Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programming Still Sucks

stvn.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 354 posts

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#291

Post by emmelaich »

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.

And yet I'm sure that greed is pretty much a constant. The opportunities to exploit that greed may change.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#292

Post by antonvs »

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?

> Society doesn't owe anybody anything.

That's obviously false. What's the point of society if that's true? Do you think there should be no government roads, no government health care (if you're in the US, you may think this, but only because you're indoctrinated), no legal system (or enforcement thereof) to protect you from criminals, no legally enforceable human rights whatsoever? Etc., etc.?

Once they actually understand what they're saying, no sane person believes that society doesn't owe them anything.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#293

Post by biglost »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #233

The sentiment of the article is spot on. I retired four years ago and it had already been going down hill for over a decade at that point. But… The but is simply to remind people that programming can still be fun. Programming as a career? Not really. If you don't believe me, that programming is still fun, go do some programming for your own personal project. (Still fun.) (But, yeah, so glad to have left. I recall tow…

I love programming, i hate my work as a programmer or whatever shiny name people prefer like software engineer. It's the only thing i know, the only way to get money for my family, the only way my wife can work at something she loves to do, so her life it's not misserably as mine

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#294

Post by krackers »

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…

Note that as I understand the main claim of Marx is that the efficiency and productivity gains from automation don't actually go to the laborer, they're captured by the "capital owner". Example being how despite all the automation we're all still working 8 hr days, 5 days a week just to get by.

Now of course there's also jevon's "paradox" here, and the automation does allow us to support a larger population so in that sense not all the increased productivity is just "skimmed off the top" as profit. But on the flipside the crux of the other recent [1] HN post is that the wealth disparity is increasing. And if all the increased productivity directly translated to more "physical resources" in the world, that wouldn't be the case.

So something must be getting skimmed of the top, and intuitively you can feel the "rent seeking" layers in society have increased. Gains in efficiency are no longer resulting in surplus of physical products and decrease in prices.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038307

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#295

Post by jordwest »

jnpnj wrote: post #223
jordwest wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scary part now is people denying its happening right in front of them. I wonder if age is a factor. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen all the promises and hope and excitement about the future, that maybe 20% of that comes true and the rest ends up being the usual exploitation and greed. The younger people haven't been through that cycle of disillusionment yet so they still believe that only…

Could you tell us more about your grandma point of view (if she ever told you more of course). With age I'm becoming jaded with computing, not personal computers per se, but the overwhelming space taken by them now (especially due to cheap networking I guess).

She just didn't see the point in them, she enjoyed a simple life, grew up with little but had a full life and didn't see the need for more. She would ask me as a kid "you've been playing the television again have you?". I don't think she ever really understood that to me it was a creative tool.

I did manage to convince her to try a VR headset at one point and despite her protests she clearly enjoyed it. Afterwards she said "what a silly gadget" haha. I'm realising now that I have similar feelings about generative AI.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#296

Post by jrosenblatt »

"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. 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. We optimized for output, and abolished apprenticeship. A few years from now, we'll wonder where all the seniors are. We shot them. Nobody will remember."

is brilliant writing. It's such good writing that it might convince you it's true. But it's cope. By that point, all senior engineer jobs will be automated too. And companies with old unknown chron jobs and USB sticks will get replaced by ones that innovate.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#297

Post by michaelteter »

The problem is not AI. The problem is still very human: the humans in charge don’t know what they don’t know, and they believe that whatever they imagine is true.

They also often believe that anything they can think of must be easy - just a matter of a worker spending a little time. Or maybe an AI can do it.

Management rarely learns from group failures, because they naturally assume that since the project was “easy”, it must be a problem with the workers.

CEOs routines run companies into the ground and the switch to a new company, fist full of cash on the way out. Once in a while, one of those repeat failures ascends into politics.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#298

Post by bryanrasmussen »

munksbeer wrote: post #230
coldtea wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take the 90s, 80s, 70s or 60s anytime, just gimme that magic time travel option. You know what, even the 00s would be fine.

Yes, recency bias.

anti-recency bias, with a less recency bias tagged on before.

I gotta say it reminds me a bit of that old Louis C.K bit where black people can't be messing with time machines. I guess gay people can't either. I don't think if you were gay you'd want the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s - maybe late 90s.

I mean it does seem that there are many groups of people I could think of that might be like 10 years ago please, but not much further back than that. Then again social progress not being evenly distributed might mean that 20 years ago and in a different country might be equivalent to 10 years for some life scenarios.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#299

Post by tobr »

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…

> maybe you're one of the 45 year old

> But for I, like most millennial Americans

Someone who turns 45 in 2026 is a millennial though.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#300

Post by larodi »

loose-cannon wrote: post #260
larodi wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come is anyone "entitled" to a decent living? I don't think this holds evolutionary, nor from historical perspective. It is commendable for a person to want to think that everyone deserves it, but I don't see it follow from anything or manifest in general in a fair way. There are plenty of examples that people are very likely going to be deprived of even whatever they deserved by means of struggling to get it.

There will always be scarcity and inequality. The point is to minimize/mitigate their effects. Can't you make the same argument for justice? Why does everyone deserve justice? Isn't that just entitlement? What is the historical or evolutionary basis for justice?

Nature does not exhibit anything as entitlement to justice. The whole concept of divine intervention (that we would like to exist more often than we like to admit) rarely manifests as measurable and consequential principle in how evolution operates. And it operates on brutal training cycles with lotta loss…

So, yes, in order to have a society one perhaps and most likely needs to define how rights are guaranteed. But it does not mean anyone is entitled to it by definition. Otherwise millions of dying children throughout modern history, and now also, would see the perpetrators get a ‘fair’ treatment. But they don’t.

Perhaps only as second order effects that are hard to understand and are not entitlement.

Post reply on HN