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Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
21–30 of 219 posts
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#22I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does. I know for a fact a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Not to mention the absolute idiot of a CEO of Vercel who thinks React is the Linux kernel of developm…
That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it.
I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people making the decisions.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#23I teach the systems class at Montana State, where we go from transistors up to a real computing system, and I have students that don't understand what a file system really is when they start my class I agree that blow is wrong on some details, but I really think we need to be thinking hard around a NAND-to-Tetris style education that starts in high school for our technical students. I use "outdated" models like Littl…
The concept of files and file systems is useful to regular computer users, even when they have no interest in knowing how things work under the hood. The issue is with mobile OSs, and that software companies like their apps to be a walled garden for your data as much as possible, and therefore resist exposing your data as files living in a normal shared file system. Even if you already work with files, they have you “import” your existing data into their storage system, and you have to manually “export” (or “share”) any modifications as a new, separate copy.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#24I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does. I know for a fact a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Not to mention the absolute idiot of a CEO of Vercel who thinks React is the Linux kernel of developm…
That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it. I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people m…
What malware has Facebook hidden in React?
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#25It appears that author is from that newer generation, and completely misses points because he just don’t know. Ironically the article is an example of what Blow was talking about. similar happens if I talk about how Figma is destroying the design world on unprecedented scale by normalising bad UX, UI and product management found in Figma itself, and get responses from younger designers that everything is great, compl…
He demolished Blows argument so I don't think it's important to bring up age but it does seem like he is likely at least in his mid forties. The Amiga was popular in the late 80s
> "The argument that software is advancing is obviously false" I still regularly use my beloved Amiga computers. A couple of weeks ago, I was copying a file to an Amiga's hard drive when the computer suddenly decided to crash on me. Not because I did something wrong, but because old home computer OS:es weren't very stable. This resulted in a corrupted hard drive partition and the OS failed to re-validate the file system. My only option was, in the end, to re-format the partition.
I don't even know much about design but I can tell your claims about Figma are totally wrong, in a similar fashion to blows claims. It's the nostalgia talking. You're forgetting the fact that user interface has always had a lot of crap, just like software just like everything. The positives of the old cream of the crop is remembered while all the crap and even all the failings of the well designed things are forgotten
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#26I teach the systems class at Montana State, where we go from transistors up to a real computing system, and I have students that don't understand what a file system really is when they start my class I agree that blow is wrong on some details, but I really think we need to be thinking hard around a NAND-to-Tetris style education that starts in high school for our technical students. I use "outdated" models like Littl…
The concept of files and file systems is useful to regular computer users, even when they have no interest in knowing how things work under the hood. The issue is with mobile OSs, and that software companies like their apps to be a walled garden for your data as much as possible, and therefore resist exposing your data as files living in a normal shared file system. Even if you already work with files, they have you…
Yes, also the curse of modern desktop os’s trying to trick people into storing data in the cloud. The notion of just having files somewhere accessible and organized in a reasonable manner isn’t clear to many (most?) of my students.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#27I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does. I know for a fact a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Not to mention the absolute idiot of a CEO of Vercel who thinks React is the Linux kernel of developm…
> They think that React is itself what browsers render
My kingdom for native JSX in the browser. That would be awesome.
Something similar to how we have WebGL and Canvas, but for pure JavaScript UI without the extra step of DOM reconciliation.
There’s a small (and growing) cohort of people working on rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl (I think). Supposedly gives you super smooth UX, but I haven’t knowingly tried it yet.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it. I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people m…
What malware has Facebook hidden in React?
I think they were referring to spyware hidden in Facebook's JavaScript, which uses React
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it. I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people m…
What malware has Facebook hidden in React?
No one knows, it's been hidden til this day
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#30Blow often makes fantastic points about development, and often completely misses the mark. He’s accomplished great things and has ideas worth listening to - but also plenty of nonsense that’s presented indistinguishably. I felt quite strongly that the collapse of civilisation talk was one of those pieces of nonsense, and I’ve largely ignored it (despite listening to it twice). I’m grateful to OP for providing a more…
Does he though? It seems like he just makes these broad critical statements then pisses off to continue to do nothing. I wouldn’t even say he’s accomplished great things. He’s accomplished some decent things. He’s released two games which barely qualify as games. They’re more like puzzles. You don’t need to play them ever again after you finish the first time. Braid is ok. And the Witness is just Flow. And then after…
I think you're getting close to ad hominem. It should be sufficient to point out how little overall people like Blow have accomplished. Blow is a hard worker, and yet it took him and his team 8 years to develop The Witness, which as you pointed out isn't anything revolutionary. I think there's a weird form of elitism at play here. Working close to the hardware isn't hard. There was a point in my early 20s where I too felt like I'm better, because I know how a computer works, or that making games in pure C is harder than in C++. As an adult this is cringe. I work in embedded, and I can tell you there's enough low level programmers out there to threaten my job security.