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The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

techtrenches.dev

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Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#741

Post by zer0tonin »

dieortin wrote: post #489
kristofferR wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most software, other than Windows and macOS, seems to have gotten better more quickly lately. Hard to quantify though, as most, other than the AI companies don't usually advertise their AI usage.

Could you give some examples?

On my side, I can give many examples of random software that became significantly worse since the AI trend started.

Trainline is practically unusable for purchasing itineraries that go accross multiple european countries. GitHub Actions now contains a bunch of extremely frustrating random bugs. Grammarly somehow gives worse copy recommendations.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#742

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

aleqs wrote: post #538
vishnugupta wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> removing people and organizational slack You are spot on w.r.t every assertion you've made. When bean-counters took over the ecosystem they optimised immediate profitability over everything else. Which in turn means, in their mind, every part of the system needs to be firing at 100% all the time. There's no room for experimentation, repair, or anything else. I've commented about lack of slack on several times here…

The problem is, in the minds of these people 'firing at 100% all the time' generally means doing busywork and/or thinking of ways to cheat/manipulate their customers and the market for maximum gain whole delivering minimum value. I would have loved to be 100% engaged working on solving real problems in honest ways at some of my past jobs, but alas MBA/marketing leadership, which has taken over much of tech has very l…

> generally means doing busywork and/or thinking of ways to cheat/manipulate their customers and the market for maximum gain whole delivering minimum value

When I read comments like this I can’t help but wonder where people like you work. It’s completely unrepeatable to me. I work with really good people, all the way to the tip, and no try to make money by increasing value for our customers.

Apple, Google, Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, Anthropic, Toyota, and a hundred other companies all offer me incredible value for so cheap. Why are people so cynical about a world that offers them unimaginable riches everywhere they look.

Sure there are bad companies. And if you work at one of those, go get a new job.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#743

Post by coffeefirst »

liendolucas wrote: post #152

I still code daily without any coding assistance mostly because I believe this is the way to not forget how things are done, even trivial things. My main point against using AI is that I do not want to depend basically on anything when I'm in front of the screen (obviously not including, documentation, books, SO and alike). I closely see people that are 100% dependent on AI for literally everything, even the most tri…

I really don't understand the people who use it for everything.

It's become my first stop for search because it's doing it in bulk—read 50 results and lead me to something useful.

But I just got Claude MCP connected to my personal email/calendar/etc and I can't figure out what to do with it. It wrote a summary of my inbox that took as long to read as flipping through my inbox. And since it makes no sense to delegate decision making, I'm not sure what the actual work I'm supposed to give it would be.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#745

Post by jfengel »

WalterBright wrote: post #643
cowmix wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know who his wealth was transferred from, exactly. But I do know what he’s using it for now: as a gravitational force to unilaterally screw with public institutions and systems the rest of us depend on. Even if you agree with some of DOGE projects’s goals, the way it operated was wildly thoughtless about consequences beyond Musk’s personal wishes, and almost completely unaccountable. I’m honestly sick that my…

Musk's money came from creating a business that was worth a lot of money. I.e. he created his wealth. It was not transferred to him. The same goes for Bezos, Jobs, Gates, etc.

He ended up with all of the profits, but he didn't put in all of the work. A lot of people worked very hard for that wealth, either for salary or a minuscule fraction of the profits.

He gets to keep the lion's share of the profits because he was the one who took the risk with his capital. And bully for him; well done that man. But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true. It's a myth that the wealth owners tell us.

All of these products would exist with the CEOs who get the credit. If it weren't them it would have been someone else. Their expertise as CEOs is not to get the product done, but to get it done a week earlier than the other guy. And even that much is more luck than skill.

There's no way to say "Musk took this money from someone else". But that's different from "He has a million times as much wealth because he is a million times more valuable."

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#746

Post by d3Xt3r »

jdw64 wrote: post #17

The real issue, in my view, is not AI itself. The problem is a management pattern: removing people and organizational slack because they don’t generate immediate profit, and then expecting the knowledge to still be there when it’s needed. Short-term cost cutting leads to less junior hiring, and removes the slack that experienced engineers need in order to teach. As a result, tacit knowledge stops being transferred. W…

> The problem is a management pattern

No, the problem is much more far-reaching than being limited to just corporations - it's a societal problem.

The article says the west is forgetting how to code, but actually the west is forgetting how to do math, how to draw and edit images, how to make music, how to write, how to read and even how to think.

And have you interacted with any kids recently? They're doing ALL their homework using ChatGPT. Forget kids, adults are even worse. At least kids can be supervised, but who's supervising the adults? How many of us have enough self-control to not reach out to the convenient AI app in our phones for every little thing?

This has massive repurcarions for our society as a whole. The bleak future depicted in Idocracy is becoming more and more of a surefire reality.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#747

Post by array_key_first »

ahussain wrote: post #596
vishnugupta wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> removing people and organizational slack You are spot on w.r.t every assertion you've made. When bean-counters took over the ecosystem they optimised immediate profitability over everything else. Which in turn means, in their mind, every part of the system needs to be firing at 100% all the time. There's no room for experimentation, repair, or anything else. I've commented about lack of slack on several times here…

Engineers seem to think business people don’t know what they are doing, but if your post were true, then companies would add slack to outperform their competitors. The broken system likely doesn’t have enough business impact to justify the investment to maintain it.

It's a measurement problem, which engineers also fall prey to, perhaps even more.

It's the danger of data driven decision making. Cutting people and resources right now gets you a measurable gain. Not cutting them gets you a gain tomorrow.

But, that gain is unmeasurable! Because in order to measure it you would need to know what happens in an alternate universe where you cut those people. So, if you're only making data driven decisions, you would cut the people 100% of the time.

But that's why companies aren't run by algorithms, they're run by people. The algorithm would run the company into the ground.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#748

Post by nobodyandproud »

WalterBright wrote: post #658
danmaz74 wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, productivity increase is hugely important, but if you only pursue profit maximization, then all the productivity increase goes into profits, which means that the general population doesn't increase their well being much if at all. The 40hr work week didn't come by as a consequence of the profit maximization mentality, but as a consequence of hard fought battles by the workers/employees against that mentality. A…

The Law of Supply and Demand is in play, and it means a company cannot dictate prices, wages, or working conditions in a free market economy. Rising productivity would have reduced the average work week regardless. If you still aren't convinced, consider that the benefits package routinely offered to employees is worth around 40% of their pay.

A free market is bound by the rules of the market, which is trade agreements and government.

Meaning it can be changed and adjusted.

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#749

Post by nobodyandproud »

WalterBright wrote: post #634
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you mean by work. Most people do a lot of work themselves that the Richie Rich would pay somebody else to do, like cooking, cleaning, childcare, gardening, etc. If it counts as work when you hire somebody to do it, it should equally count as work if you do it yourself.

People still did cooking, cleaning, childcare, and gardening in those times of 12 hour work days. BTW, cooking in those days was an all day affair. The wood stove required continuous feeding and watching. Today one can just put the food in a microwave. I cook a steak now and then, it's the only cooking I do. It takes about 10 minutes. The dishwasher does the cleaning. Rich people hire others to do the cooking because…

Division of labor. The men worked, the women stayed home.

Things went to hell for single-parent families

Re: The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code

#750

Post by ranger_danger »

Kamq wrote: post #626
ranger_danger wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teaching how to increase shareholder value in the short term Problem is this is quite often a requirement for a public company, to maximize company value/profits above all else. Also execs who are more right-wing are typically not interested in helping the larger society in general.

This is BS. A shareholder lawsuit against the CEO/board/executives for investing in the employees in the hope of long term profits would never succeed. The idea of a fiduciary duty doesn't mean that. It means the CEO can't take actions that intentionally hurt the company. And there are very few large public companies with active enough investors to oust a CEO over this, and even fewer that have both active and activi…

There can be other valid perspectives than your own, especially when one makes sweeping black-and-white generalizations without any evidence.

> the CEO can't take actions that intentionally hurt the company

And who gets to define what "hurt" means?

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