The Death of Software Development

Summary

Background I’m Michael Arnaldi, Founder and CEO of Effectful Technologies — the company behind Effect, the TypeScript library for building production-grade systems. I’ve been programming most of my life. I started at 11 with the goal of cracking video games. Since then, I’ve written code at every level: from kernel development to the highest abstractions in TypeScript. Programming has been my life. And now it’s gone for good. Let me explain. The Ralph Wiggum Moment The broader community is only now waking up to the power of AI. Last week, Ralph Wiggum went viral. Ralph is a technique that prompts agents like Claude Code in a deterministic loop, iteratively building large systems from lists of small tasks. Twitter exploded. The name comes from Geoffrey Huntley, a great engineer and a good friend who’s been exploring the extremes of AI for a long time. But here’s the thing: what people don’t realize is that Ralph is just the beginning. The “AI power users” — the ones who’ve been living in this world for months — are already working with far more refined techniques. And they’re not just building simple things. They’re cloning entire companies in hours. Missing the Point The average software developer is not even close to understanding the extent of this change. They’re obsessed with picking “the best model” — endlessly debating whether Claude is better than GPT, whether Gemini is catching up, whether open-source models can compete. They’re missing the point entirely. The outcome is defined by the process, not the model. The model is just one piece of the puzzle. Think of it like traditional software development: not every developer is exceptional, but a team of good enough developers with the right process can build great software. The same principle applies here. A good enough model with the right process will beat a better model with no process — every single time. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the state of the art is not public knowledge. Power users are keeping t...