> It also seems like an era coming to a close where a solo programmer can deliver an impactful product.
This is true but you have to look at it differently. There are generally two ways of looking at history: the 'great man'[0] theory, or the 'of the times' theory.
If you look at it one way Woz and Carmack and Torvalds and the others were instrumental in shaping their surroundings and without those specific people we would have lost out on basically the entire technological world as we know it.
If you look at it another way, they were inevitable -- the times were such that it was bound to happen (or at least extremely likely) because of a great confluence of events that could never be arranged or predicted, and if Woz had electrocuted himself making the Apple I power supply module then someone else would have done something similar around the same time and we end up at the same
spot (but Steve Jobs becomes a moderately successful Bay Area Benz dealer and we all use Blackberry phones with physical keyboards in 2023).
The era of an individual engineer or programmer making a paradigm shifting breakthrough in his or her basement may be over, but that just means the times have shifted into another dynamic. What that is can not be predicted, but if we do survive the oncoming crises upon us and somehow also never end up turning the planet into smoldering radioactive ash over a shipping lane dispute or something, there will be a time when such a person can be expected to emerge and do it again.
[0] excuse the masculine nature of this terminology, but unfortunately that is what it is called, though I haven't formally studied history in a while and it could have changed
This is true but you have to look at it differently. There are generally two ways of looking at history: the 'great man'[0] theory, or the 'of the times' theory.
If you look at it one way Woz and Carmack and Torvalds and the others were instrumental in shaping their surroundings and without those specific people we would have lost out on basically the entire technological world as we know it.
If you look at it another way, they were inevitable -- the times were such that it was bound to happen (or at least extremely likely) because of a great confluence of events that could never be arranged or predicted, and if Woz had electrocuted himself making the Apple I power supply module then someone else would have done something similar around the same time and we end up at the same spot (but Steve Jobs becomes a moderately successful Bay Area Benz dealer and we all use Blackberry phones with physical keyboards in 2023).
The era of an individual engineer or programmer making a paradigm shifting breakthrough in his or her basement may be over, but that just means the times have shifted into another dynamic. What that is can not be predicted, but if we do survive the oncoming crises upon us and somehow also never end up turning the planet into smoldering radioactive ash over a shipping lane dispute or something, there will be a time when such a person can be expected to emerge and do it again.
[0] excuse the masculine nature of this terminology, but unfortunately that is what it is called, though I haven't formally studied history in a while and it could have changed