[tempaccount5050]

Software companies have been about automating human labor since the invention of computers. It's the whole damn point. Why do you think finance used to be (sometimes still is) the head of the IT dept? Because we automated accounting away. Then typists. Then secretaries. Then drafting. Etc etc.

[wiseowise]

> It's the whole damn point.

Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.

[tempaccount5050]

Whether or not you want to admit that is up to you. If you're selling automation or efficiency gains, you're removing human labor.

[gravypod]

My first "job" in computing, where someone else paid me for code, was in a research context where we were modeling radio propagation. Nothing about that was removing human labor. It in face eventually called for a bunch of humans to interact with each other. See: https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclips...

I don't think it is fair to claim computers are about putting people out of jobs.

[tempaccount5050]

I think it is. Before computers you would have had to write all that down on paper logs. By using code, you saved yourself time. If it wasn't less labor, you wouldn't have done it that way.

[dash2]

Before it was less labor, they might not have done it at all. Computers let you do things quicker. So you do more things.

[casey2]

Ok, then go work on homelessness or political corruption. It's not like we have a dearth of problems. Coding is solved.

[oarsinsync]

> Before computers

Computer used to mean "human who does math". Before machine computers, we had human computers. Machine computers replaced all of these human computers.

[gravypod]

People *did* write down these logs, manually, and submit them.

[tempaccount5050]

And without software, what then, make a bunch of books and mail it to all these people? On this site of all sites, it's blowing my mind that this kind of thing isn't obvious to everyone. I guess maybe it isn't if you were born before the internet, but man, I'm really surprised by some of these comments.

[Georgelemental]

Human labor could do the math by hand

[aaomidi]

And in fact, was how it was done.

[wiseowise]

I'm improving error prone systems to make the world more efficient, not to replace people.

[ori_b]

The purpose of a system is what it does. If people constantly use your device to turn kittens into pulp, you have built a kitten grinder, even if the label you slapped on the side says "coffee beans only".

[wiseowise]

Nonsense. By your logic anything pointy is a killer machine, because people constantly use them to kill.

[ori_b]

If that's constantly the thing your device is constantly used for... yes?

[skeledrew]

Why else would one create software, if not to do something that a human does/did?

[matt_kantor]

A few off the top of my head:

- Video games

- Medical device firmware

- Synthesizers

- Detailed universe-scale physics simulations

- Mars rover control software

- The Linux kernel

[skeledrew]

- Video games - only feasible because of computers.

- Medical device firmware - hardware control layer for medical devices, which are used to aid in medical procedures.

- Synthesizers - help to make music.

- Detailed universe-scale physics simulations - help to make certain physics problems more tractable.

- Mars rover control software - helps to remote control rovers.

- The Linux kernel - control layer that sits between firmware and actual applications, pretty much just a common shared library so apps don't have to each ship with a full stack.

I don't really see your point here. None of these examples counter the argument that software is created to automate human labour as much as is practical.

Video games are an interesting category since they're entirely enabled by software: I can't imagine anyone driving a video game manually (note I don't consider things like Chess, etc software to be video games in this context; more things like FPS, racing, etc). I do remember as a kid I thought that there were actually little people doing the stuff in video games though.

[matt_kantor]

> I don't really see your point here.

The parent comment said "to do something that a human does/did", so I tried to come up with a diverse list of software that performs functions humans hadn't/couldn't've done.

> software is created to automate human labour as much as is practical

That's certainly a reason software is created, but not the only reason.

> Medical device firmware - hardware control layer for medical devices, which are used to aid in medical procedures.

I should've been more specific, maybe "MRI scanner firmware". Lots of medical devices could not exist without software.

> Synthesizers - help to make music.

Yes, they "help to make music", but synthesizers can produce sounds that humans cannot produce by themselves. If the upthread comment were about technology broadly rather than software specifically, I could've written "saxophones" here.

> Detailed universe-scale physics simulations - help to make certain physics problems more tractable.

"More tractable", or "tractable at all"? Simulations that would take 100 human lifetimes to compute on paper weren't even attempted before.

> Mars rover control software - helps to remote control rovers.

This clearly wasn't ever done without software, so I don't think I understand your response. I can't even imagine how it could have been done without software (my first ridiculous thought is very long cables going from Earth to Mars mechanically controlling a rover, but even if we had a magical material that'd enable that, the cables would get tangled up as the planets move).

> The Linux kernel - control layer that sits between firmware and actual applications, pretty much just a common shared library so apps don't have to each ship with a full stack.

I thought the pushback on this would be "this is just an implementation detail to let us run other software, so it shouldn't count". I don't think I understand your response here either.

---

I guess my general reaction is: sure, if you broaden the criteria enough then you can interpret most anything as "something that a human does/did". Like: humans "have fun" and therefore video games don't count, or humans can jump therefore they "travel through the air" therefore airplanes are just "doing something that humans do". But I don't think this reading of the upthread comment leads to interesting discussion.

[skeledrew]

Ah I think I see where things went off the rails. I should've explicitly added "would have to do" to purposes for creating software; it was just on my mind, and left as an implicit.

I don't think there's anything out there that a computer can do but humans can't do per se. Whether it's manually doing what an MRI does, or sending people with the Mars rover. It would be anything from tedious/inefficient through crazy difficult/dangerous to totally impossible at this time (at some point in time it would at least be possible). Though that's just being pedantic, especially re video games.

> "this is just an implementation detail to let us run other software, so it shouldn't count"

That's essentially what I said, but in different words.

The main point in my original reply was to question the point of software creation, if not to stand in for human capability, wholly or partially. I don't see people creating software explicitly to just let it gather dust for example, even though that happens very often.

[tempaccount5050]

This list is funny.

All of these things existed in pre computer form.

A scheduler used to be a person putting punch cards into a machine.

[matt_kantor]

My reply in a sibling thread[0] is applicable here too. I'm not sure if you have the same things in mind as skeledrew, but at least this seems probably relevant:

> If you broaden the criteria enough then you can interpret most anything as "something that a human does/did". Like: humans "have fun" and therefore video games don't count, or humans can jump therefore they "travel through the air" therefore airplanes are just "doing something that humans do". But I don't think this reading of the upthread comment leads to interesting discussion.

I'd be happy to discuss specific examples of the "pre computer forms", if you provide some.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083805

[TheRoque]

What's the human form of a video game ?

[brabel]

Board games? All sorts of toys?

[moring]

To do things that a human could have done in theory, but did not do because it would have been too expensive.

[nly]

To do new things no number of humans can do

[grim_io]

No one is taking away programming as a hobby from you :)

[sdevonoes]

There are software components out there that are the backbone of our industry, and they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies. Linux, postgres, HTTP, TCP/IP, qemu,…

It’s not that anthropic/google/openai/etc are unavoidable

[tomnipotent]

> they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies

Every tech you mentioned is absolutely governed by multibillion dollar companies. Something like 75-85% of OSS code is contributed by employees doing their day job. Most Linux and Postgres contributions come from those same employees. HTTP and TCP/IP are managed by standard bodies and industry working groups that, you guessed it, are governed by multibillion dollar companies. Red Hat and IBM are responsible for 40-60% of contributions to Qemu.

[dakiol]

The way I understood op is that we don't necessarily have to pay to use linux or postgres (when self hosting, for example). But we have to pay to use claude code... which sucks big time (also, open source models are behind private models)

[tomnipotent]

Claude Code isn't OSS, so I fail to see the connection. You're paying for compute, not access to code. I'm personally more than happy to pay for access to that compute.

[raj1298]

The usual model for OSS projects is that initially they are written for free. Then an inner circle forms and exploits the second generation of idealists who write entire large features without ever getting the same rights.

Some of the inner circle move to corporations to increase their power and are joined by corporate developers (sometimes their bosses) to take over the project.

A lot of corporate OSS development are entirely unnecessary rewrites or simple things like release management. So I'd put the number of useful code by employees much lower.

But governed, hell yeah, I agree. The corporations crack the whip and oppress real contributors.

[tomnipotent]

This is a nice fantasy, but that's all it is. Most of the code used by corporations is also mostly contributed to by other corporations. Contributions by volunteers is the exception for most of the projects in this context. I also don't think this is a bad thing.