41–50 of 126 posts
Tech progress has always been incremental in nature. It seems “nothing is going on”, but there is a constant iterative cycle that will eventually automate almost every repetitive job or task.
It will be cold for many who do repetitive jobs and tasks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can rent a fleet of computers for an hour for a few dollars. On which you deploy an web app that has 30 working components written in 10 different languages that is able to do a fraction of the work a single vertically scaled server that runs 3 C written components. And has less than two 9 uptime. No one person can grasp it mentally. Is statically linked and must be updated piece by piece, unable to use the dis…
So, why are we doing this? In truth because the world of C (I was a C and then C++ programmer 30 years ago) did not enable the production of effective applications cheaply and quickly. Yes - you can write anything, but it took months and months and months. We've traded efficiency for productivity. We have been able to do this because of Moore's law and all its friends. Also, C code is hellish to read and understand (…
The C & C++ of 30 years ago, where compile times took days - sure. Nowadays building a whole yocto software stack, basically a full linux distro - from GCC, to the kernel, to glibc, to X11, to Qt takes 6 to 8 hours in a good laptop. In addition, modern language features & the general shift from runtime to compile-time polymorphism, especially in C++, make the potential for errors decrease sharply, and language simplifications - standard library improvements, terser syntax, also make time to release go down. Finally, tooling has greatly improved : I barely ever need to run a build with my IDE to check for errors, because IDEs now embed clang, clang-tidy, clazy... which checks your code as soon as you type and highlight it in the editor. And asan, ubsan, handle the remaining cases which cannot be caught at compile time, leaving only logic errors to handle.
To quote David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author) it would be tempting to take this kind of thing seriously if it wasn't for a damnable sense of perspective. Some thoughts: 1. Much like how the entire centrist media machine feeds off the insanity of the current US administration, somehow this article is at the top of HN. We put it there. (Well, 42 of you did, as of the time I wrote this.) 2. Perhaps the best-kep…
Indeed. Thanks for plugging the inimitable Rosling (I'd also strongly recommend his excellent book, "Factfulness") and Pinker. Rosling has incredible anecdotes from the real world, and Pinker is methodical and rigorous. Each book is a companion to the other.
(Me brags: A few months ago I've had the pleasure of meeting Steven Pinker in person and even have a small chat about his book, the late Rosling, and other topics.)
And I hope Hans Rosling's exhilarating enthusiasm rubs off on many folks. I was so enthralled with Rosling's work that when I was in Sweden earlier this year, I took a train to Uppsala (where Rosling lived and worked) and spent a day there just to breathe some inspiring air. Rosling was a force of nature.
PS: Yes, for all the "positivity bias" that Rosling and Pinker are accused of, they repeatedly acknowledge that there's still a long a way to go, and never claim that everything is hunky-dory. As Rosling puts it: "Things can be both bad and better".
To quote David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author) it would be tempting to take this kind of thing seriously if it wasn't for a damnable sense of perspective. Some thoughts: 1. Much like how the entire centrist media machine feeds off the insanity of the current US administration, somehow this article is at the top of HN. We put it there. (Well, 42 of you did, as of the time I wrote this.) 2. Perhaps the best-kep…
I think you caught the idea better than anybody else. The tech industry is no longer about the tech itself, and much more about everyday world around us. The tech ate the world — sure.
I can't remember the last project in our engineering company where we ever bothered with the product spec wise, and we haven't done anything like a PC or a smartphone in years. We almost solely work on "gadgetising" existing everyday stuff now — household appliances, toys, all kinds of vending machines, ad displays and installations, EV stuff, aircraft and rapid transit infortainment.
The essence and the shape of thing is way more important these days than what's inside. Things are definitely changing that way. Prime majority of our biggest clients these days are companies whose business had zero things to do with tech just few years ago, but is all about it now.
I really don’t get articles like this. You can rent a fleet of computers for an hour for a few dollars. Your cellular phone is more powerful than the time-sharing systems of 25 years ago. There is pervasive wireless broadband internet available in much of the world. Single computers can be bought with dozens of cores and a lake of RAM. You can look up nearly any piece of human knowledge in a few seconds. The labor of…
It's not that they're not getting better, but they're in the transition period where they move from new frontier to commonplace technology taken for granted.
For example, it seems crypto might never be successful as a replacement for consumer direct spending due to bandwidth issues. However, as a backend currency for a front-facing financial institution it has untapped potential. The growth in interest from here will be gradual, but will probably elevate.
To quote David Mitchell (the comedian, not the author) it would be tempting to take this kind of thing seriously if it wasn't for a damnable sense of perspective. Some thoughts: 1. Much like how the entire centrist media machine feeds off the insanity of the current US administration, somehow this article is at the top of HN. We put it there. (Well, 42 of you did, as of the time I wrote this.) 2. Perhaps the best-kep…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can rent a fleet of computers for an hour for a few dollars. On which you deploy an web app that has 30 working components written in 10 different languages that is able to do a fraction of the work a single vertically scaled server that runs 3 C written components. And has less than two 9 uptime. No one person can grasp it mentally. Is statically linked and must be updated piece by piece, unable to use the dis…
Your comment mirrors the article. A bunch of projection, written out. Lots of people do microservices for the wrong reason, with the wrong model. They don't realize this model asks for a lot of initial overhead per process for visibility and early investment into figuring out how these services communicate. For instance, a service that sets off 3-4 layers of HTTP requests is an indicator of a bad microservice archite…
Internet speeds never seem to get better faster or more reliable
I really don’t get articles like this. You can rent a fleet of computers for an hour for a few dollars. Your cellular phone is more powerful than the time-sharing systems of 25 years ago. There is pervasive wireless broadband internet available in much of the world. Single computers can be bought with dozens of cores and a lake of RAM. You can look up nearly any piece of human knowledge in a few seconds. The labor of…