At Google, some of the engineers would joke, self-deprecatingly, that the software internally was not particularly exceptional but rather Google’s dominance was an example of the power of network effects: when software is custom tailored to work well with each other.

Farid Zakaria’s Blog

Custom-built software tailored to specific needs often outperforms generalized solutions, despite the tech industry's preference for off-the-shelf tools. Generalized software forces users to pay a "general-purpose tax" through unnecessary abstractions and features. LLMs now make bespoke software development accessible to smaller companies by dramatically reducing development time. The author demonstrates this by building µld, a minimal linker in Rust with LLM assistance in 1-2 days, compared to navigating LLVM's complex abstractions. Tools like Nix provide ideal environments for building custom tooling, enabling organizations to create smaller, better-integrated solutions without FAANG-level resources.

Bespoke software is the future