[vouaobrasil]

> So where do you go when you want to geek out?

This may be a pessimistic take, but computer stuff I believe has lost the allure that it once had, and here is why I think so:

At one point, computer stuff meant being a hacker, having the hacker ethic, which personally to me translated into figuring out how stuff worked and putting it together to do something useful. And, "something useful" to me meant creating something and showing it off to other people. I still remember in high school when I hacked together a paint program in some interpreted language that had built-in primitive graphics. Computer-related stuff meant also doing good things for the world, like transmitting useful information over the internet and discussing things.

Nowadays, "computer stuff" is a lot different. Yeah, computers have gotten way more powerful, but computer stuff is now 99% about commoditizing and big-tech abstracting everything away into a process that is just about selling junk people don't need and manipulating the basic psychological processes of human beings for the sake of their own growth. It's about behemoth, high-level abstractions that take away the basic joy of learning, and the main philosophy that pervades computers today is that they are a tool to supply sugar-level media consumption in return for commercial engagement.

Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and others are the result of a late-stage technological development fuelled only by greed, and it's left the computer landscape soulless, metallic, and empty. Unfortunately, people became aware of just how commercializable computers were and we've milked it dry like a cow that needs to be pumped full of drugs to keep going.

So no thanks. I left computer science as my job this year, and while I still enjoy writing a cool algorithm in Python, I'm much happier for it and don't talk about computers any more.

[rkagerer]

I view their failure to put users first as a giant opportunity for someone else to come along and do a better job.

[a_bonobo]

I think that's a direct result of the 'weird' way our economy works: we've moved away from customer satisfaction to investor satisfaction.

Nowadays, companies exist to increase their stock value so their managers get bigger bonuses. You don't get more stock by being better to your customers: ruthlessly firing people also increases your stock value. Putting users first might make your company look not worthy of investment: the market selects for stockholder-first companies.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I think that's a direct result of the 'weird' way our economy works: we've moved away from customer satisfaction to investor satisfaction.

A lot of this was a consequence of low interest rates. Money didn't come from selling things to customers, it came from selling a story to investors. Now that interest rates are finally above zero it's harder to raise money from investors and businesses will start to remember what it's like to make money from satisfying customers.

And the incumbents who don't realize this may be in for a surprise. What do you do when your business strategy is based on buying up the competition with cheap money and then the cheap money dries up and the competition is willing to sacrifice margins or disavow customer-hostile misfeatures in order to get your market share?

[vouaobrasil]

That is an insightful point, and all too true. And it's not just investor satisfaction, but the satisfaction of short-term investors due to the peculiarities of modern derivative trading which emphasizes short-term gains through extremely complex financial abstractions.

[samwillis]

This is very much what the local first movement is about: https://localfirstweb.dev/

Give users control of their data and privacy, moving away from large backend infrastructure, and providing better value to the user. With the bonus of having a more enjoyable development environment and an excited community.

[rkagerer]

I never left... still creating desktop applications in my spare time :-).

[lagniappe]

I'm working on this right now. I miss when the user determined how the data was presented. I'm making a minimal, markdown-based document network similar to gemini or gopher.

[itisit]

That’s just it: computing is ordinary and in most cases a commodity. Same as petroleum, wheat, and gold. When business normalizes around a commodity, all the excitement, novelty, and wonder is lost. Consumers demand it, suppliers crank it out. Who cares? Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful the staples are always there on the proverbial shelf. But am I enthusiastically interested and passionate about that?

[epups]

While I understand you, I don't share your pessimism. The golden age you alluded to was elitist. Very few people around the world benefitted from technology, it was a game for privileged and/or rich kids. Now we have literally billions of people talking to each other, banking, working remotely through technology. Sure, it was commoditized, like everything else. But this commoditization helped far more people than any legendary hacker of the 1980s could ever dream of.

[oska]

I would call your take 'jaded' rather than pessimistic. And I don't mean to be critical in saying that; it's quite understandable that people get jaded in this industry. But I think there are still very much hacker cultures out there and green shoots still sprouting in not highly visible corners. You have to have the enthusiasm and idealism to go searching for them; both things that we tend to have more of when we are younger. Or you have to have been very careful throughout your career to have only worked in places and on things that you believed in and were enthusiastic about, and thus kept your enthusiasm and idealism alive.

[nnurmanov]

I am from enterprise background, where 80-90% of the works is simply supporting the existing infrastructure. Any successful technology after adoption becomes "mundane" as you can't always write code or build new products, you have to support them too.

[Dalewyn]

>computer stuff I believe has lost the allure that it once had,

You're quite right, but your subsequent argument can be summed up much more simply: Computing became mainstream.

Mainstream things aren't fun. Mainstream things are mundane.

>Companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and others are the result of a late-stage technological development fuelled only by greed,

Besides Google and contemporaries like Amazon, those companies like Microsoft and IBM are the companies who led the way during the Computing == Hacker age that you feel nostalgia for.

Obviously companies can and will change over time, but to mindlessly hand wave them away as "greed" is the epitome of rose-colored glasses.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Mainstream things aren't fun. Mainstream things are mundane.

Mainstream things are mundane in the way that McDonalds is mundane and yet food as a whole is not.

The real problem is that users have been locked out of their own devices and data to such an extent that you can't easily make your own and share it with your friends, and people are disenchanted with years of eating nothing but Big Macs.

[vouaobrasil]

You are right in some ways, but I think the situation is a bit more complex than mainstream. Some things do go mainstream, such as protein shakes (at one point, whey was simply discarded), but they don't necessarily lose their enjoyment factor. The point I was trying to make is that not only did computers go mainstream, but they also have certain attributes that make them especially exploitable under the current capitalistic system.

[Zoo3y]

Agreed, it's possible to still like programming as a hobby despite its commodification in the larger scheme of things. Ycombinator in a nutshell.

[36933]

This is the best take I’ve read about this topic and I don’t think that’s a pessimistic take of you.

What are you doing now, if I may ask?

[vouaobrasil]

Thanks for the comment. After I quit my full-time research job, I became a full-time wildlife photographer and non-fiction writer. It doesn't pay as much but I like it a lot.