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Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

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Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#51

Post by sertorius »

swasheck wrote: post #35
neogodless wrote: post #15

Your task is to keep your house at a steady 70F when you're there, and 55F when you're not. Can you do this task more quickly now than you could 20 years ago? Your task is to assess your bills and financial health, including outstanding balances, account balances, interest rates and dividends returned. Your task is to determine the weather forecast for this afternoon. Your task is to turn on your computer and downloa…

Your task is to create a lasting representation of the struggle and beauty and plight of the human race. Your task is to bring meaningful, sustainable, and relevant hope and quality of life improvement to society. We can get more low-value tasks per unit of time now, thanks to technology. Unfortunately, there's something of our essential humanity that tech has robbed. We pay lip service to the fact that tech has made…

> Your task is to create a lasting representation of the struggle and beauty and plight of the human race. > Your task is to bring meaningful, sustainable, and relevant hope and quality of life improvement to society.

I'd be curious as to your opinion on the shape of this curve in history. Did we peak at some date in history? Perpetual downward slope? Perpetual upward slope?

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#53

Post by bsenftner »

I started professionally developing in '82. I'm 52 now. A major part of being an engineer is filtering out the noise generated by the marketing arms of our industry. As tech development grew, the number of available tools and platforms exploded, with an exponential growth in the marketing noise generated by all these tools trying succeed.

Since web development "matured", the number of disposable tools and the hype machine surrounding them has convinced a good population of programmers (who seem to be mostly young) that they are "not cool" if they are using older tool chains.

I see so many 20 and 30 something developers caught up trying new frameworks, trying new languages, and experimenting with their dev setup WHILE ON A PAYING CLIENT'S JOB, basically just fucking over their productivity, and needlessly generating self-stress.

I am super-uber productive. I am lead developer of 3 libraries, and 2 of the 3 flagship products of the facial recognition company I work. My background includes VFX production as a developer and digital artist for 9 major release feature films, lead 3D game console developer for 15 years, and OS developer of the original PlayStation. Through ALL that, I still use the same "make" I used back in the 80's, I hand write my make files, just give me a text editor and a compiler. That is ALL I need, that and to be left alone.

No slack/chat app bullshit, no trying out of tools, just doing the job with the tools I know very well. Delivering early, or over delivering on time, with 100% certainty of what I'm delivering because I know the libs and tool chain from years of experience with them.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#54

Post by falcolas »

bitexploder wrote: post #26
nickjj wrote: post #7

I started programming (mainly web development) about 20 years ago. I think the lack of current day productivity is due to there being so much more input available. 15-20 years ago you were forced to get into the mix of things and try things out because there weren't 800 blog posts and 227 youtube videos on the topic you're trying to learn. Nowadays it's too easy to research yourself to death without trying anything b…

That was part of Slack's reason for choosing PHP for their backend. Use a fancy language like Java or Node if you want to do "modern" development. PHP is for getting shit done. https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329?...

If you want to stop my productivity cold, use PHP. If you want me to just "get shit done", give me Python. Does this, by itself, make Python superior to PHP? No. It's what I'm used to using.

IOW, they are mistaking familiarity with tooling with the superiority of tooling.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#55

Post by juandazapata »

I remember that if you wanted to do Windows programming in the pre-internet era, you'd have to buy some manuals via phone, then wait for about 3 weeks to get them delivered and then start hacking. You could also buy an MSDN subscription for several thousand dollars.

Nowadays you're just one google search away. Definitely more productive.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#56

Post by ghaff »

moosebear wrote: post #50
grecht wrote: post #24

As a young person who was 11 years old 10 years ago, I can't really answer that question. But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity. Growing up in midst of the rise of smartphones, I just now realized how much time I spent staring at a screen, being distracted by the constant flow of information and the constant need to communicate. And I s…

I recently discovered downloading library books onto phones, have you looked into that? I live in a city and don’t have enough cash/room for hundreds of books in my apartment and don’t usually have time to reach a library branch. But this way I get/return books instantly and I don’t have to lug anything around on the subway. I read ebooks faster for some reason, too. No way to drop the book in a puddle or pour coffee…

I like to at least think that, if I were starting over today, I'd have a lot less clutter and physical "stuff." I think there's a mindset along the lines of "If I'm going to have a bunch of books, CDs, other stuff that today can all be digitized, then what's another ton or so of physical artifacts to lug around.

Not that I would necessarily behave that way but it's at least wishful thinking.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#57

Post by falcolas »

bachmeier wrote: post #31
grecht wrote: post #24

As a young person who was 11 years old 10 years ago, I can't really answer that question. But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity. Growing up in midst of the rise of smartphones, I just now realized how much time I spent staring at a screen, being distracted by the constant flow of information and the constant need to communicate. And I s…

> But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity. When I'm teaching, I'd love to bring a hammer and smash phones students check them. They're doing it as a way to avoid thinking, as a way to always have someone entertain them. They're addicted and don't know it. > I'd argue that for the most part ActiveBoards resulted in a big productivity loss…

Eh, before powerpoint, there were printed overhead transparencies. Before transparencies, there were teachers who spent their entire lecture writing directly from notes to the blackboard.

Rote teachers are rote teachers.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#58

Post by gaius »

I am wondering if completing tasks was easier in the past than it is today

Yes definitely. Here's how I used to work back in the day: I would sit down at my desk on which there would be one monitor, probably a 17" or if I was lucky a gorgeous 19" Trinitron with the blackest blacks. I would have my main tool maximised to full screen - Metrowerks CodeWarrior (Mac), Visual C++ (Windows) or SPARCworks (Sun). On my desk there would be a paper copy of the spec I was working on and a couple of reference books, all annotated by hand. I would code in two solid blocks interrupted only by lunch, and often times I would lose track of time and know it was lunchtime or hometime only when someone said.

Nowadays I work in little nibbles of 15-30 minutes at a time, and it's not just me either - everyone used to work like that and now works like this. Everyone seems busier because they are juggling more things at once, but studies have shown that multitasking is a myth, we get much less done than we used to. Modern tooling without modern distractions and interruptions would be the dream.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#59

Post by dpweb »

nickjj wrote: post #7

I started programming (mainly web development) about 20 years ago. I think the lack of current day productivity is due to there being so much more input available. 15-20 years ago you were forced to get into the mix of things and try things out because there weren't 800 blog posts and 227 youtube videos on the topic you're trying to learn. Nowadays it's too easy to research yourself to death without trying anything b…

On the consumer front, you can be paperless now, and travel across the county carrying nothing but your phone. That feels like progress as far as efficiency.

Better tools and resources like Stack overflow etc.. have made us more productive.

But this has been partially offset by endless feature adding and abstraction upon abstration in software construction.

Its very difficult/impossible for people to stop development on something and say, this is all it can and should be.

Re: Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

#60

Post by quantumhobbit »

neogodless wrote: post #15

Your task is to keep your house at a steady 70F when you're there, and 55F when you're not. Can you do this task more quickly now than you could 20 years ago? Your task is to assess your bills and financial health, including outstanding balances, account balances, interest rates and dividends returned. Your task is to determine the weather forecast for this afternoon. Your task is to turn on your computer and downloa…

How about, your task is to program a thermostat, but also keep the thermostat from mining bitcoins because an npm module you downloaded has been compromised.
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