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> Consider: what does computing look like in a world where many (maybe most) applications have an audience of just 1-2 people? How is software distributed? What does it run on?

The same. The slop apps remain just that. They may do something useful for you, but that's it. A bit like a branch in a repository.

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Have you thought carefully about this? What does it mean to call a piece of software that solves a real problem you have in your life "slop"?

It's the same thing as looking down your nose at people who use Excel as a database because it's not a "real" database.

Yes, I'm sure we all have horror stories about spreadsheets that got out of hand, but that ignores the thousands (or more) spreadsheets that are silently productive everyday.

That's a pretty good simile in fact. Excel programs are very useful to the people who write them (including myself sometimes); and yet - almost none of them are widely shared, becoming fundamental tools.

People worry when very important things are done with Excel because it has practically no mechanisms guiding the user toward avoiding mistakes.

https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/

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