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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?

#161

Post by giovannibonetti »

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 is a middle ground between doing it yourself and buying industrialized food. In Italy, people really value food produced locally. There is even a slogan for it "kilometro zero", which means "buy food close to the source".

No wonder food tastes way better in Italy than in the US (in general), for example.

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

#162

Post by asdff »

crazygringo wrote: post #119
qwerty456127 wrote: post #70

Perhaps because mainstream software of today doesn't add much to what we had in 199x. There already were the same Word, Excel and e-mail those days - . (and I doubt live chats we have today can add much to productivity, well-thought and well-organized emails are better). It can be possible to boost productivity with something like Roam Research (especially used in collaborative mode) but it would require a lot of enh…

I disagree completely. I'm insanely more productive as part of a team than I was in 199x. Not even talking about things for software development specifically, but for general-purpose word-processing and spreadsheeting and scheduling, you've got: - Live collaborative cloud editing over mobile. The back-and-forth that previously might take a week can now be done in half an hour while you're in the back of an Uber in a…

On the other hand, for all of these points you could argue you aren't gaining all that much added productivity for the amount of compute power this all took vs the 1990s.

- Live editing requires people to be working on the same thing at the same time, otherwise its back to back and forthing as people have different schedules and don't get to things right away.

- Google has now gone to shit with basic search terms. Too often you end up in some longwinded article seeking another 10 seconds from you to pay advertizers before you back out and look for another. The web had a lot more signal and a lot less noise in the 1990s. I'd even reach for a book on excel today where I can quickly flip through (or ctrlf a pdf) vs waiting for a 15 minute youtube video to get to the point.

- the scheduling improvements have costs, you now have to put everything and anything up on your google calendar lest you be scheduled for a meeting where you are "free" on the calendar but really working on something else. Invites for these sorts of meetings/zoomcalls/calendar events takes places over decades old email.

Really the biggest productivity gain would be from going from a printed book to a pdf you could search. Everything else imo is sort of a wash or a massive waste depending on how you look at it with the compute resources being used to run that zoom meeting (that could just be a conference call like the 1990s).

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

#163

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #156
masklinn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> > 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. Civilization isn't necessary for this to be true. It is even true in small scale societies. You can observe this whenever they get cutoff from each other: they end up technologically regressing. I…

really, it's about division of labor, aka "allow someone to become much, much better at making chairs than you, a non-chairmaker, will ever be."

When you get so good at making something that it takes you 0.1-0.5 of the time it takes someone less experienced/skilled, the cost of your labor becomes an diminishingly small part of the overall cost. That makes it ever more difficult for the unskilled person to ever be able to make it "cheaper", even if they consider their time to be free.

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

#164

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bartread wrote: post #133
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…

> 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 suppo…

There's also a timeline element to this.

I may not have saved myself any money at all by doing things myself when I was 25. But now I'm 57, and I can more or less fix anything in my house, and carry out more or less any changes I want or need to do, without outside assistance.

Me fixing that one toilet leak myself at 25 was probably a net cost to myself - tools & time considered. But at this point, when I can just remove a defunct radiant heating system from my house without even thinking of calling a plumber - by this point, I'm way ahead on cost. Similarly for electrical and basic framing work.

Plus, I manage to almost entirely avoid having to interview/audition contractors and deal with the stress of them (almost invariably) doing a worse job that I would have done myself.

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

#165

Post by nrb »

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…

I certainly enjoy the perks of living in a post-agrarian society. I too love to cook (and garden) a bit, particularly so when I know that I have options for feeding myself that don't start with tending the fields all day.

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

#166

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jjk166 wrote: post #155
jefftk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring a carpenter is very expensive. The cost of tools is tiny compared to the cost of their labor. (I'm assuming that we're talking about saving money in a way that counts your own time doing something you enjoy as free.)

A carpenter charges like $50/hr. A tablesaw alone would likely set you back more than the labor for some simple shelves. Then they can get better deals on material, they do higher quality work, and they do all the parts that aren't fun, like cleaning up at the end. Also your time still has value even if you enjoy what you're doing. You could be doing other hobbies you enjoy more, or other aspects of the same hobby, o…

Over your lifetime, you might need 5 or 6 sets of shelves. Buy yourself a porta-tablesaw for about $400-$500 (or cheaper on craiglist etc), learn to use it, and chances are that somewhere in the middle of your life, the cost equation will have flipped in your favor.

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

#167

Post by Fomite »

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…

Spent so much time planning out and figuring out how to build a custom workbench for a weird area (sometimes, you just need an airbrush booth in a bath/shower stall).

Ended up just buying something from Harbor Freight.

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

#168

Post by mdoms »

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…

The benchtop is only 1 inch thick? That's not a heavy duty bench. My kitchen has thicker benchtops.

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

#169

Post by nrb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #164
bartread wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 suppo…

There's also a timeline element to this. I may not have saved myself any money at all by doing things myself when I was 25. But now I'm 57, and I can more or less fix anything in my house, and carry out more or less any changes I want or need to do, without outside assistance. Me fixing that one toilet leak myself at 25 was probably a net cost to myself - tools & time considered. But at this point, when I can just re…

Something to keep in mind is, despite those 30 years of experience that leads to one not needing to think about contacting a professional, knowing whether the work you're about to perform requires any permits/code; the lack of which might affect homeowners insurance claims or local code enforcement.
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