The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#111

Post by _dain_ » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 11:22 AM UTC

omscs99 wrote: post #56

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it? Another example, if there’s some repetitive task that you automate at a software dev job, would you get rewarded for figuring out how to automate it? The answer is obviously dependent on culture, at my current gig you just get brushed off Seems to me like you’re assuming that…

> Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it?

the reward is the intrinsic satisfaction of a job well done, and something to put on the CV for the next job.

automating dumb bureaucratic shit is how I learned to code in the "real world".

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#112

Post by nonrandomstring » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 11:22 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #24

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

What the fuck are we doing as a society, that this lady, with a machine that could compute the above in a fraction of a second, has to spend a decent chunk of her work time doing this? To put it bluntly: do you want her to be unemployed instead?

> do you want her to be unemployed instead?

Yes.

Compassion and reason both repel me, as a humanist and computer scientist, from the thought of another human being pointlessly wasting her life for the mere "necessity" of money to live because broken software has become an excuse for this.

It is an inhuman spectacle, and the notion of "employment" here is so weak as to have no force in the argument. An unemployed person at least has the opportunity to redefine their life, whereas one who is tricked daily into believing their bullshit job is "valuable" is being robbed, no matter the remuneration.

Further, as a technical person, it disgusts me to see the tools we created so comprehensively misused by idiots who are unable to intelligently deploy them - or rather deploy them as instruments of abuse rather than for human development and progress.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#113

Post by II2II » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 11:38 AM UTC

omscs99 wrote: post #56

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it? Another example, if there’s some repetitive task that you automate at a software dev job, would you get rewarded for figuring out how to automate it? The answer is obviously dependent on culture, at my current gig you just get brushed off Seems to me like you’re assuming that…

> Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it?

One would hope she would be able to move on to more meaningful work, rather than doing drudgery while waiting for someone to eliminate her when someone figures out it can be automated.

That said, a lot of people don't know how to automate processes and it would likely face some push back since the process would be non-standard and tied to an individual. That can have long term costs should the knowledge be lost or a software upgrade breaks something.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#114

Post by dmvdoug » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 11:48 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

There should be a Tell HN that is just an 800-comment-long thread full of these stories because I love them.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#115

Post by npsimons » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 11:56 AM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

> but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software.

I would argue it's a failure of policy, and more specifically certain people enforcing a policy top-down on an industry they have little, if any, competence in.

The tools are still out there, and those of us who know what we are doing balk at those managers (not programmers, BTW), telling us "you don't need that."

We need to wrest control back from the managers, at all levels, and tell them to fuck off while we get real work done.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#116

Post by npsimons » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 12:00 PM UTC

dmvdoug wrote: post #114

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

There should be a Tell HN that is just an 800-comment-long thread full of these stories because I love them.

> There should be a Tell HN that is just an 800-comment-long thread full of these stories because I love them.

As gratifying as they are, they get repetitive. Once you've heard one, you've heard them all.

I'd much rather hear about the place that fixed a policy problem that was blocking such progress in the first place. Software is easy, getting people (and orgs) to change is hard, tedious, boring, but absolutely necessary, and more enduring than a lot of software fixes.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#117

Post by pixelpoet » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 12:05 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #51

ditch your phone , go back to your desktop, problem solve. Mobile has been a regression in pretty much everything except corporate profits. The focus of the article is wrong. PCs for example are not getting more specialized, they are getting new capabilities with the additional specialized gpus. As others have said the problem does not lie in processors, but on the software and UI, which has been steadily dumbing dow…

Amen to this, I absolutely hate what mobile phones and their attendant giant megacorps did to the internet and computing in general.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#118

Post by rhn_mk1 » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 12:14 PM UTC

omscs99 wrote: post #56

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it? Another example, if there’s some repetitive task that you automate at a software dev job, would you get rewarded for figuring out how to automate it? The answer is obviously dependent on culture, at my current gig you just get brushed off Seems to me like you’re assuming that…

What the fuck are we doing as a society that we have such a system of perverse incentives in place?

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#119

Post by tim333 » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

It's an odd use of language. I'm typing this from a macbook that seems pretty general purpose but the article seems to arguing it's not because it has both a regular CPU and some GPU/parallel stuff and the latter apparently doesn't count. But it mostly seems quite general purpose to me.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#120

Post by atoav » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 12:26 PM UTC

dingi wrote: post #110

atoav wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically that reward is going to be: 1. more work 2. nice words and then more work 3. nice words, more work and then she is asked to do the same for another person's task who is then fired Sorry to be cynical here, but it is very rare for managment to reward the few people that do a better than good job with more free time or less work.

She doesn't have to tell anyone

Exactly my point. But if you are a manager, you might wanna consider if that is the incentive structure you wanna have at your organization: People who do good work get "punished" with more work, people who keep it low don't.

I certainly have left jobs because of that.