To understand how software will change, we can benefit from studying how technology has changed other industries. History tends to rhyme, if you listen.
要了解软件将如何改变，我们可以从研究技术如何改变其他行业中受益。如果你倾听的话，历史往往会押韵。

Before the internet, media behaved very differently—it was expensive to create. You had to pay people to make content, edit it, and distribute it. Because content was expensive to create, it had to make money. And consumers paid—newspapers, magazines, books, cable, and pay per view. Warren Buffett famously loved newspapers—and who wouldn’t love a predictable subscription business with local monopolistic dynamics?
在互联网出现之前，媒体的表现非常不同——制作成本很高。你必须付钱给人们来制作、编辑和分发内容。因为内容的创建成本很高，所以它必须赚钱。消费者付费——报纸、杂志、书籍、有线电视和按次付费。众所周知，沃伦·巴菲特对报纸的喜爱程度很高，谁会不喜欢具有本地垄断动态的可预测订阅业务呢？

When the internet happened, media companies viewed it as a way to reach broader audiences and reduce their distribution costs. But what no one saw coming was that the internet not only reduced distribution costs to zero, but it also drove the cost of creating content to zero. User generated content flourished, and when content doesn’t cost anything to create, it no longer has to make money. How does content behave when it no longer has to make money? The relaxation of this economic constraint led to a Cambrian explosion–you can take a picture of a cup of coffee, post it to a million views or none at all and the market clearing price is still met. This produced a deluge of content that none of us could reasonably consume. This necessitated products to direct attention, merchandise this content, and route us effectively–we understand these now as user-generated content platforms.
当互联网出现时，媒体公司将其视为接触更广泛受众并降低发行成本的一种方式。但没有人预见到的是，互联网不仅将发行成本降至零，而且还将创建内容的成本降至零。用户生成的内容蓬勃发展，当内容创建不需要任何成本时，它就不再需要赚钱。当内容不再需要赚钱时，它会如何表现？这种经济约束的放松导致了寒武纪大爆发——你可以拍一张咖啡的照片，将其发布到百万浏览量或根本没有浏览量，但仍然满足市场出清价格。这产生了我们任何人都无法合理消费的大量内容。这需要产品来引导注意力、推销这些内容并有效地引导我们——我们现在将这些理解为用户生成的内容平台。

These platforms completely T-boned media companies. As a media company, you were competing for the same attention of users, but with a strictly higher COGS. The more people you had on your payroll that were creating content, the more exposed you were to being flanked by user-generated content platforms. Structurally, investing in media has been a losing value proposition ever since and value creation has shifted entirely to the platforms that control distribution.
这些平台完全是媒体公司的T骨。作为一家媒体公司，您正在争夺用户的同样关注度，但销售成本却更高。您的工资单上创建内容的人越多，您就越容易受到用户生成内容平台的攻击。从结构上讲，从那时起，对媒体的投资就一直是一个正在失去价值的主张，价值创造已完全转移到控制发行的平台上。

Software is expensive to create. You have to pay people to create it, maintain it, and distribute it. Because software is expensive to create, it has to make money. And we pay for it–software licenses, SaaS, per seat pricing, etc. Software margins have historically been an architectural envy–90+% margins and zero marginal cost of distribution.
软件的创建成本很高。你必须付钱给人们来创建、维护和分发它。因为软件的创建成本很高，所以它必须赚钱。我们为此付费——软件许可证、SaaS、每席位定价等。软件利润历来是令人羡慕的架构——90% 以上的利润和零边际分销成本。

Software is expensive because developers are expensive. They are skilled translators–they translate human language into computer language and vice-versa. LLMs have proven themselves to be remarkably efficient at this and will drive the cost of creating software to zero. What happens when software no longer has to make money? We will experience a Cambrian explosion of software, the same way we did with content.
软件之所以昂贵，是因为开发人员的成本很高。他们是熟练的翻译者——他们将人类语言翻译成计算机语言，反之亦然。法学硕士已经证明自己在这方面非常高效，并将把创建软件的成本降至零。当软件不再需要赚钱时会发生什么？我们将经历软件的寒武纪大爆发，就像我们对内容的经历一样。

Vogue wasn’t replaced by another fashion media company, it was replaced by 10,000 influencers. Salesforce will not be replaced by another monolithic CRM. It will be replaced by a constellation of things that dynamically serve the same intent and pain points. Software companies will be replaced the same way media companies were, giving rise to a new set of platforms that control distribution.
《Vogue》并不是被另一家时尚媒体公司取代，而是被 10,000 名影响者取代。 Salesforce 不会被另一个单一的 CRM 所取代。它将被一系列动态地服务于相同意图和痛点的事物所取代。软件公司将像媒体公司一样被取代，从而产生一套控制发行的新平台。

SaaS, ARR, magic numbers–these are all shorthand to understand the old model of business building in software, one where the expense associated with creating software was a moat. The invisible hand has been stayed in software for a long time, but LLMs will usher in its swift, familiar corrective force. Majoring in computer science today will be like majoring in journalism in the late 90’s.
SaaS、ARR、幻数——这些都是理解软件业务构建的旧模式的简写，在这种模式中，与创建软件相关的费用是一条护城河。看不见的手在软件领域已经存在很长时间了，但法学硕士将迎来其迅速、熟悉的纠正力量。今天主修计算机科学就像 90 年代末主修新闻学一样。