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by Timpy
933 days ago
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I think there's a fair argument to be made that computing is the most complex synthetic thing humans have ever conceived all on our own. If we're talking about making systems in the broadest sense, then any category of problems that we create systems for could conceptually be managed on paper and pencil. Let's say "number of things that could go wrong multiplied by the difficulty a layperson would have in fixing such a thing" is what we mean by complexity, a computer would be more complex than a filing cabinet every single time. There are trade offs for the complexity though, and well managed complexity could disappear behind the interface of a computer. When this is done well it feels seamless, and when it's done poorly it's painful. So maybe I'm arguing the meaning of complexity isn't 1:1 with the meaning of complicated. At the end of the day "did moving this to a computer make it better?" is the question to answer, and a lot of times the answer is no. QR menus at restaurants is my favorite punching bag for this but any home appliance with bluetooth or wifi is an easy target. |
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This reads like empty circumlocution in defense of programmer jobs.
My boring EE and math degrees are from another era, before all this cool software jargon captivated the world. I am not really sure what all the verbosity of the DSLs, config formats, and many programming languages really solves from an engineering perspective. Much of it feels like baggage from the era before graphical computing first; iPhones don’t boot to a CLI, right?
Humanity burns a lot of real resources preserving computing history when the first computers were human mathematicians. What does a Commodore and Borland have to do with mathematics? Feels like nostalgia more than engineering.
I will keep iterating on personal computing experiments. Ye olde cranks of software lore and genius CEOs are just normal people hallucinating about their essentialness to society. Yawn. (I’m doing it too!)
The real energy vampires are not the sarcastic, but the toxic positivity crowd peddling Ponzi schemes passed on from dad and his 80s bitching Camaro crowd. Yes, yes, you did something within the constraints of physical reality. Ooh wow an expensive agency manipulating boondoggle; can I subscribe to your newsletter?
The next generation grew up on the internet. They’re aware of the hustle, whereas the aging out elders were maybe a bit less discerning given lack of education and experience; how were they know it’s just arithmetic and Boolean of memory addresses and semantic babble? Their special boys seemed convinced and the elders might have been a bit more accepting of hallucinations given their religious upbringing.
I ended up in software expecting to have a career in industrial controls, but entered that field at the tail end of offshoring, never got my foot in the door as networking became harder, internet was not so socially organized back then. Couldn’t figure out where to be at the right time.
I’m fucking sick of “software” as we know it. It’s elementary DSL parsers and git pull github.com/everything.git which given how things work with software is great but that that’s how things work in software is ridiculous.