Software is becoming less and less of a tech industry and more and more commoditized. Very little innovation in the past 5-10 years. Very few successful companies during that time have come about by having incredibly innovative and novel technology - almost all are simply using run of the mill, commoditized technology to solve business problems that they have large domain knowledge of. Given this, it makes total sense that having detailed esoteric technical knowledge is no longer the path to success in 2021, and ultimately, hacker news has always been predominately about one thing - how to get rich. The best methods have simply shifted over the last 15 years from being a tech genius to being technically-proficient domain knowledge expert
^^ This comment is spot on; my personal path has evolved from low-level "let's build everything ourselves" to "which components/services/apps can I leverage to serve my clients and get a new feature out in a few days instead of months".
We're moving up on the abstraction ladder, and as hacker news has always had an early adopter audience, focus is shifting here first.
Assuming these trends are highly correlated with the Kondratieff cycle, I expect a new trend to emerge about a decade from now. My best bet is focus will shift deep into the implementation again, but now in another context (Maybe on edge devices, data/code floating in the void, more decentralized, ...).
I've put my money where my mouth is, and my personal bet is on interactive 3D, as 3D capable devices are becoming more of a commodity and the current generation of youth (future buyers) will be a very technically literate audience that has grown up playing games and being connected 24/7.
Maybe I should send myself a reminder about this post in 10 years from now; curious to see what will have emerged by then on this site...
I think it's also that we've solved many of the tech problems that can be solved by a single, genius savant. These days it's more "cross functional teams."
When problems are solved by three or more people working together in a Zoom meeting, "making technology" becomes a lot less like being a hacker.
And a lot more boring regular business suit stuff becomes part of the conversation.
That means the time is now! The changes and innovations that we are looking for are being formed right now! I can't wait to see what comes out of all this. Sure the HN community is getting a little homogenized but the creator of the next big thing is likely already here among us, and they're unknowingly depending on us to seed them with the concepts and values that we care about.
