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Comment by IggleSniggle | Hacker News Reader

I am sometimes guilty of reading the comments before reading the article. I often find the reactions more concise, insightful, and valuable to me than the source material.

That said:

If you are reading this comment and haven’t read the article, go read the article instead.

This is an inverse scenario: imho most of the comments here are interesting but have only marginal value building from the insight of the article.

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The author doesn't make a good case for "The main value of a software company is the mapping of source code and problem space in the developer’s heads" being a universal truth. There are some problem domains and practical development and deployment roadblocks that simply make certain source code more valuable than others. Nowadays it seems people are more willing to throw money at open sourcing solutions so competing firms don't have to roll their own but thats not a hard and fast phenomenon.

I think "software company" can probably hold the weight of the argument, if defined well.

ie., a Bank maybe finds most of its value in that its code runs, etc.

A software company, perhaps, we could define (1) simply as any company where this is true; or if that's cheating, (2) any company where its competitive advantage derives from its software developing over time.

I think the claim of this article is that (1) and (2) refer, aproximately, to the same companies: ie., that software which is changed to adapt to ever changing needs derives that capacity from the "theory of the programmers" and not the code.

I agree, but at least for me, this did not diminish the value of the article.

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