This is utopian thinking that disregards how software ecosystems actually work in practice. Take the opening sentence:
> In the world of mobile development (though likely also elsewhere), we sink so much engineering talent into making tools that are great within-ecosystem, but as we don’t bother making them available to other ecosystems, everyone ends up reinventing the wheel.
I get the frustration with software churn and substandard tooling when you have to code for multiple platforms, but this is a very hand-wavy admonishment. Leaving aside who "we" are and what our cross-platform responsibilities are for the moment, how would this even work? Different platforms have different capabilities. Cross-platform tooling will therefore always be more complex and less capable than platform-specific tooling.
One could then argue that we should consolidate platforms, which generally will be more efficient, but who will be responsible for this platform? Whether closed or open, you are now in a situation where one platform has to be all things to all people, and that means there will be tradeoffs that hurt someone. I'm a happy iOS user, but I'm sure glad Android exists because diversity is healthy.
Technology will always trend towards consolidation because bits are cheap and easy to move, and there's always an incentive to harness economies of scale. The problem is mono-cultures are brittle. Some amount of "reinventing the wheel" is just the cost of a healthy and diverse software ecosystem. The OA should be careful what he wishes for.
> In the world of mobile development (though likely also elsewhere), we sink so much engineering talent into making tools that are great within-ecosystem, but as we don’t bother making them available to other ecosystems, everyone ends up reinventing the wheel.
I get the frustration with software churn and substandard tooling when you have to code for multiple platforms, but this is a very hand-wavy admonishment. Leaving aside who "we" are and what our cross-platform responsibilities are for the moment, how would this even work? Different platforms have different capabilities. Cross-platform tooling will therefore always be more complex and less capable than platform-specific tooling.
One could then argue that we should consolidate platforms, which generally will be more efficient, but who will be responsible for this platform? Whether closed or open, you are now in a situation where one platform has to be all things to all people, and that means there will be tradeoffs that hurt someone. I'm a happy iOS user, but I'm sure glad Android exists because diversity is healthy.
Technology will always trend towards consolidation because bits are cheap and easy to move, and there's always an incentive to harness economies of scale. The problem is mono-cultures are brittle. Some amount of "reinventing the wheel" is just the cost of a healthy and diverse software ecosystem. The OA should be careful what he wishes for.