>Phones are going to be in service for a lot longer. We all felt that both Android, with their aggressive backwards compatibility...
Come again?
Programming in the Apocalypse
91–100 of 301 posts
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#92For me, the big story is going to be supply-chain breakup and de-globalization. The author touches on this a bit, but completely misses the implication. The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly-efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for this, C will still…
I could not imagine running rustc on a Rust program, let alone building a 200-crate dependency graph or all of rustc, on a 2000s car entertainment system microcontroller.
What you are programming would change, just like what you're programming with would change. The projects who use 200-something crates are building desktop applications or something like that.
What we'd program if we only have microcontrollers available, would be much smaller in scope, maybe a lot of focus on controlling physical infrastructure for agriculture and such.
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#93Lol. We're heading for a mini Ice Age which will peak around 2035. Get a wood stove if you live in the Northern Hemisphere.
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#94I have fear that the cathartic pessimism we sometimes enjoy ironically is turning into a chronic fatalism. It's like a habit that has become an addiction. I think the author was in a discussion that started as a fun catharsis for all involved and then devolved into an addictive argument that the author felt they needed to win.
There is a cliché which goes: "Expect the best. Prepare for the worst". Articles like this only seem to get the second half of that while clearly violating the first half. A well balanced response to crisis is benefited by both.
I think the author is not actively aware of the importance of expecting the best, both of the world and of their colleagues. I feel their arguments are weak due to this imbalance.
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#95Lol. We're heading for a mini Ice Age which will peak around 2035. Get a wood stove if you live in the Northern Hemisphere.
Not according to NASA https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there-is-no-i...
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#96Quoted post unavailable.
Have you done any research about the impacts of climate change? Complaining about the urgency of warnings only works if you're certain the urgency is unwarranted.
Personally, I'm not against the planet or humanity, I'm against disingenously poor quality arguments designed as a chaff countermeasure to befog public discourse and facilitate a worlwide distration theft via technocratic policies and economic centralization.
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#97The pandemic taught me a lot about apocalypse. While people are a lot slower to buy into collective action and changing their way of life than I thought, society is far more robust than I expected. Covid looked nothing like a pandemic film, thank god.
With that in mind, I have some ideas on what programming will look like in 30 years:
1. New frameworks and abstractions for making apps even more disposable while maintaining privacy will come along. New languages will happen. Corporations that just finished moving to the cloud will now be moving to even greater abstractions like Airtable or whatever comes next.
2. Programmer pay will decrease compared to other industries. This is a hunch and I’m only 60% confident of it happening.
3. Satellite internet will be more of a norm for no better reason than it’s the most efficient way to manage infrastructure. More rural communities will need it, and remote trends will continue. The cost of launches are going down and there’s a lot of land.
4. Everything will get more energy efficient, and most intense activity will be pushed to compute farms.
5. VR will once again come around as the next big revolution in computing, but will be ultimately disappointing and won’t see mass adoption.
Beyond these ideas, I think too much plays into our personal optimism or pessimism. I think things will change, but we’re a scrappy species that will fight to preserve its way of life. It will look a lot like our global pandemic response…warts and all. There’s a lot there to be disappointed about, but it’s actually incredible it wasn’t worse.
When these predictions hit I’ll be 70. I hope I’ll live to see it.
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a decent and brief response to why geoengineering is a bad idea: https://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org/reasons-to-oppose/ The most convincing argument to me is that we're already facing a vast problem that would require a great deal of geoengineering to counter. If polluters realized they could geoengineer the problem away, they would stop trying to reduce emissions, and the geoengineering problem wou…
That argument is totally unconvincing... like saying not to treat some lung cancer because the patient will just smoke more.
Agreed. It also makes me feel like some people want there to be no 'easy' solutions to problems, because they despise how society is going and wish it would be forced to change. I suspect they'd still be unhappy even if there was a magic wand you could wave that would instantly fix climate change (or make it impossible to occur).
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#99If there is an apocalypse, it looks entirely contrived to me. Spending untold billions to shut down the economy for most of 2 years is something I saw with my own eyes. Sea level rises, and whatever else, not at all. The dire predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al Gore)? And nothing.. I suspect its just a trick that means we hand over greater control and money to the worst of us (government). And if it…
> dire predictions have been coming for decades (remember Al Gore)? And nothing.
And I suppose you think that's it's just a coincidence that we're breaking all-time-high temperature records year over year isn't it?
Re: Programming in the Apocalypse
#100For me, the big story is going to be supply-chain breakup and de-globalization. The author touches on this a bit, but completely misses the implication. The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly-efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for this, C will still…
One should first ask what is the actually useful task for computers. Right now it is often things like powering ad networks, tracking engagements, running tax code for millions, calculating sha 256 hashes. Would any of this be useful in apocalypse? If not what would be?
There's tons of stuff that would be useful in an apocalypse. Things like:
1.) Communications. Being able to send over plans for a useful tool, or instructions for repair, or a meeting place for the defense of a village becomes critical.
2.) Entertainment/education. Threads shows the post-apocalyptic children watching a VHS video of animals & grammar. If you can preserve even just the PBS Kids catalog on local disk and have a working computer, you'll be in huge demand as the town's babysitter, and it's far easier to do this at scale with video than individually keep dozens of kids occupied.
3.) Local records. It's critical to catch freeriders for any communal endeavors, because if you don't, community breaks down and everybody just worries about their own family. Same goes for financial records: if you can restore some semblance of banking & credit you can operate much more efficient trade than if everything is spot barter.
4.) Knowledge repository. The community where everybody knows how to garden is going to be way better off than the one where two people know how to garden and everybody steals their food. Same with a variety of other skills - repairs, local resources, weapon manufacture, etc.
5.) Industrial control. If communities can get an electricity source back online, it opens up a wide variety of options for local manufacturing and automation. Labor is likely to be in very short supply after an apocalypse, so anything you can do to automate control will be a big help.