Recap: Software Should Work 2026

Recap: Software Should Work 2026 回顾：2026 年“软件应当好用”（Software Should Work）大会

Published 2026-07-18 发布日期：2026 年 7 月 18 日

I attended my first software conference! The conference, hosted in Columbia, Missouri, was named Software Should Work. I really enjoyed what every speaker had to bring to the table. There were a couple of themes I took away from the conference and hopefully will convey intelligibly here. 我参加了人生中第一次软件大会！这次大会在密苏里州的哥伦比亚市举办，名为“软件应当好用”（Software Should Work）。我非常欣赏每一位演讲者带来的分享。我从会议中总结出几个核心主题，希望能够在这里清晰地传达给大家。

软件是一种社会契约

Software is essential to modern society. It runs in our phones, homes, cars, businesses and medical devices. Besides adopting an intensely ascetic lifestyle, it will touch almost everything about our daily life. 软件对现代社会至关重要。它运行在我们的手机、家庭、汽车、企业和医疗设备中。除非你选择极度苦行的生活方式，否则软件几乎会触及我们日常生活的方方面面。

Software should serve the needs of its users. In my opinion, software should work so well that the user should not even be cognizant of the software itself. For example, a user shouldn’t be worried that when they use an app that it’s going to store metadata about them and sell it to third parties. Or that their garage door opener has paywalled features. Or when they get in their car that it has software bugs and will cause them to crash. 软件应当服务于用户的需求。在我看来，软件应该好用到用户甚至感觉不到它的存在。例如，用户不应担心在使用某个应用时，它会存储个人元数据并将其出售给第三方；也不应担心车库门开启器会有付费墙功能；更不应担心坐进车里时，因为软件漏洞而导致车祸。

Software should be invisible and frictionless to its end users. And I think there are a lot of systems that do work well. The inventions of TCP/IP and Linux are the foundation of modern computing. Most people don’t even know what those technologies are and that’s a good thing. It means they are working as intended. The problems solved by those technologies have sufficiently been extracted away from the end user. 软件对终端用户来说应该是隐形且无摩擦的。我认为有很多系统确实做得很好。TCP/IP 和 Linux 的发明是现代计算的基石。大多数人甚至不知道这些技术是什么，这其实是件好事。这意味着它们正按预期运行。这些技术所解决的问题已经充分地从终端用户面前“抽象”掉了。

So what’s driving the slop? Is it AI? Is it market pressure? Is it careless and greedy people? The answer is yes to all three. The sentiment that I came away from Software Should Work is that the future of software is as much in our hands as it ever has been. Corporations may not have our best interest in mind but I believe people, in the aggregate, care about their fellow humans. That’s why free and open source software continues to be our best bet for maintaining the social contract of software. 那么，是什么导致了这种粗制滥造？是人工智能吗？是市场压力吗？还是因为人们粗心大意且贪婪？答案是这三者皆有。我从这次大会中得到的感悟是：软件的未来依然掌握在我们自己手中。企业可能不会把我们的最大利益放在心上，但我相信，从整体来看，人们依然关心彼此。这就是为什么自由和开源软件依然是我们维护软件社会契约的最佳选择。

AI is applying immense pressure

人工智能正在施加巨大压力

AI is breaking down trust in software as a product. AI is also breaking down trust in our own ability to reason about software. AI is becoming this strange intermediary between software engineers. Expectations around our output have increased. Employers are tracking token usage. Teams within the same company are attempting to out innovate each other so they don’t get laid off. 人工智能正在瓦解人们对“软件作为产品”的信任。它也在瓦解我们对自己理解软件能力的信心。人工智能正成为软件工程师之间一种奇怪的中间人。对产出的期望值提高了，雇主开始追踪 Token 使用量，同一家公司内部的团队为了不被裁员，正试图在创新上相互竞争。

AI is simultaneously finding vulnerabilities; creating vulnerabilities; and becoming a vulnerability itself. It’s taxing maintainers and decreasing trust. As an industry, we are slowly forming an ant mill. Other humans will always be our best resource. It’s not to say that AI is inherently bad, but it will regress towards the mean. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop. I want to experience the highs and lows of human relationship. I want the full human experience. 人工智能在发现漏洞的同时，也在制造漏洞，甚至它本身就成为了一个漏洞。这给维护者带来了负担，并降低了信任度。作为一个行业，我们正在慢慢形成一个“蚁磨”（ant mill，指蚂蚁因失去方向感而陷入死循环）。人类永远是我们最好的资源。这并不是说人工智能本质上是坏的，但它会趋向于平庸。这是一个自我强化的反馈循环。我想要体验人际关系中的起起落落，我想要完整的人类体验。

All this to say that being in the same room with people whom I share interests but not necessarily the same values enlivened me. It reminded me how fun it was to be a software engineer. We get to be excited about the bits and bobs of computers and drawing things on screens. It gave me new hope that there are smart people out there who see AI as an ends to a mean and not an end in and of itself. 说了这么多，我想表达的是：与一群志趣相投但价值观未必完全一致的人共处一室，让我感到充满活力。它提醒了我，做一名软件工程师是多么有趣。我们可以为计算机的零碎细节和在屏幕上绘制图形而感到兴奋。这让我重新燃起希望：世界上还有聪明人将人工智能视为一种手段，而不是目的本身。

Use better tools or build them yourself

使用更好的工具，或者自己构建它们

My final and favorite part of the conference was learning all the incredible tools people are bringing to bear to solve real problems. These include: formal methods and systems thinking, type systems, memory safe programming languages, dependency management, reproducible environments, testing and fuzzing, simpler web frameworks, understanding system limits and yes, even AI. 会议中我最喜欢的部分是学习人们为解决实际问题而带来的各种不可思议的工具。这些包括：形式化方法与系统思维、类型系统、内存安全编程语言、依赖管理、可复现环境、测试与模糊测试、更简单的 Web 框架、理解系统极限，当然，还有人工智能。

I’m particularly excited about formal methods because I think it’s a great thinking tool. It’s reinvigorated my desire to do a deep dive on P. After this conference, I realized I’m not budgeting enough time to think about problems I am facing. Coding, in some sense, is a side effect of us building a mental model of a problem space. The most valuable exercise is the act of problem solving itself. We will continue to face novel problems. These tools help us build a scaffolding around problems so that we can exercise dominion over them. 我对形式化方法特别感兴趣，因为我认为它是一个伟大的思维工具。它重新激发了我深入研究 P 语言的渴望。会议结束后，我意识到我没有预留足够的时间来思考我所面临的问题。从某种意义上说，编码是我们构建问题空间心理模型后的副产品。最有价值的练习是解决问题本身的过程。我们将继续面临新的问题，而这些工具能帮助我们围绕问题搭建脚手架，从而让我们能够掌控它们。

My perspective has shifted on how I want to use AI moving forward. AI can write a lot of code much faster than me. And it might save me some time right now. But the real value is in my domain expertise; all the tacit knowledge accumulated from talking with customers and teammates. Overuse of AI attenuates my grasp of the domain, so there has to be a balance. AI is great at building throwaway code I don’t care about. Which is a perfect usecase for diagramming and building visualizations of how a system should work. 对于未来如何使用人工智能，我的观点发生了转变。AI 写代码的速度确实比我快得多，也确实能节省我目前的一些时间。但真正的价值在于我的领域专业知识——那些通过与客户和队友交流所积累的隐性知识。过度使用 AI 会削弱我对领域的掌控力，所以必须保持平衡。AI 非常擅长编写那些我不在乎的“一次性代码”，这对于绘制图表和构建系统工作原理的可视化模型来说，是一个完美的用例。

Another takeaway on this theme is that we don’t have to accept the status quo. Some of the best software out there bucked the trends of its time. Just because something works well for Google or Meta does not make it blessed. There are lots of people out there who think like this. They are finding simpler, more efficient solutions to their problems. 关于这个主题的另一个收获是：我们不必接受现状。一些最优秀的软件正是因为反其道而行之才脱颖而出。仅仅因为某些东西在 Google 或 Meta 运行良好，并不代表它就是金科玉律。外面有很多人持有这种想法，他们正在为自己的问题寻找更简单、更高效的解决方案。

Conclusion

结语

Software Should Work was electric! I completely enjoyed myself. Missouri is known as the “Show Me State”. From a visitor’s perspective, this conference lived up to that ethos. Every speaker and attendee was passionate about their contributions to industry and academia. It was a passion that I needed reminded of. A big thanks to the organizers of the conference. You really outdid yourselves! “软件应当好用”大会令人热血沸腾！我非常享受这次经历。密苏里州被称为“展示给我看之州”（Show Me State）。从访客的角度来看，这次大会完全践行了这一精神。每一位演讲者和参会者都对自己在工业界和学术界的贡献充满热情。这种热情正是我所需要的提醒。非常感谢大会的组织者，你们真的做得太棒了！