The Era of (Good) Personal Software has Arrived

It Started with Slop A few years ago as the AI revolution (or not) took hold, people started espousing the idea that anyone would be able to write their own software just how they want it. Every little thing would be customized just how they want and it would unlock a new era of software design. What starting actually looked like was NextJS apps spammed to all corners of the internet with the same design and a bunch of poor implementation. The app store exploded with bare-bones apps that never left the ground and all looked like the same collection of SwiftUI. But models got better, as there was so much economic incentive to do. A lot of engineers took the wrong signal and didn't take a real inner look to decide what they did or didn't like about something and what they actually wanted out of their toolbox. Toast! After coming back from a grueling paternity leave, some spark in me realized all the IDEs that I had used over time, I didn't really use their whole feature set. I didn't…