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Programming Still Sucks

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Re: Programming Still Sucks

#341

Post by coldtea »

munksbeer wrote: post #323
coldtea wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike? What I want is a better society (as I see it), not convenience for me personally. Obviously to the degree I can distance myself from stuff I don't care for, I do it. But I don't want to larp in some like-minded commune while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit.

> while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit. But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit, and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year. I understand your issues are more local, but remember, actions always speak louder than words. People say they don't want certain things, but then they engage prolifically with those things. All I'm sayi…

>But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit, and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.

That's so untrue in these here parts, it's laughable

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#342

Post by JackSlateur »

jrosenblatt wrote: post #296

"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…

This is dogma

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#343

Post by jnpnj »

jordwest wrote: post #340
jnpnj wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compu…

I ask myself the same questions. And I see other people discussing this on HN or other websites (old video games culture for instance).

I too feel that the computing aesthetic has vanished, somehow on purpose, a lot of efforts were aimed at making gpus and browser able to emulate anything (magazine, movies), so that's what apps do.

And I also agree about the balance between the tool and user. Limitations forced UIs to be organized, structured in some simple ways, they would do enough work to do some of the work, but the rest was on you to grasp the abstractions and ideas around. The software became something to immerse yourself in to gain more. That was part of the magic.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#344

Post by Chipshuffle »

I thought about Sara and the cron job and if this could be an interaction between a script and an AI agent.

When the script doesn't run and throws an error, it could trigger an AI that has some skill to reconfigure and rerun the script so that it can run again. Seems like the perfect fit depending on the complexity.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#345

Post by doug_durham »

Madmallard wrote: post #146
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.

"Juniors are still hired in the 100's thousands every year." CITATION NEEDED From my perspective it seems like they're just not hired basically at all anymore

Look at the Fed published employment numbers. Over 80% of new CS grads find employment in their field. That would be 0 if we were hiring none. We are still hiring juniors where I work.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#346

Post by fragmede »

_pdp_ wrote: post #86

The so called AI job loses are not due to AI. I don't think there is anyone out there to argue otherwise. In a year but probably sooner, when software systems start collapsing, and they will, hiring in tech sector will skyrocket. In fact, I don't believe the world have enough developers to backfill for the AI deficiencies. To me the math is obvious. Assuming humans touch a 1% of all software systems created, somethin…

I like the idea of that, but it hinges on the notion that AI won't be capable of that. From what I've seen I don't know that it won't.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#347

Post by valleyer »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #330
valleyer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what GDP means.

"(GDP) measures the total market value of final goods and services produced" It can be circular. MS invests 5 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI invests 5 billion in MS. Do we have 10 billion now?

No goods or services were produced in your example, so GDP would not be affected. Purchases of securities are not goods or services.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#348

Post by thisoneisreal »

protocolture wrote: post #55
thisoneisreal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get into that line of work? Sounds really interesting.

Refusal to pick a silo, having a knack for troubleshooting, falling into consulting. It just sort of happened. Helps to be extremely jaded too. My kneekjerk disbelief that something is good, documented or even functional makes me well suited to taking over new clients and finding where all their bodies are buried. One of my favorite jobs early in my career was working for a really shonky wireless isp. The majority of…

Thanks for following up, really interesting and appreciate you sharing.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#349

Post by CRConrad »

munksbeer wrote: post #323
coldtea wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike? What I want is a better society (as I see it), not convenience for me personally. Obviously to the degree I can distance myself from stuff I don't care for, I do it. But I don't want to larp in some like-minded commune while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit.

> while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit. But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit, and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year. I understand your issues are more local, but remember, actions always speak louder than words. People say they don't want certain things, but then they engage prolifically with those things. All I'm sayi…

> But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit

They're wrong. Their little corner might not be, but the world as a whole is.

> and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.

Sure, if you're a subsistence farmer, five of whose nine kids would have died of starvation a few decades ago. Now it's only one out of six. And yes, that is even in part thanks to the agricultural apps on your smartphone.

But for the larger part of the world's population, who aren't subsistence farmers — they're beyond all that, and into the downside (and that's where the subsistence farmers are headed too, once they are no longer such): Materially safe and well-fed, but prisoners in a bunch of walled panopticon gardens.

> You can control your reality

What one can control is a little Potemkin village, which one will always know is not actually reality. Your avid proselytizing for that as a "solution" is you working, intentionally or (hopefully) unintentionally, on behalf of the techbroligarks who are busily acquiring the real world as their personal fiefdoms.

If you are (hopefully not!) doing this intentionally, one can only wonder: Are you a techbroligark? (If so, who are you — Zuck, Musk, Thiel...?) If not: Why on Earth would you want to lull people — why would you be propagandizing for people lulling themselves — into the bliss of ignorance; why would you want them to ignore the world actually going to shit by hiding in some little artificial enclave where they can pretend that it isn't?

And if you aren't doing it intentionally, you need to wake up to the fact that it is what you're doing... And stop doing it.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#350

Post by CRConrad »

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.

Don't project your Potemkin village as "reality".
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