The Tech Industry Cycle

View on Threads

I came across this Threads post of a X (Formerly Twitter) post and it got me thinking about the tech industry and cycles. I've been in web development since 2007 and one thing I've noticed is the industry goes through constant cycles. Let me explain.

I've constantly seen new technology, ideas, concepts get introduced and usually they come spark lots of interest. People rush to use and embrace a new trend and implement it across different projects. This usually happens over a few years and you hear lots of "This is amazing!" and "How did we ever live without it?".

It's always an exciting time. Except when those years have passed and people come to realize maybe we jumped too quickly into the water. Over those years as the ideas and concepts settle and we've start to see what didn't work. This usually involves a retcon of a bit. Some people undo what was done and go back to simpler solutions. Some keep what was done and try their best to improve and fix what is... well fixable.

That social post gives me those old feelings of industry cycle specifically with AI usage. To me? We're right in new and exciting phase. Trying new concepts, seeing how they fit and seeing how far we can go with it. That's great! But I feel like soon we'll going to hit the next phase and that's the realization we moved too fast or too far. From this developer's view, it's going to result in the realization of a lot of not so great products. We may have to go back to simpler solutions while at the same time fixing those past mistakes.