Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#21

Post by swalsh » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #4

This article makes me think of the woodworker's dilemma. You might start working with cutting, planing, joining and finishing wood because you want to make a chair or end table, and you like the idea of learning to do it yourself, maybe saving some money, or at least getting some extra tools out of the process, and having some pride in your work. But before you know it, you've spent 4 years accumulating tools, but mo…

As a woodworker, i've noticed 90% of time is easily spent on setting the tools up. Jigs help save time because they let you spend less time setting up tools.

Economy of scales are gained when you can get more products out of the same number of tool setups.

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#22

Post by eadmund » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #8

neogodless wrote: post #4

This article makes me think of the woodworker's dilemma. You might start working with cutting, planing, joining and finishing wood because you want to make a chair or end table, and you like the idea of learning to do it yourself, maybe saving some money, or at least getting some extra tools out of the process, and having some pride in your work. But before you know it, you've spent 4 years accumulating tools, but mo…

Sometimes I feel like the complexity introduced by those tools results in less productivity. When that happens this weird cycle forms where more and more developers are hired to manage the ever changing interfaces used by internal tools which results in more churn.

> When that happens this weird cycle forms where more and more developers are hired to manage the ever changing interfaces used by internal tools which results in more churn.

The Node ecosystem leaps to mind. To a much lesser extent, the Python ecosystem.

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#23

Post by gpspake » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #8

neogodless wrote: post #4

This article makes me think of the woodworker's dilemma. You might start working with cutting, planing, joining and finishing wood because you want to make a chair or end table, and you like the idea of learning to do it yourself, maybe saving some money, or at least getting some extra tools out of the process, and having some pride in your work. But before you know it, you've spent 4 years accumulating tools, but mo…

Sometimes I feel like the complexity introduced by those tools results in less productivity. When that happens this weird cycle forms where more and more developers are hired to manage the ever changing interfaces used by internal tools which results in more churn.

relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1319/

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#24

Post by marcinzm » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #10

>Almost every recent A.I. advance has come from one tiny corner of the field, machine learning. Machine learning exposes a set of connected nodes, known as neural nets, to mass amounts of labeled real-world data in an attempt to give those nodes tacit knowledge. The breakthrough example was software that was able to identify cat pictures. >So far, these neural nets have given us some great demos but mostly niche real…

Not to mention Google search uses neural networks for language parsing [1], social networks use neural networks for ranking feeds, etc. I'd venture to guess the author interacts with the results of neural networks dozens if not hundreds of times per day but simply doesn't realize it.

[1] https://searchengineland.com/google-bert-used-on-almost-ever...

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#25

Post by orolle » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #10

>Almost every recent A.I. advance has come from one tiny corner of the field, machine learning. Machine learning exposes a set of connected nodes, known as neural nets, to mass amounts of labeled real-world data in an attempt to give those nodes tacit knowledge. The breakthrough example was software that was able to identify cat pictures. >So far, these neural nets have given us some great demos but mostly niche real…

I think the author wording is a little bit confusing. I think he want to point out, that narrow AI is used successfully only in (niche) applications with narrow purpose. Niche here is not about total market size.

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#26

Post by li2uR3ce » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

> While software improves through better tooling and faster hardware

In my experience faster hardware leads to worse software. I'm doing the same things I've always done on my "smart" phone but apparently the same sized text messages now need more phone. Good god, ICQ from 2000 had more user facing features than texting apps and that was running on Windows-swap-everything-unconditially.

Yeah, much software development time is spent on invisible "features" that aren't relevant to the poor bastards that will have to use it. It makes the case for the more vertical in-house software development. There's much less push back to specialized features which often aren't nearly as specialized as the outside developer thinks it is because of absent understanding of the job fortified by arrogance.

But even when the job is well understood... display fucking words on the screen... I mean, come on! Why am I ever waiting 3 seconds after unlock for that?

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#27

Post by ZeroGravitas » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #5

That is a graph of US TFP. I expect that once Asia is included in the mix the change will be a bit more pronounced. Most of the hardware related change in the IT revolution is happening there. The S&P 500 rank 1 company (Apple) would look to an alien like an Asian company since all the actual manufacturing happens there. Also, while I don't think it is necessarily the major driving factor, the US has a capital misall…

Also, Total Factor Productivity will include the effects of everything a society does that can be measured in monetary terms.

Dumping poison in rivers would probably show up as an "efficiency gain" at least until it causes ecosystem collapse and widespread illness and death, similarly so would clearcutting forests.

I would expect at least some attempt to ground the claim in something real before leaping to a headline grabbing "computers aren't productive" (except for that bit when the productivity went up faster than previously) conclusion.

For starters, do we care about TFP (the article implies we do) and if so has whatever we predict it to provide as a benefit also followed a similar graph? If not, then who cares if computers or anything else makes the graph go up.

Secondly, how can we tell if computers have made it shoot upwards, but some other unconnected change has mostly negated that impact.

It all feels very shoddy.

The first time this came up in economics neatly lines up with when the graph suddenly changes direction upwards:

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." Solow, 1987

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#28

Post by Jensson » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

Firstly, GDP is a bad measure of productivity. A pill that replaced all healthcare would reduce GDP by 15%, but I doubt anyone (even economists) would call that a catastrophe.

Productivity has stalled mostly because people have already filled their needs, so it makes little sense to buy more. Basically everyone have the clothes they need, the food they need, the car they need, the computer they need, already. Screen entertainment and information is basically free nowadays. So no matter how much you increase productivity these sectors will remain mostly constant.

What do people still buy? Housing, but that is mostly a competitive good, people spend as much as they have on housing and it is limited supply so prices just increases to whatever people can afford. Same thing with education, international flights and the free market healthcare with restricted supply you have in USA.

Another thing is access to other peoples time. You can buy a person to clean your home or do your lawn or drive you somewhere or renovate your kitchen or provide a massage or other things. There is no way to significantly increase that productivity, it is mostly fixed.

So personally I see no need to increase GDP (what he calls productivity) further. Not to mention that many things gets cheaper, a family buying a TV today gets a much better TV for the same amount of money as a family buying a TV 30 years ago. The main thing would be to automate tasks so you no longer need as much access to other peoples time, but that is mostly an unsolved issue for now. Automating information delivery worked great, but it didn't lead to increased GDP rather it lead to those products becoming essentially free to consume effectively making it useless from an economists perspective.

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#29

Post by tyingq » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #4

This article makes me think of the woodworker's dilemma. You might start working with cutting, planing, joining and finishing wood because you want to make a chair or end table, and you like the idea of learning to do it yourself, maybe saving some money, or at least getting some extra tools out of the process, and having some pride in your work. But before you know it, you've spent 4 years accumulating tools, but mo…

This effect gets worse in a large organization, where eventually you get a named group with a leader for every possible sub-specialty or task. Human nature, then, is to grow (or at least preserve) the size of your group. So you end up inventing projects and work that keep your group busy, rather than ceding people to other groups that actually need more help. There's also a tendency to create mandatory process that forces other groups to engage with your group (forms, approvals, reviews, etc).

Re: Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

#30

Post by orolle » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #18

This is off topic a bit since the article was really talking about something tangently different, and it's probably a really unpopular thing to say, but it's been in my mind for a while. If you look at the worlds population growth rate, you can see that it is beginning to level off. That world of 10 billion that we were all preparing for several years ago is probably not going to come. If the population stabalizes, o…

Its a different discussion, quite off topic. When the boomers go into retirement, our current economic system with GDP growth focus has a big problem. Our system is based on produce more stuff and buy more stuff. But when the boomers retire, they will buy less stuff. Who will buy supply overhang? Nobody. Even worse, who will pay for the debt incurred to buy overly inflated asset prices, like housing and factories, when boomers start downsizing and start selling?

Look at Japan. They are 10 years ahead of us. It will be tough and depressing until the economic system adapted and prices normalized. On an opitmistic point, humanity will progress and when an economy cannot sell more stuff then it has to sell better stuff.