Thread by @edsocra

3D printing never took off because it failed to solve scale and yield.

I think I know the reason why:

Semiconductor manufacturing is the highest scale production process with extremely high yield.

Semiconductors alternate between additive and subtractive processes. Deposit, pattern, etch, planarize, repeat. Between every cycle you measure and correct before the next layer.

That's what makes scale possible because defects caught at layer 3 don't propagate to layer 300. The process is designed to stay correctable. 3D printing in the other hand, it’s purely additive.

Software is historically almost purely additive. You deposit code, features, dependencies, abstractions. Year after year without etch, planarization, or inspection between layers.

That means current software’s yield degrades as stack height increases. In other words, products degrade as they grow.

Now AI agents have dramatically increased the deposition rate. You’re building faster than ever and your yield problem is just getting worse.

What you accumulate isn't just technical debt. It's inventory. Features nobody uses, bugs compounding on bugs, work-in-progress (WIP) that never ships, and surface area nobody can hold in their head.

Inventory is the silent killer, especially if it grows faster than your ability to manage it. Manufacturing has already discovered that if you want to maximize throughput and yield, first you need an inventory system.

I started my career as a photolithography engineer at TI where I also lead teams in CMP (subtraction layer) and metrology (measurement layer).

The subtractive steps were just as automated, mandatory, and gating as the additive ones, in our case, fully automated.

I also ran a 3D printing lab at Siemens, had my own commercial 3D printing business, and worked for a home 3D printing startup.

Software production is currently 3D printing, and we’re revolutionizing it into semiconductor manufacturing with Socra V2.

Side note (if you haven’t tried Socra V1 yet):

The last startup I worked at ran on Slack. You know how that goes.

Yesterday I met with a former coworker. He's consulting now and told me Socra is literally his entire team. Said he could never go back and he doesn’t need any other AI tool.

Instead of endless threads, on Socra every conversation has a purpose, every issue is tracked, AI agents built after the greatest human minds in history (Steve Jobs, Taiichi Ohno, Alan Turing, Nichola Tesla, Daniel Kahneman, and many others) help you think through strategy, execute, document your work, and organize your projects all while you and your team have discussions.

For the next version, we’re releasing mobile and desktop apps, API, and a new layer of AI infrastructure that will enable our users to build their own agents (AI teammates), solve inventory, yield, and continuously improve.