Esp32 emulation in the browser is an incredible superpower for hardware manufacturers.

You can put your hardware product, with a pixel perfect display and sound, directly into users (virtual) hands so they can try before they buy.

There's no real cost to you, since their web browser and computer provide all the horse power, you just serve it up as a static web page.

In the age of AI, a moat for hardware companies can be network effects through providing an AI friendly base that your users/players can build on.

For us that takes the form of an open source app store where players can extend their device using AI ("Hey Claude, make me a game like this one, except that a giant bowling ball with our company logo embossed on it should drop and roll down an Indiana Jones styled marble run").

It's hard to overstate how powerful it is to have users trying your device, navigating the menus, extending it's functionality themselves with AI, all on their own computer, creating games for others, all without even buying your device.

But nothing quite matches the satisfaction of someone in a far off engineering group reporting a problem that prevented them from committing data that would have corrupted the database - because your referential integrity constraints protected the database.

In the age of AI and a massive explosion of code touching the database, maybe it makes even more sense to embed logic and constraints inside the database where there's no way to get around them.

There was a pitched battle over features like row-level locking as competitors like Sybase, Ingress and Oracle scrapped it out. New features arrived on a monthly cadence, with immense engineering effort behind them. The winners (Oracle mostly) won a great moat which led to them to where they are today.

The fact that so many AI companies can produce amazing coding tools so quickly shows there is no moat, supporting your theory.

I think by any measure that OS/360 would be "high craft".

A human would (rightfully) call you out for wasting time and resources. AI slurps up your feedback and dives in again with the same vigour.

As a SaaS vendor, interacting with our customers about SAML usually involves:

a) them knowing what they want because they already have SAML-based SSO and it works for them; and

b) our contact on their side being some unfortunate support dude who got given SAML as their subject area for whatever reason, and who knows very little about it, and who is 4 levels in the org away from anyone empowered to make decisions as significant as moving away from SAML.

Aluminium is often described as "congealed electricity". Ship bauxite to wherever power is cheap and stranded, turn it into metal, and ship the metal out. Here in NZ, Tiwai Point is the textbook case, with London-based Rio Tinto running a smelter on the other side of the world that exists mainly because Manapōuri hydro had nowhere else to go.

AI data centres can be just the same - even more so, since the plant's assets (its chips) are virtually perishables, so there is less concern about assets becoming stranded if the host goes rogue. All the US needs is friendly and stable allied countries with cheap power.

The skills to drive AI are much the same as they were for business analysts in the old days. Domain knowledge, insight into user requirements, knowledge of modern UI paradigms, ability to write detailed, consistent requirements docs/ design docs.

There is a deep bench in the industry of these senior-ish people. Many have left to become baristas, dive instructors or hobby farmers, scarred by the pain of building large complex software systems using human labour and absurd Agile rituals. But they could slot straight back in, it's like riding a bike.

AI development is the new waterfall. Its just that the lower level that the BA hands off to, which used to be roomfuls of devs, is now a superhuman who can implement those designs at lighting speed and come back hungrily for more.

But if by senior you mean someone who is just a junior with more experience, someone who's not really in touch with the business's needs and who just works off stuff fed to them by PMs or the like - then yeah, agreed.