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The End of the Beginning

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Re: The End of the Beginning

#81

Post by alasdair_ »

alexashka wrote: post #69
christiansakai wrote: post #13

I've been thinking along the same line, albeit on a more personal take as a software engineer. Basically, starting around 15 years ago, there's the proliferation of bootcamps teaching fullstack development, because software startups were the new hot thing, and they desperately need generalist engineers that were capable of spinning up web app quickly. Rails was the hot thing those days because of this as well. Hence…

The tragedy of people who want to make money and believe it will be 'life changing', is that no matter how many times they are told it won't be, they think 'ha, you only say that because you got yours'. What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow?

> What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow?

I still have the childish dream of wanting to change the world. Specifically, I want to be involved in certain kinds of political activism that will likely piss off a number of people, and I want to have enough money that I can support my family without needing to back off if my income source is threatened.

I’m lucky enough to be almost at that point due to startup equity.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#82

Post by alasdair_ »

jimbokun wrote: post #59
repsilat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right -- today you need to remember to charge your phone, you don't take it everywhere (and don't have signal everywhere, especially internationally), and you need to take it out of your pocket to use it, and type into it with your thumbs (though voice "assistants" are here, and some people get use out of them.) The end-goal is being able to talk to anyone at any time, remember anything you've seen before, and know t…

Everything you describe are very minor tweaks to what already exists today. The bottom line is everyone does have their phone charged and with them always, is probably out of their pocket most of the time anyway, and can get the answer to pretty much any question you can phrase that someone has already answered. The voice assistants will continue to improve, but some people actually prefer thumb-typing for various re…

> Everything you describe are very minor tweaks to what already exists today.

Sure, and the iphone was the same thing - I had a 3G windows phone years before the iphone that essentially did all the same things. But the iphone was still a breakthrough nonetheless.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#83

Post by wpietri »

alasdair_ wrote: post #81
alexashka wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragedy of people who want to make money and believe it will be 'life changing', is that no matter how many times they are told it won't be, they think 'ha, you only say that because you got yours'. What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow?

> What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow? I still have the childish dream of wanting to change the world. Specifically, I want to be involved in certain kinds of political activism that will likely piss off a number of people, and I want to have enough money that I can support my family without needing to back off if my income source is…

Yeah, I'm personally uninterested in spending money. But I could quite easily find things to do with money in the 10-100M range. First being starting companies without being beholden to investors that are monomaniacally focused on short-term cash extraction. Then investing in entrepreneurs who are up to good things in the world. And then supporting people who do useful things that don't pay well.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#84

Post by pixelbash »

paulsutter wrote: post #57
christiansakai wrote: post #13

I've been thinking along the same line, albeit on a more personal take as a software engineer. Basically, starting around 15 years ago, there's the proliferation of bootcamps teaching fullstack development, because software startups were the new hot thing, and they desperately need generalist engineers that were capable of spinning up web app quickly. Rails was the hot thing those days because of this as well. Hence…

"Fullstack" development is just a tiny slice of software. There's an entire economy to be automated, there are endless inefficient processes and massive opportunities there.

And many of those processes are spreadsheet based, ie CRUD!

Re: The End of the Beginning

#85

Post by LMo »

Frankly not sure this piece really said anything other than the big 4 or 5 are so unbelievably strong that we're all left playing in the spaces, usually small, leftover.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#86

Post by wpietri »

pthomas551 wrote: post #32
oflannabhra wrote: post #15

I'm not exactly sure where I fall on this. Ben is a really smart guy (way smarter than me), but I feel like this could be a classic case of hindsight. Now, looking back, it makes sense that the next logical step after PCs was the Internet. But from each era looking forward, it's not as easy to see the next "horizon". So, if each next "horizon" is hard to see, and the paradigm it subsequently unlocks is also difficult…

Was it really that hard to predict the Internet? SF authors picked up on it almost immediately.

Which authors are you thinking of?

Up until the web existed, I think it was extremely hard to usefully predict the Internet's impact. TCP was invented in 1974, but it wasn't until 1993 that we started seeing things that really pointed to where we were going: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...

Of course, everybody knew computers would be important. But that was true starting in the 1960s. E.g., Stand on Zanzibar has a supercomputer as a central plot element.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#87

Post by alexashka »

alasdair_ wrote: post #81
alexashka wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragedy of people who want to make money and believe it will be 'life changing', is that no matter how many times they are told it won't be, they think 'ha, you only say that because you got yours'. What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow?

> What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow? I still have the childish dream of wanting to change the world. Specifically, I want to be involved in certain kinds of political activism that will likely piss off a number of people, and I want to have enough money that I can support my family without needing to back off if my income source is…

Do you feel like you'll graduate to 'political problems are human problems and human problems boil down to idiots having children, idiots raising children and society being unwilling to rid itself of humans who have convincingly shown to be counter-productive to society', coupled with 'for society to function long term, it needs to have a shared goal, vision, not selfish goals of one house, two cars, fence, big tv and plenty of derp entertainment for each family'?

I feel like anything that isn't addressing these two issues is re-arranging chairs on the Titanic as it's headed for a crash.

Re: The End of the Beginning

#88

Post by dredmorbius »

chrisco255 wrote: post #76
pthomas551 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really that hard to predict the Internet? SF authors picked up on it almost immediately.

I mean, if you even look at popular sci-fi, nobody exactly predicted the internet as it is today. It wasn't until someone coined the "information superhighway" that gears started turning. Even then, the earliest commercial websites were basically just digital brochures and catalogs. It wasn't until SaaS, search and social took off that we grasped what the specific use cases were that were going to be the dominant mon…

The concept of an information superhighway dates to at least 1964:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway#Earli...

Re: The End of the Beginning

#89

Post by untwerth »

alexashka wrote: post #87
alasdair_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What useless shit are you going to buy with 'life changing' money exactly that a software developer's salary won't allow? I still have the childish dream of wanting to change the world. Specifically, I want to be involved in certain kinds of political activism that will likely piss off a number of people, and I want to have enough money that I can support my family without needing to back off if my income source is…

Do you feel like you'll graduate to 'political problems are human problems and human problems boil down to idiots having children, idiots raising children and society being unwilling to rid itself of humans who have convincingly shown to be counter-productive to society', coupled with 'for society to function long term, it needs to have a shared goal, vision, not selfish goals of one house, two cars, fence, big tv an…

Do you feel like you'll graduate to 'Political problems are not emergent individual problems, but an issue of rules. The rules of the political game are rigged to filter out competent people and only allow shallow ideologues to power'? ;)

Re: The End of the Beginning

#90

Post by makapuf »

andreilys wrote: post #78
JohnFen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I prefer working for startups and tiny companies -- not because of the income potential (as you point out, there are better ways of chasing that), but because the really interesting stuff is almost always done by startups and tiny companies. Small companies make it possible, large companies make it economical.

Not always true. There are some very interesting projects at Google, Apple, etc. that can only be done by companies capable of throwing hundreds of Millions/billions of dollars at problems with uncertain payoffs

Sure but is the probability to work on them with an I teresting impactful role greater than a financially successful startup?
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