I miss assembler and maximizing code efficiency to juggle 2k of ram.
Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
11–20 of 219 posts
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#12Blow often makes fantastic points about development, and often completely misses the mark. He’s accomplished great things and has ideas worth listening to - but also plenty of nonsense that’s presented indistinguishably. I felt quite strongly that the collapse of civilisation talk was one of those pieces of nonsense, and I’ve largely ignored it (despite listening to it twice). I’m grateful to OP for providing a more…
Does he though?
It seems like he just makes these broad critical statements then pisses off to continue to do nothing.
I wouldn’t even say he’s accomplished great things. He’s accomplished some decent things.
He’s released two games which barely qualify as games. They’re more like puzzles. You don’t need to play them ever again after you finish the first time. Braid is ok. And the Witness is just Flow. And then after that he’s been working on a programming language for the past decade which he hasn’t released to the public because “it’s not finished”.
He got lucky and made his nut and ever since then has thought of himself as way more talented than he is.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#13I teach the systems class at Montana State, where we go from transistors up to a real computing system, and I have students that don't understand what a file system really is when they start my class
I agree that blow is wrong on some details, but I really think we need to be thinking hard around a NAND-to-Tetris style education that starts in high school for our technical students.
I use "outdated" models like Little Man Computer and a simple visual MIPS emulator which, even though they aren't realistic, at least give the students a sense of where we came from, with a level of complexity that a normal human can get their head around. When I look at modern 64 bit architecture books that get suggested for me to teach with I just laugh.
Anyway, not to say I agree 100% with Blow on everything, but connecting technology down to the roots is a hard problem.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#14I miss assembler and maximizing code efficiency to juggle 2k of ram.
Plenty of hand written assembler in core programs like ffmpeg. Sure most people glue together tedious JavaScript frameworks but there’s still people doing real work.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#15It appears that author is from that newer generation, and completely misses points because he just don’t know. Ironically the article is an example of what Blow was talking about. similar happens if I talk about how Figma is destroying the design world on unprecedented scale by normalising bad UX, UI and product management found in Figma itself, and get responses from younger designers that everything is great, compl…
So your rebuttal is that they’re wrong because they’re young and inexperienced? OK, maybe, but what exactly are they wrong about? You haven’t actually added anything to the conversation with this ad hominem attack.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#16Why stop here… not say easy access to clean water is destroying your health. Should walk two miles to the watering hole, carry it back, collect wood for fire and boil the water your self… \s
Well indeed - abstraction is a cornerstone of progress, not a hindrance to it.
Most of us will die from dehydration or water-borne disease or hunger if civilisation collapses though!
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#17[dead]
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#18I think this post is related: We are destroying software (https://antirez.com/news/145)
I don't disagree that software engineering is not as rigorous as it was. But software has also spread into much wider area, allowing many more people to participate as programmers, all thanks to abstractions.
I'm drawn to the romantic/pure/spartan aspect of low level programming too but I also need to make a living by solving problems in practical and scrappy ways.
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#19It appears that author is from that newer generation, and completely misses points because he just don’t know. Ironically the article is an example of what Blow was talking about. similar happens if I talk about how Figma is destroying the design world on unprecedented scale by normalising bad UX, UI and product management found in Figma itself, and get responses from younger designers that everything is great, compl…
Could you expand on how Figma is destroying the design world?
I'm curious too. I want to understand "Figma is destroying the design world on unprecedented scale by normalising bad UX, UI and product management found in Figma itself".
Re: Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
#20I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does.
I know for a fact a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render.
Not to mention the absolute idiot of a CEO of Vercel who thinks React is the Linux kernel of development.