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Programming Still Sucks

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Re: Programming Still Sucks

#121

Post by eggsandbeer »

01100011 wrote: post #92
fooqux wrote: post #27

> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot. This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

Society doesn't owe me over $500k/year for writing some instructions in a cryptic specification language. It's cool that I've been getting that, but I consider that luck and circumstance. When robots take my job I'll go find something else to do. I'm not going to blame evil rich people or some other boogieman.

Fuck the American Dream

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#122

Post by simgt »

socalgal2 wrote: post #81
fooqux wrote: post #27

> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot. This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

Greed does not take your jobs, progress does. People don’t hand wash clothing for money because we have machines to do that now. We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally. AI is no different. “IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large Note: the above is not claiming AI or LLM…

> it’s a benefit to society at large

That remains to be determined. Most of the examples you'll likely come up with are made at the expense of the environment. We've never consumed as much oil and other limited natural resources as now, in spite of massive gains in productivity.

So far it also looks like digital media is fast tracking us back into fascism, helped by the large concentration of capital that occurred during the transition.

Change and automation are not always societal progress, sadly.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#123

Post by simgt »

ironmagma wrote: post #116
01100011 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society doesn't owe me over $500k/year for writing some instructions in a cryptic specification language. It's cool that I've been getting that, but I consider that luck and circumstance. When robots take my job I'll go find something else to do. I'm not going to blame evil rich people or some other boogieman.

Society doesn't owe anybody anything. So who's to say when you find something else to do, it will pay enough to live?

They've earned 500k/y for a couple years, they don't need another job that pays enough, that's why they can be so indifferent about the outcome.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#124

Post by stevenlangbroek »

fnoef wrote: post #120
stevenlangbroek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this was just a failure on my part, I was too lazy to go the ISR route and was on the Cloudflare free plan. I was not expecting any traffic haha.

Get a VPS and host it there. Costs less than a cup of coffee a month, with tens of TB of traffic. Nice article by the way!

oh I probably should, but I'm kinda busy with checks notes trying to feed my family :D

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#125

Post by anal_reactor »

> You remember being the junior whose first PR got shredded by a senior who took the time to explain why.

No I don't. I remember flagging that a tool is bugged, my manager-but-also-engineer-himself telling me "why cannot you do this, just press this button here" and then my entire work for that week getting obliberated because surprise surprise, the tool was bugged. And his voice "What? This wasn't supposed to happen.".

> You told yourself the seniors could absorb the missing hands, that the agents would cover the gap.

In every company I've been to the correlation between age, seniority, and skill, was very loose. I'll never forget going to my first job, talking to literally the oldest man there, and him telling me that smart pointers in C++ are silly and real men use bare pointers.

> You knew what happens to a codebase when the people who'd catch the errors get pushed out, or learn to stop catching them.

Recently I thought that we as a society need to stop expecting everything digital to work 24/7. Adding more nines to availability costs exponentially more effort but the gains are minimal. Imagine a world where every year for two days we just shut down the internet - one day for Postgres upgrade, and the other just for chilling on the beach. Would the society collapse? I don't think so. Managers understand this, but they prefer faulty software over giving their overly eager programmers a break.

> Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are buried.

Not all of them. Not even most of them. Very few would become valuable contributors, most of them would never make code better than AI does. That's the sad truth. I sit in a meeting with 6 seniors and we spend an hour discussing irrelevant shit and eventually postponing the decision until "later time" aka "we'll quickly do whatever once the situation becomes urgent". How is that better than vibe-coding a functionality?

> When she dies, the thing that produces people like her is already gone.

Literally not a problem because if every single company is fighting the same issue, then your company isn't disadvantaged by also having the issue.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#126

Post by hparadiz »

simgt wrote: post #123
ironmagma wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society doesn't owe anybody anything. So who's to say when you find something else to do, it will pay enough to live?

They've earned 500k/y for a couple years, they don't need another job that pays enough, that's why they can be so indifferent about the outcome.

I'm no where near that TC and think this way too. This field of work is generally new in history. The whole woe is me what will we ever do attitude is so weak and frankly annoying.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#127

Post by wiseowise »

socalgal2 wrote: post #81
fooqux wrote: post #27

> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot. This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

Greed does not take your jobs, progress does. People don’t hand wash clothing for money because we have machines to do that now. We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally. AI is no different. “IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large Note: the above is not claiming AI or LLM…

> We don’t need people delivering news papers because the news is delivered digitally.

That’s where your idea breaks. There’s a big swathe of people who prefer the feel and simplicity of newspapers over digital hellscape. There’s also a reason why people prefer quality books like Folio Society over books printer on a toilet paper.

> “IF” your job can be automated away or made more efficient it will. That might not be a benefit for your but it’s a benefit to society at large

You can automate away 80% of CEOs by Markov chains, and it would be a benefit to society at large. Yet it doesn’t happen, why?

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#128

Post by keybored »

fooqux wrote: post #27

> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot. This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

Imagine you start on a trek to find the sage with the answer to why idiot sociopaths rule everything, why wars that don’t even benefit the aggressor are started, why there is enough food for everyone twice over but people are still starving... and much more. You’ve been pondering this question for years. You’ve read comments. Wikipedia. You already have a good idea. But you seek the wisdom of the sage.

You cross mountains. Marshes. You evade pirates, bandits. Help some fellow travelers. Finally, after scouring the land and asking hundreds for clues and direction, you find his location; a small plateau beyond the swamp and rainforest which hugs the southern shore of the great lake.

You notice immediately that the wind dies down. It is now completely calm. Weirdly serene, as if the sudden silence made you notice all the ambient noise, now absent. The sage sits between (edit: beneath) a cherry blossom tree, said to always bloom; the sage is an old man but his wisdom is the most permanent thing on the plateau.

You approach the old man. His eyes are closed. You make sure to exaggerate your approach, make some noise, so as to not startle this frail old man that surely must have seen more than ninety winters. You prostrate yourself, calmly introduce yourself, and sit down beside him.

You calmly breathe in and out. This is it. Don’t rush it. Any erratic movement, any slight irritation could prove fatal to his old shell.

“Venerable Opakaku”, you start. “I know some things about how the world works. Why the cruel rule us. Why the meek suffer. Why the brave die for nothing. Why those of brilliant mind mostly seem to serve the cruel. But my opinions are unimportant. Can you please tell me, Venerable Opakaku, why is the world in this state? And how do we solve it?”

The sage’s parched lips move. He has to wet his throat, it is difficult for him—such is the state of his shell—but he composes himself and opens his white eyes, staring just to the left of your head. His blind eyes widen as he is about to reveal the answer. “Greed!”

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#129

Post by stevenlangbroek »

bluegatty wrote: post #103
bluegatty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever your mental disposition is. The writing is an expression of a state of mind through an absurdist voice, not any kind of reasonable articulation of reality. It's at least a much about the lens as it is the subject. Which is fine, if we ingest it roughly from that purview.

your experiences (and probably mine as well) are not a reflection of the general reality of the industry - that's the root of the problem; the writing is a projection, not a reality. The writing is fine (even good) as a personal story, not in the manner in which people here seem to be interpreting it.

i dunno. i'm happy to read in the comments here (and elsewhere) that my experience is not unique, many others have similar experiences and are going through the same feelings: grief. i think we're allowed to grieve, don't you?

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#130

Post by stevenlangbroek »

viccis wrote: post #101
doug_durham wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely capture the value of your additional productivity. Strike out on your own. Start your own company or consulting firm. That has always been the answer. Why would you think it would be any different now?

"Ah you textile workers are so whiny. If you're mad at your jobs being obsoleted by massive machine factories, why not just buy a few dozen such factories? Strike out on your own." Yeah man I don't know if mommy and daddy are paying your rent and healthcare (as I often see from people with this attitude). Or maybe you're one of the 45 year old tech workers whose mid life crisis involves a music project no one will li…

> Ah you textile workers are so whiny...

hell yeah baby, I'm a proud Luddite.

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