Well said. I'll add some scientific esoterica, because it parallels software a little: we've even had custom endonuclease services for a while (TALENS[1]), which serve a very similar function. But they were hard to generate and difficult to work with. Companies like Invitrogen even sold a TALEN-making service, costing in the dozens-of-thousands of dollars to generate a TALEN for preclinical drug discovery use.

Then CRISPR came along. It was like the open-sourced, better-performing alternative to the cumbersome, proprietary software. Switching was a no-brainer, and it has handily become the future, if not the mainstream already.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_activator-like_e...