Tobi Lütke on Software and Blacksmithing

Mar 24, 2021

The guest discusses the allure of software engineering, comparing it to traditional crafts like blacksmithing. He emphasizes creating tools that amplify productivity, showcasing how technology advances compound over time. The conversation also touches on the evolving nature of coding and the joy of problem-solving in the digital age. Listeners will find insights into how software transforms not just industries but also the individual's workflow, drawing parallels to craftsmanship and innovation.

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The Power of Software: Craftsmanship and Innovation

00:00 • 5min

Audio source (with video): https://thisweekinstartups.com/tobi-lutke-on-shopifys-impact-on-the-creator-economy-covid-forcing-focus-early-internet-breakthroughs-evolving-as-a-remote-manager-much-more-e1184/

Software and Blacksmithing

swyx: [00:00:00] So recently Tobi Lutke, the CEO of Shopify was on theThis Week in Startups podcast with Jason Calacanis and he has some really interesting thoughts about software, which I shared. But it sounds better coming from him around why software engineering is an attractive career it's because we get to make tools that we then use to help us the next day. And so if you apply this over a 40 year career, you can really compound your productivity and your output. And here he is:

Jason Calacanis: [00:00:30] Do you still write code ever? I think sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. You miss being, 12 hour a day, coder.

Tobi Lutke: [00:00:36] Yeah, it's a really good question. I think the 12th hour day coding has never been a goal, but sometimes happened just because there wasn't anything more interesting going on in plateau and figuring something out to read like it's so in a way that's not the objective, but I love coding. I find, I think the, all, I think the narrative around programming is more interesting than people have realized just because really, since blacksmithing, we never really had a craft that makes whether the craftsman actually make their own tools.

And I think there's, the who's had it first we make two of the tools and number two, it's make us I'm making this part of it. Yeah. I think,

Jason Calacanis: [00:01:15] I mean, to make tools, right? Like you see this gorillas take sticks and stick them into the Antell to get the bugs out, to eat, to get the heads out, to eat and say

Tobi Lutke: [00:01:24] it's purely cause and effect vote for four primary purposes.

I think what we do is I'll give you a genetically no different in the last 70,000 years, we event like so the difference between aspect van, and now it's really the tools we have available that don't really invent the stories we tell each other. And it's amazing that we can put people on the moon or, go to space on your usable, the rockets and do all these things and have internet based on just to a building point to a building.

And then of course softwares, like what would you make of. Plenty of leverage because you have zero marginal cost copying infrastructure that everyone on planet earth can add to and constantly come up with trying to come up with better ideas. So I'm like, this is the thing that I'm really excited by and why I love being here programmer, because for leverage, you get as an individual, being able to build something that then is available to everyone.

It's just enormous. I'd like obviously Shopify as a good example of that. And I, I think that's that's really important. There's so many stories about, w what you said earlier is totally true about, Ethernet, like DSLR camera and an SM7B microphone.

But in a way If you need technologists to come in and make it so that someone can buy a single thing and then plug it into one thing. And then all of this needs to work well. And you need to marshal the complete infrastructure that we've built around machine learning to to take tiny microphones and make them sound good.

And we need to like all of this. Like it needs to be like significant movement to make the setup you and I have here, which we can do because we have tinkerers available to everyone, this kind of democratization of goodness studio. Yeah. It's important.

Jason Calacanis: [00:02:57] Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting.

I love the thought of the compounding nature of software and it's also happening in hardware. Now, if you just think about what happened with the smartphone revolution, If we hadn't an Apple hadn't produced and Android phones, billions of smartphones and billions of batteries and billions of charging stations and got obsessed with how fast can we charge these phones?

It would have never trickled down into your Tesla and that would have never trickled into your quad-copter. And now the quad copters, I don't know if you said Joby is going public Reid. Hoffman's taking a public Mark Pincus. I said, read on the pod, talking about it. That would have not been possible if Elon haven't made a million cars with those battery packs, because now the battery management and fast charging allows you to have a Vitol.

So you're going to be able to go from Ottawa to the airport in a veto, and it's going to have eight rotors and it's going to I would never get an, a helicopter. Those things are death traps, but a veto with eight rotors and to go out and it just the software it's like, Oh, two Rutgers are out just.

Redeploy the energy and it's done, and it feels like that's happening with software so quickly. Startups today, I had a startup that built a million dollar business, basically on Slack, like just charging people subscriptions to go into a soccer room. And I was like, there's no, you don't have any developers.

So no. We just charge people on this Stripe account to go to this landing page. And then they are in a Slack instance and we built some glue with Zapier. If this, then that. The no code startups I'm seeing, which actually is what Shopify is right too. And people can build an online store with no work.

swyx: [00:04:33] I think if you've been in software for a while, you've probably thought about this where one thing that we do builds on another thing that someone else did and so on and so on and down the stack. And it's just really empowering. And I really like this discussion from Toby.