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Programming Still Sucks

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Re: Programming Still Sucks

#331

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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. So who's to say when you find something else to do, it will pay enough to live?"

I don't think Society means what you think it means.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#332

Post by jnpnj »

jordwest wrote: post #295
jnpnj wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

Hehe yeah we all have our own tastes based on time. But I'm also interested about the perception of computers. I too was enamoured with the creative possibilities of it. But nowadays I see a detrimental trend in how aesthetics are born on computers. The cleanliness, the recurrent patterns. A lot of pre-computing visuals were really different, none of it would qualify as nice today, but it was seen a cute before, and I kind of miss the less structured, less obvious, less shiny approach. It was also material, a different game, with constraints about possible colours, shape and precision you know. It also distracts us too much and creates real mind issues (I struggle with strange behaviors when browsing, near no attention-span etc)

So now I rebalance things and put computers in a smaller niche, not the centre of gravity.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#333

Post by sevenseacat »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #307
blackjack_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook literally heavily contributed or at minimum enabled and amplified at least one genocide (2017 Myanmar). That is the total opposite of "really not causing harm".

Plus they implemented "Organic Reach" where the bands I followed posted the flyers to their shows and Facebook only distributed the posts to ~10% of users subscribed to the band, so over and over again I would see a flyer for a show that happened 2 days ago. Deleterious to culture at large.

> over and over again I would see a flyer for a show that happened 2 days ago

oh that's happened to me a couple of times, its fucking infuriating.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#334

Post by nz »

redfloatplane wrote: post #152
quxbar wrote: post #36

I don't agree with everything this piece concludes, but I do admire getting to read through a whole HN article without feeling the sheen of AI co-authorship.

It’s funny you say that as about halfway through I was beginning to wonder if this was at least Claude-edited. Absolutely no shade to the author meant, I think it’s a thoughtful article, but I _did_ feel the sheen of AI co-authorship. It raises the question of how much text I have read that I did not realise was LLM-generated. I think I have a decent nose for it but I’m not perfect, there must be false negatives (and…

> What will it mean when I can no longer tell the difference?

It just means that you will have to evaluate prose on its own merits (aesthetic, logical, etc).

The main problem with LLM-assisted writing is that effort-to-write is now much lower than effort-to-read -- the LLM-prose-style is simply an imperfection that can sometimes help the reader bail on a piece (and there might be false-positives).

Most people are already biased against reading long pieces, and seem to skim them more often than not. These people are _probably_ a little worse off than before, but they are not paying full-price for being hoodwinked. The people who end up paying full-price are probably going to become more sophisticated in how they choose what to read. I can't tell if this will be good/bad for publishers and/or advertisers.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#335

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

larodi wrote: post #301
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this holds evolutionary Sure it does. Our species is social, meaning we form societies for evolutionary success. Both of us being members of that society, it is in my interest to see your child survive. It is a tragedy to think your child may not survive because human greed prevents them from accessing resources we have in abundance. The opposite perspective is anti-social in a literal way: the greedy…

Sorry, but history saw so little (as a fraction) of people that were actually getting fair living that others guaranteed for them. Even when it is about living in decent conditions provided by the community if you want. Even in a tribe, there’s a lotta suffering and very little remorse for it. We may say we chase a society that would see everyone understand the principle of ‘your child should also get a decent life’,…

> Sorry, but history saw so little (as a fraction) of people that were actually getting fair living that others guaranteed for them.

This statement is rather plainly not true. It describes child rearing and claims it does not happen in one breath.

There is a concept of "fairness", which I don't want to discount, but there's not much of a history of people being bottom feeders who do nothing to help those around them. Sure, there's a lot of sentiment to that effect but it is somehow something I fail to observe to this day. It is in the eye of the beholder and I worry for the souls of the beholders who judge so harshly.

This idea that someone is not deserving of food because they have not earned it a sad, anti-social thing to believe, perpetuated by psychological attacks from those who have more than they could ever need. You and your children deserve to eat and disagreement with that statement says more about the one disagreeing than it does any other, regardless of the judgement inherent to the nature of the disagreement (really, because of it, I suppose).

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#336

Post by cineticdaffodil »

michaelteter wrote: post #297

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”,…

Its the "Lets invade russia in winter" moment of the mbas.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#337

Post by esseph »

munksbeer wrote: post #324
esseph wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just take soma" is what you are telling me right now. Four things: 1. I am a parent. Ignoring like the world doesn't exist is not an option. > wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike? 2. That would not be possible. 3. If you have the capability to do something, some believe you have an obligation to. Actively working to not make a shit world req…

> For YOU maybe, for fucks sake. And many, many others. Don't project your reality on everyone else.

I choose not to ignore the suffering of others.

Only through awareness and understanding of it can I work to reduce it.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#338

Post by m463 »

So I've seen this pattern many times in software. I've been part of it too.

AI is just repeating the pattern.

You have a software group, and there's a young engineer that goes and tries some new technology. He spends weeks reading about it, and does a lot of stuff in his head, and then he does something for the group using it and shows it off.

And management wonders about it. If the technology costs money, they will quietly push it off because they have no budget for a $50 tool. If it saves money, they will quietly push it off because reasons. But if it saves headcount and they get to get rid of "annoying fred with the red stapler", they might show interest. And interest means they have quietly accepted it in their mind.

Thing is jr guy spent every waking hour on this thing, chose the problem carefully, and didn't talk about the impractical, the gotchas, or the things it affects that he doesn't know about.

Who knows, maybe I'm just imagining this and AI is different.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#339

Post by nchagnet »

bluegatty wrote: post #94
nchagnet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 'journalism' wasn't the best suggestion by the OP but I have to disagree with the rest of your message. It may be a rant, or less pejoratively it may be a cry for help of someone seeing their industry's future, but I can't accept that it's not well written. When is the last time you opened an HN comment section and the main comment was that people enjoyed the writing quality? Maybe it says more about what we us…

I commented only because I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was. It's highly personalized and interesting, but I wouldn't call it well written. As a personal bit of art - 'thumbs up', but anything else is overstated. But more appropriately, the nihilism on this thread is unhinged. "seeing their industry's future" ??? I'm seein…

> A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.

You say, to the community, as it describes how it relates to the message.

You may not agree with it, but surely this thread among many should show you this view is not fringe or denial, but how a strong segment feels. I concede it's a divisive topic, some people feel optimistic, others less so. I myself don't fully know where I stand. I just don't agree with branding all of this as "unhinged nihilism".

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#340

Post by jordwest »

jnpnj wrote: post #332
jordwest wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

Hehe yeah we all have our own tastes based on time. But I'm also interested about the perception of computers. I too was enamoured with the creative possibilities of it. But nowadays I see a detrimental trend in how aesthetics are born on computers. The cleanliness, the recurrent patterns. A lot of pre-computing visuals were really different, none of it would qualify as nice today, but it was seen a cute before, and…

I can totally relate, funny enough I find myself drifting back to really appreciating old school interfaces and pixel fonts lately. I've been enjoying using the old IBM DOS font [1] [2] in my editor, terminal etc.

Hard to tell if it's just nostalgia, but all the smoothing, drop shadows, antialiasing (and now blurring with MacOS 26) feel so unnecessary and hardly even pretty anymore.

There's something nice about computer interfaces that just look like computer interfaces instead of pretending they're something else.

IMO part of it is that the older interfaces trusted the intelligence of the user to understand the abstractions below the interface, while newer software assumes the user is dumb in order to capture the largest possible market share. In the 90s it was "RTFM", now it's "your software sucks if it's not obvious". But what we lost in that is that interfaces now abstract away what's actually going on underneath.

Maybe this preference for the old way is part of the reason for the resurgence of TUIs.

    [1] https://viznut.fi/unscii/
    [2] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/
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