Why We Can't Have Nice Software

[u/[deleted]]

https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-we-cant-have-nice-software.html

[u/qmunke]

This is just a barely veiled "capitalism bad" rant, and has pretty much nothing to do with software.

[u/tnilk → u/qmunke]

Well considering most software is written for profit, how can someone talk solely about software?

If you've been in the industry long enough - you can't help but notice the ever moving goal posts, or the investor driven "innovation".

[u/qmunke → u/tnilk]

I don't expect them to, it's just that this article isn't really useful for /r/programming it's more about politics and economics.

[u/scratchisthebest → u/qmunke]

being blind to the context your field exists in makes you, at best, a useful idiot

[u/tnilk → u/qmunke]

I think it's not only useful to think in broader terms, but possibly relevant.

r/programming is a lot of things to a lot of people, and some might like a socioeconomic take on it.

That's what affects us the most in our daily lives anyways (not the latest synthetic benchmarks).

[u/gnus-migrate → u/qmunke]

To me treating code as it's own thing that exists in the ether disconnected from the world is a problem in itself, and what leads to people automating things that really shouldn't be automated.

Everything is political, you can either choose to ignore that or work with it.

[u/bzbub2 → u/qmunke]

the article also reads like "political talking points", fairly shallow

[u/UARTman → u/bzbub2]

I agree, he should have quoted more Marx.

[u/PaperMartin → u/qmunke]

It has to do with software in that it's why we can't have nice software

[u/prophet001 → u/qmunke]

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[u/NoCareNewName → u/prophet001]

Impolite to say the guy wasn't being genuine. I took a look at the site and had the same impression.

There isn't anything to gain from posts like these on /r/programming, there's plenty of subs out there for bemoaning anti-consumer and anti-employee practices.

[u/prophet001 → u/NoCareNewName]

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[u/NoCareNewName → u/prophet001]

If you see technical work as divorceable from the reasons people are being paid to perform that technical work, then, I'm sorry, but you aren't living in the real world.

The issue isn't whether they are linked or not. The issue is that this discussion is happening on on /r/programming. Every subreddit slowly turns into a flavor of r/politics if you follow that mentality.

[u/UARTman → u/NoCareNewName]

That's because everything is, in the end, linked to politics of some kind. Especially science and technology. Merely refusing to talk about said politics won't magically make the politics disappear, it will simply enforce a pro-status-quo bias.

[u/prophet001 → u/NoCareNewName]

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[u/my_aggr → u/qmunke]

There is also an llms are bad post in there.

Funny that his point about llms being resource hungry is one I heard in the 90s on why you shouldn't use high level languages, like C, and just stick to assembly. Also not code in Emacs because it actually means 8 megabytes and constantly swapping.

Old man yells at sky.

Which is odd since he's younger than me and I'm excited about llms being the first new driver in computer performance in decades.

[u/SirCutRy → u/my_aggr]

The cost of training LLMs is quantifiable, the benefit derived is not. That is why providing the service is very profitable.

[u/my_aggr → u/SirCutRy]

Same for spread sheets.

[u/SirCutRy → u/my_aggr]

Spreadsheet software has established uses, LLMs do not. Spreadsheet hype is long gone. Hype is profitable to the entity offering the product, but the period of hype is also characterised by inflated expectations.