The diminishing half-life of knowledge

The diminishing half-life of knowledge
rednafi.com

While there’s certainly currently an accelerando going on in terms of knowledge growth and change in many fields, there is also bias built into us and our perception of the world - every human has a tendency to be surprised by the degree of change that occurs in their lifetime - we are raised with the world presented as-is, with a static set of truths, yet the only constant thing about the human world is change.

I do feel like the culture of tech has become one of maintenance not being part of what we do. When was the last time you saw someone get promoted for "cutting costs" or "making the code less complicated". When was the last time you sat down and read someone else's code and were impressed at how CLEAR and SIMPLE it was?

20 years ago we were all running on bare hardware. Now it's a hypervisor, with a VM, that has a docker container, that imports everything and a cat. We get tools like artifactory to make up for the fact that all of that might disappear. Top it of with zero ownership (infrastructure as a cost center and not a depreciable asset).

It feels like a fuck shit stack of wet turds and were trying to play jenga with them, shuffling them back to the top and trying to get our next gig before the whole thing falls over and hopefully lands in someone else's lap.

To make a point: do we need docker? No, but writing installable software is hard (depending on language and what you're doing). Docker doesn't fix the problem it just adds another layer in.

The original service is the database. Yet we dont normally expose it because its security model remains rooted in the 19xx's. So we have layers of shims over it, ORM, JSON... pick your stack and "scalable" abstraction.

The author mentions LLM's. The more I play with them the more I feel like this is going to be cool after engineers beat it into submission over the course of the next few years. So much opaque, and so little clarity on what is going on under the hood. It's no wonder people are having trouble coming to grips, it's a mess! If it were a battery break through it would take 10 years to turn it into a mass producible product, but because its software we throw money at it and let it dangle out on the web!!! (and I dont fear AGI)

FTA: >> I don’t have a prescriptive solution for this. I wrote this text to start a discussion around a feeling I previously struggled with but didn’t know how to label.

I do. We need to do better. We need to stop piling on more and strip back to clear and well understood. We need to value readable code over DRY, or Design patterns or what ever the next FOTM is. We need to laud people who make systems simpler, who reduces costs, who reshape and extend existing things rather than build new ones and pile more on top because it's "easy" or looks good on the resume.

I am part of the problem too, and I need to stop. I need to stop reaching for that next shiny bit of tech, next framework, next library. Because acting like a schizophrenic ADHD child finding candy hasn't really served anyone.

Also I'd like to kindly ask you not to use "ADHD child" in that manner because I think it stigmatizes it although I do understand the point you were trying to make there.

AS for the ADHD thing, I get it, it's also a pretty accurate description of how I feel some days working in this industry. Its hard not to be a technological magpie collecting shiny rocks!