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Programming Still Sucks

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131–140 of 354 posts

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#131

Post by torginus »

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.

Does it? Why do those slaves work in the Congo? It's to produce materials that go into premium EVs in order to satiate demand in rich Western countries. If said demand never existed, or people would say 'yeah, but not at this cost', like you seem to imply the moral responsibility lies solely with industrialists, these mines would never exist.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#132

Post by stevenlangbroek »

monkeyballs wrote: post #60

> The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was. This is just not true. Working in tech (starting 1989) was awesome for me for at least 20 years, and tolerable for quite some time after. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers and tech-ignorant MBA decisions, for example -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun…

i zoomed in on a specific aspect of the experience, that of course doesn't mean everything is bad across the board. i've gotten great joy from programming, especially with other cool people, for most of my life. i'm grieving the loss of that joy, and hopefully, inspiring a few people to start talking to their peers about it, rather than suffering in silence.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#133

Post by gitowiec »

"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." :((( that is sad and so true. Economical thinking should be regulated

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#134

Post by Bendy »

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 is greed; LLMs are progress but their cost, and the lies told about them wildly exceed their utility for most of the tasks that they’re otherwise expected to perform. The claims are fraudulent, fraud is a crime, and crime does not benefit society.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#135

Post by majorbugger »

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…

Yes it does. Typical example - layoffs to make to stock perform better.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#136

Post by black3r »

01100011 wrote: post #100
doug_durham wrote: post #62

It sounds like the author shouldn't be in tech. For many, perhaps most of us programming is joy. It's why we started in our teens and have continued for 40 years. This is just a cynical post that adds no new value. We didn't kill the junior training mechanism. Juniors are still hired in the 100's thousands every year. There are valuable things to be said about the impact of AI. This isn't one of them.

There are way too many people in tech who did it solely for the money. People worry about AI slop but these poseurs have been cranking out garbage for decades. A lot of my career has been cleaning up the mess they've made.

The difference with AI is that now generating AI slop is much faster than carefully crafted code. So companies began to prefer AI slop.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#137

Post by pdpi »

wiseowise wrote: post #127
socalgal2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

Because, at some level, people understand that a CEO’s job is largely about the human interaction part, so the real value of a human CEO is that last 20%.

The real value of a software engineer is also their own “last 20%”, but non-technical people (and many frustrated technical people) don’t really appreciate how much non-technical work is involved in being a good SWE.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#138

Post by torginus »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #37
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.

Autor surely always could be journalist. He can write a exceptional story.

I mean he could be, though nowadays that's not really a recongition of skill some seem to think it is nowadays.

Besides this is an opinion piece, which contains passages comparing programmers who despite AI, make hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting at home or air conditioned offices, to bangladeshi indentured workers.

Even if we do away with hyperbole and take the 'Sara' example, programming are still one of the least physically demanding and best paid jobs out there, especially in the US, even compared to jobs needing hard qualifications. Compared to your hypothetical 'Sarah' keeping the payroll system alive, almost everyone in every profession does more work for less pay.

He also sells (I imagine not cheap) consulting on the side.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#139

Post by amelius »

endanke wrote: post #109
kiba wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ignoring the people who capture the rent. If technological innovation is to liberate us from poverty then it should be a celebration that everytime that a job is automated. Since that is not happening, it implies something deeply wrong about how we structure our society.

These two things can be true at the same time.

The entire comment is true.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#140

Post by sfn42 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #52
bluegatty wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The industry' is not hellbent on destroying society - this is just so unhinged it's hard to know how to make of it.

True, I should have said an industry that will trample on anything that stands in the way of its pursuit of money.

Welcome to literally all industry.
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