3 ms·

...Failed? It's just getting started.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
I know, these people have no patience. “The web was displaced by apps”, “Facebook will control our social lives forever”. “Bitcoin has failed we are permanent slaves to global financial institutions”.... If the software revolution is a year, we are in late February. Rugged winter plants are growing slowly. Most things haven’t sprouted, let alone bloomed. Megafauna are still in hibernation. The fitness landscape in which permacode will evolve doesn’t even exist yet.
- toss1 8y ago
  Assuming the start of the software revolution with the Jacquard loom in early 1800s, Turing in mid-1900s, widely available microcomputers in the 1980s or the public Internet in the 1990s? (my vote is for Jacquard, otherwise it's late January)
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Maybe, yeah. I said late February just because I think the next couple decades will see an explosion. (To answer your question, I would put the invention of software at COBOL probably. Jaquard and Turing were developing operations, not developing on operations.) I think we’re currently laboring under unnecessary complexity, enforced by a single-minded control system (generate software structures controllable by financial funds). We’re already past the point where we can operate in a lower energy state (a factor of 10 less code underlying our user-facing apps and a factor of 100 more software writers) and it’s just a matter of when in the next decade the nucleation site will form. At the point we’ll be in what I believe is a software spring. Also, the development of the handheld limitless visual networked computer, and the even more limitless cloud, isn’t nothing.
    - toss1 8y ago
      Incoming explosion for sure! Just not sure of the form. It'd certainly be nice to clear out the mountains of unnecessary complexity, which may sort of make it 'easier' to spin up apps, but just squanders computing power. Just using desktop app responsiveness as a proxy, it really feels like the most responsive time was just pre-Windows or early WinNT, and despite ever-increasing processing speed, cache, and RAM, the responsiveness just gets mushy. & config mgt almost takes more time than coding. I'm hoping that as Moore's law tapers off, we get somewhat forced back into valuing efficient systems. So, yes, when that nucleation site forms, it'll be nice, and a big burst of power! I'm sort of hoping that one part of it might take the form of greater power in the handhelds, pulling back some computing out of the cloud and onto a more independent old-desktop-style stand-alone high-capability machine, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd expect it'll still be tapping lots of big datasets/AI in the cloud... We can hope for fun times ahead!

I know, these people have no patience. “The web was displaced by apps”, “Facebook will control our social lives forever”. “Bitcoin has failed we are permanent slaves to global financial institutions”.... If the software revolution is a year, we are in late February. Rugged winter plants are growing slowly. Most things haven’t sprouted, let alone bloomed. Megafauna are still in hibernation. The fitness landscape in which permacode will evolve doesn’t even exist yet.

toss1 8y ago
Assuming the start of the software revolution with the Jacquard loom in early 1800s, Turing in mid-1900s, widely available microcomputers in the 1980s or the public Internet in the 1990s? (my vote is for Jacquard, otherwise it's late January)
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Maybe, yeah. I said late February just because I think the next couple decades will see an explosion. (To answer your question, I would put the invention of software at COBOL probably. Jaquard and Turing were developing operations, not developing on operations.) I think we’re currently laboring under unnecessary complexity, enforced by a single-minded control system (generate software structures controllable by financial funds). We’re already past the point where we can operate in a lower energy state (a factor of 10 less code underlying our user-facing apps and a factor of 100 more software writers) and it’s just a matter of when in the next decade the nucleation site will form. At the point we’ll be in what I believe is a software spring. Also, the development of the handheld limitless visual networked computer, and the even more limitless cloud, isn’t nothing.
  - toss1 8y ago
    Incoming explosion for sure! Just not sure of the form. It'd certainly be nice to clear out the mountains of unnecessary complexity, which may sort of make it 'easier' to spin up apps, but just squanders computing power. Just using desktop app responsiveness as a proxy, it really feels like the most responsive time was just pre-Windows or early WinNT, and despite ever-increasing processing speed, cache, and RAM, the responsiveness just gets mushy. & config mgt almost takes more time than coding. I'm hoping that as Moore's law tapers off, we get somewhat forced back into valuing efficient systems. So, yes, when that nucleation site forms, it'll be nice, and a big burst of power! I'm sort of hoping that one part of it might take the form of greater power in the handhelds, pulling back some computing out of the cloud and onto a more independent old-desktop-style stand-alone high-capability machine, but I'm not holding my breath. I'd expect it'll still be tapping lots of big datasets/AI in the cloud... We can hope for fun times ahead!