the agent you assigned to review your code was truly adversarial and additional, and didn't just look for the things you told it to? How do you know your design won't be considered AI slop in 2 months weeks? Are you sure your support agent found the right docs?
Compressing the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) can be an intoxicating feeling, especially for those of us who have been in an "Agile for Agile's sake" environment. Being able to go from an idea to an interactable product in a few prompts is pure dopamine, and the volume and speed of iterations this allows for early-on in a project is magical. But a crazy thing happens when you keep moving fast without a process. You start to thrash. You ship half-baked features. Those half-baked features change.
This is fine as you're iterating early on, but this thrashing gives your users paper cuts, and these paper cuts add up over time. Every feature you add becomes another facet of your product that you need to maintain, and as the surface area of your product increases, so does the weight of the promise you're making to your users.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
(Not so) Hot take - a team of experts beats a solo expert in the long run 99 times out of 100.
At Aarden, we've been able to ship a disruptive goespatial analysis tool in a little over a year. We have happy, paying customers. Here's the wild part:
we have 3 full time engineers on staff.
One of us has been focused on data pipelines. Another has been owning the front-end product. A third (👋) has been focused on AI tooling and infrastructure. Alongside us, we have 6 expert teammmates, each individual with their own lane of expertise - strategy, commercial, design, energy systems, land value, business operations. Each person an expert, with their own full processes and workflows.
Professional Software Development is so much more than just building the thing. Assuming the entire team will speed up just because of one step being radically changed is short-sighted, and undervalues the importance of all the work that goes into building a great company. Empathy, rigor, creativity - these are all non-negotiables for building great products.
While AI might not have directly sped up Professional Software Development, in the right hands it does allow teams to punch way above their weight. Aarden's going to continue to grow (We have open roles!), and each team-mate that joins will be a step-change improvement in capabilities for us. Just don't ask us to ship things faster.