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Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

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

#131

Post by manachar »

hvs wrote: post #32
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…

A few nits to pick as a woodworker: 1) You never save money building it yourself (at least not in comparison to a standard consumer option, like a chair or table from your local furniture store. This may hold up if you compare what you build to high-end hardwood furniture. But with the cost of tools, you're probably still losing money if this is just a hobby) 2) 90% of my enjoyment of woodworking is just being in my…

There's something amazing/odd/horrifying about a world where it is generally no longer cheaper to do anything yourself.

I love to bake and cook. I can do so fairly frugally.

A supermarket frozen pie is still gonna be cheaper than anything I can make, especially if I count my time.

It's a benefit and goal of the modern global industrialized supply chain, but I cannot help feel that making me work a full time job to buy cheap things means we don't put enough economic value on people making things themselves.

Then again, I like not having to mine my own lithium, copper, etc. to get a computer.

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

#132

Post by smoldesu »

beefman wrote: post #130

My family watched Miracle on 34th Street a couple years ago. Aside from being generally impressed with how well it's aged, I was particularly impressed with the office technology on display (pneumatic tubes etc). In Victorian London, mail could be posted up to 12 times per day.[1] That's about as often as e-mail can be turned around. Bronze Age merchants exchanged clay tablets with remarkable throughput.[2] On the co…

A lot of those jobs ultimately became redundant for people. Milk delivery makes no sense when you can choose your bottle down at the grocery store next time you're there. Bedside care became impractical as medical technology advanced, and electric trolleys are pretty cumbersome (especially alongside city streets).

Eventually, we realized that we could cut out the milkman: we laid off a lot of people in the process, but I'm sure the ice deliverymen are thankful that they no longer need to haul 25 pound bricks up New York staircases anymore.

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

#133

Post by bartread »

hvs wrote: post #32
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…

A few nits to pick as a woodworker: 1) You never save money building it yourself (at least not in comparison to a standard consumer option, like a chair or table from your local furniture store. This may hold up if you compare what you build to high-end hardwood furniture. But with the cost of tools, you're probably still losing money if this is just a hobby) 2) 90% of my enjoyment of woodworking is just being in my…

> You never save money building it yourself

I know where you're coming from with this. I've been refurbing my house myself and I doubt I've saved that much because the "saving" has meant that I've been able to buy tools and, of course, better quality materials (e.g., more expensive flooring). I've also often chosen to go the extra mile with improvements where I might have scaled back if I were paying someone. I suppose you could argue this is a saving in that I've got more value out of the money I've spent by treating my own time as "free labour", but have I spent less? I doubt it.

Still, I don't know if it's entirely true in all circumstances. Here, for example, TheGeekPub (The 8-Bit Guy's brother) manages to save himself a ton by building his own electronics station rather than buying one or paying a carpenter to do it for him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KfWMJV7fQ0

But then, as becomes evident when you watch the video, he already owned all the tools he needed and just had to buy the materials, which were relatively inexpensive.

I think the results look great though, and it's clearly an extremely functional piece of furniture.

Like a lot of things in life, does it save you money? It really depends on your starting conditions (skill level, tools and facilities), and how much you want to invest in the project (both time and money).

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

#134

Post by euroderf »

WalterBright wrote: post #127
hvs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few nits to pick as a woodworker: 1) You never save money building it yourself (at least not in comparison to a standard consumer option, like a chair or table from your local furniture store. This may hold up if you compare what you build to high-end hardwood furniture. But with the cost of tools, you're probably still losing money if this is just a hobby) 2) 90% of my enjoyment of woodworking is just being in my…

I built my dream workbench. The commercial ones were too light. I wanted one that was 8 feet long, and 4 deep, that I could bolt a big vise to, and whale away at whatever was in the vise without the bench scittering across the floor. It is build entirely from 4x4s for the legs, 2x4s for the rest of the frame, and 1x8 planks for the top and shelf. It's all held together with carriage bolts so it can be disassembled, a…

Sounds good. Post a sketch or plan somewhere ?

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

#135

Post by beefman »

smoldesu wrote: post #132
beefman wrote: post #130

My family watched Miracle on 34th Street a couple years ago. Aside from being generally impressed with how well it's aged, I was particularly impressed with the office technology on display (pneumatic tubes etc). In Victorian London, mail could be posted up to 12 times per day.[1] That's about as often as e-mail can be turned around. Bronze Age merchants exchanged clay tablets with remarkable throughput.[2] On the co…

A lot of those jobs ultimately became redundant for people. Milk delivery makes no sense when you can choose your bottle down at the grocery store next time you're there. Bedside care became impractical as medical technology advanced, and electric trolleys are pretty cumbersome (especially alongside city streets). Eventually, we realized that we could cut out the milkman: we laid off a lot of people in the process, b…

Ice delivery is the only valid example of a reduntdant job here. My grandparents bought milk at the grocery store, too. And I get milk delivered with Instacart. Medical technology did not make bedside care impractical. Quite the opposite. More can now be done from the bedside. Not that a typical doctor's visit involves any meaningful use of technology. Of course there are many other reasons why bedside care is superior.

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

#136

Post by 3pt14159 »

I'm not sure that we're measuring productivity correctly these days. Take AI, for example. Going from barely being able to play chess, to winning at Starcraft and Go and basically any game Google thinks is worth cracking is a huge, huge leap in technological capacity. What was the impact of the people that worked on these and related technologies on "productivity"? You can count apples. You can't really quantify DynamoDB or Rust on the economy.

Now, median worker productivity growth seems like it's drastically slowed and I think we have real problems in the economy, but as everything started merging with tech it gets harder to see the full picture.

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

#137

Post by mrmuagi »

hvs wrote: post #32
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…

A few nits to pick as a woodworker: 1) You never save money building it yourself (at least not in comparison to a standard consumer option, like a chair or table from your local furniture store. This may hold up if you compare what you build to high-end hardwood furniture. But with the cost of tools, you're probably still losing money if this is just a hobby) 2) 90% of my enjoyment of woodworking is just being in my…

> 1) You never save money building it yourself

Yes and no.

The deciding factor besides fixed cost of tools is your time. Consider kitchen cabinets. Sure you can build them yourselves, but it'll take weeks, maybe a month of your time which when compared to ikea/box store cabinets you could spend more to save time. If you want to spend even more you can get some custom work done at the cost of having little to no effort needed.

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

#138

Post by masklinn »

manachar wrote: post #131
hvs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few nits to pick as a woodworker: 1) You never save money building it yourself (at least not in comparison to a standard consumer option, like a chair or table from your local furniture store. This may hold up if you compare what you build to high-end hardwood furniture. But with the cost of tools, you're probably still losing money if this is just a hobby) 2) 90% of my enjoyment of woodworking is just being in my…

There's something amazing/odd/horrifying about a world where it is generally no longer cheaper to do anything yourself. I love to bake and cook. I can do so fairly frugally. A supermarket frozen pie is still gonna be cheaper than anything I can make, especially if I count my time. It's a benefit and goal of the modern global industrialized supply chain, but I cannot help feel that making me work a full time job to bu…

> There's something amazing/odd/horrifying about a world where it is generally no longer cheaper to do anything yourself.

How? It’s pretty much the point and purpose of civilisation, to say nothing of industrialisation.

> we don't put enough economic value on people making things themselves.

The invisible hand is a middle finger. Always has been.

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

#139

Post by wefarrell »

Retric wrote: post #115
wefarrell wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like world population growth is slowing at all: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?end=2020&st... What reason do you have to believe that the population will top off at 10 billion?

That’s a legacy of increasing life expectancy not increasing number of births. ~139 Million people where born in 1988 and ~140 Million people where born in 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-project... ~140 Million * global life expectancy of 72.6 years is ~10 Billion people.

More of those births are making past infancy:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?end=2019...

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

#140

Post by mytailorisrich »

3pt14159 wrote: post #136

I'm not sure that we're measuring productivity correctly these days. Take AI, for example. Going from barely being able to play chess, to winning at Starcraft and Go and basically any game Google thinks is worth cracking is a huge, huge leap in technological capacity. What was the impact of the people that worked on these and related technologies on "productivity"? You can count apples. You can't really quantify Dyna…

Oh we are measuring productivity correctly.

How much more productive is an software engineer that uses Rust compared to one that uses, say, C/C++? That is to say, do I need fewer software engineers to deliver the same product if they use Rust rather than another language?

If the answer is "not really", then Rust does not increase productivity (I don't know the answer, btw).

In general, I don't think that software as a tool made much difference to people's productivity in the last 20 years or so. The boost enabled by internet connectivity was probably over by ~2005.

Since then not much has happened. Uber, Deliveroo, etc. are great for consumers but they don't increase the productivity of drivers: Drivers cannot drive faster or service more customers per hour, really, these are bounded by physical constraints.

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