Jonathan Blow

There is certainly some inflection point of cost/complexity with systems written in high-level languages, and the big Web companies are all past it. But there are probably a lot of other things going on there as well (politics, lack of focus, massive investments tracking/adtech)

When I say the "economics of high-level languages" I'm talking about the cost of training/hiring n programmers to build some application. The quality of the end product is of course lower, but our economy would at least look very different if the cost of new software was higher

I agree that this is the common belief, I am just saying that I see no evidence supporting that belief.

Do you think there is a non-economic explanation for the popularity of high-level languages as the software industry has grown?

Yes. This is generally what happens when nobody knows what they are doing, so everyone imitates each other rather than solving problems from first principles.

A technically simpler Web would be a *massive* economic gain for all web companies, but it's not going to happen any time soon, because there is too much chaos for agents to focus on clear goals.

Oh yeah I totally agree. That's also complicated by the fact that the standards are driven by huge, entrenched orgs with the resources to maintain the status quo. A simpler Web would entail more competition for them on multiple fronts.

I guess my question is, if not knowing what you're doing is more expensive in general, why haven't we seen more disruption of companies that operate that way? This has been a question for me my whole career.