The Great Flood of Adequate Software – by Scott Werner
July 22, 2025
Here’s what I think is about to happen: every task that used to require a team will become a Thursday afternoon project. But not revolutionary, world-changing projects. Just… adequate ones.Picture this future:
That weird file format your enterprise system spits out? Someone’s vibe coding a converter right now. It’ll be done by dinner.That API you need to test? There’ll be 17 testers by next month. Each slightly different. All adequate.
That specific workflow that requires seven manual steps? Someone’s 4-hour automation project is about to make it two clicks.
The tools won’t try to do everything. They’ll do one thing. Adequately.
Source: The Great Flood of Adequate Software – by Scott Werner
Just about any job, indeed any task has repetitive time consuming aspects to them that in theory could be automated by software, but in practice it never quite seems worth doing.
We may lack the ability to write software, but even when we do we may not have the time or budget to do so. Or the unknown time it might take gives us pause–will it take an hour? Or half a day?
LLMs change this. I’ve automated significant chunks of work that used to be at best semi automated (with spreadsheets and bash scripts) for when we publish conference websites and prepare presentations for Conffab.
This ability to write ‘good enough’ software that is better than the existing alternative (janky spreadsheets or entirely manual processes).
A great deal of software development has always been done by people who aren’t professional software developers. Thats only going to accelerate.
