5 ms·

Programmer productivity. As long as this is the bottleneck in determining market success of a product, this tradeoff will continue.

noobermin 5y ago
Well in between the ads and google spying I often do not feel productive.
nradov 5y ago
Programmer productivity has gotten worse. None of the development tools in widespread use today is as productive as Visual Basic or Delphi were back in 1996.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  This needs a lot of qualifiers. I can see that for web development maybe (I don't know, haven't done that for almost 10 years, but I can imagine given the constraints), but for system level programming for example I don't want to go back to the 90s. Not that Visual Basic or Delphi worked for that anyway.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Technically Delphi could have worked but you'd need to use your own RTL and aside from a few additional language feature, you'd be losing 99% of what Delphi offered anyway.
  - frostwarrior 5y ago
    Also, as the internet (and technology) grew in influence and popularity, the amound of usecases for them grew exponentially. In the "golden era" computers were more or less advanced calculators. Now we (as a population) expect to give entertainment and give advice about our lifestyle, like we do with smartwatches or fitness devices. That's a lot more complicated than writing text or inputting numbers into a grid
    - marttt 5y ago
      > Now we (as a population) expect to give entertainment and give advice about our lifestyle, like we do with smartwatches or fitness devices. I always think about Lindy effect [1] in this context: the life expectancy of a technology, idea or (in our case) a societal habit is proportional to its current age. It follows, then, that the idea of a multi-purpose computing device may also wear off in certain areas of life, or for certain types of people. Not always, not everywhere is there a need for complex or complicated devices or systems. There will always be people who seek or prefer a simpler, quieter life that involves as little technology as possible. What's really interesting is that many of these people seem to have a remarkably deep understanding of technology, and great skills [2]. Possibly because of this knowledge, they're really clear (or, pedantic :) about what they don't need. In the end, though, I've come to think that this may be more of a simple psychological preference (for less stimulation) than a rationalized choice. Who knows. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect 2: Some of the people I really look up to: http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/, http://joeyh.name/ http://joeyh.name/, https://sassenrath.com/ https://sassenrath.com/
- analognoise 5y ago
  Lazarus and FreePascal would beg to differ: https://www.lazarus-ide.org https://www.lazarus-ide.org Everything you ever loved about Delphi 7, but with a ton of modernization. LGPL, too!
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    Serious question: Can you make "Netflix money", er, "FAANG money", as a Lazarus developer?
    - datalus 5y ago
      No, but all those people making "Netflix money" aren't really changing technology, are they? I'd argue FAANG is stagnating it, and telling themselves differently. I guess if you want to make gobs of cash, fine. You could also just go into finance and make more than FAANG money if you're talented enough.
      - gibolt 5y ago
        I'd argue that Microsoft, Google and Apple have enabled massive growth in technology. New uses for OSs, new places for them to run, and ways to make starting far more accessible/collaborative. Even if there is 2 step forwards, one step back, the overall benefit of options available due to the vast number of people contributing their creativity is only possible due to these companies.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        They enabled new users for computers, and killed desktop computing in the process. I don't think the trade off is with it.
      - School-Cotton 5y ago
        Facebook is a major contributor (sometimes the primary one) to many famous open-source projects: Linux, mercurial, MySQL, React, jemalloc, PyTorch, GraphQL, and probably several others I’m not thinking of. They’re also one of the top AI/ML research institutions in the world with a huge chunk of the papers published at top conferences. Similar statements are also true of Google.
- keyle 5y ago
  Have you ever wondered why? It's because today isn't about programmer productivity. It's about enabling teams to work together without tripping over their own feet and killing the business. So much complexity to solve essentially what is a human problem. It takes 5 people to do the job of 1 back then, and that's what the industry wants. No one would trust an individual. Too much money flowed into this industry, leading to waste, as it became clearly a pillar of the future.
  - frostwarrior 5y ago
    It took many years to realize the role of software is to be flexible to maintain and modify at the code level. That's the entire point of "soft"ware. Otherwise there would be no point on doing on a CPU what could be made on an integrated circuit 1000 times faster. A single guy writing whatever code they decided to do, may create a good program. But as requirements change, and the ownership gets passed on, it quickly becomes a nightmare to modify or refactor. Good code made in SlowScript® by a team based on consensus on architecture and coding style has more potential for success as a product than the fast and optimized spaghetti code made by the best hacker in the world.
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  Your evidence for this? It took a whole damn team to build a single website with "HTML programming" back then. Software was still shrinkwrapped. Modern platforms on web frameworks with CI/CD I think make today's dev a hell of a lot more productive.
pjmlp 5y ago
Comparing Delphi and C++ Builder with modern SPAs, or dealing with the Kubernetes boilerplate doesn't really sound that productive to me.

noobermin 5y ago

Well in between the ads and google spying I often do not feel productive.

nradov 5y ago

Programmer productivity has gotten worse. None of the development tools in widespread use today is as productive as Visual Basic or Delphi were back in 1996.

anyfoo 5y ago
This needs a lot of qualifiers. I can see that for web development maybe (I don't know, haven't done that for almost 10 years, but I can imagine given the constraints), but for system level programming for example I don't want to go back to the 90s. Not that Visual Basic or Delphi worked for that anyway.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Technically Delphi could have worked but you'd need to use your own RTL and aside from a few additional language feature, you'd be losing 99% of what Delphi offered anyway.
- frostwarrior 5y ago
  Also, as the internet (and technology) grew in influence and popularity, the amound of usecases for them grew exponentially. In the "golden era" computers were more or less advanced calculators. Now we (as a population) expect to give entertainment and give advice about our lifestyle, like we do with smartwatches or fitness devices. That's a lot more complicated than writing text or inputting numbers into a grid
  - marttt 5y ago
    > Now we (as a population) expect to give entertainment and give advice about our lifestyle, like we do with smartwatches or fitness devices. I always think about Lindy effect [1] in this context: the life expectancy of a technology, idea or (in our case) a societal habit is proportional to its current age. It follows, then, that the idea of a multi-purpose computing device may also wear off in certain areas of life, or for certain types of people. Not always, not everywhere is there a need for complex or complicated devices or systems. There will always be people who seek or prefer a simpler, quieter life that involves as little technology as possible. What's really interesting is that many of these people seem to have a remarkably deep understanding of technology, and great skills [2]. Possibly because of this knowledge, they're really clear (or, pedantic :) about what they don't need. In the end, though, I've come to think that this may be more of a simple psychological preference (for less stimulation) than a rationalized choice. Who knows. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect 2: Some of the people I really look up to: http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/, http://joeyh.name/ http://joeyh.name/, https://sassenrath.com/ https://sassenrath.com/
analognoise 5y ago
Lazarus and FreePascal would beg to differ: https://www.lazarus-ide.org https://www.lazarus-ide.org Everything you ever loved about Delphi 7, but with a ton of modernization. LGPL, too!
- beamatronic 5y ago
  Serious question: Can you make "Netflix money", er, "FAANG money", as a Lazarus developer?
  - datalus 5y ago
    No, but all those people making "Netflix money" aren't really changing technology, are they? I'd argue FAANG is stagnating it, and telling themselves differently. I guess if you want to make gobs of cash, fine. You could also just go into finance and make more than FAANG money if you're talented enough.
    - gibolt 5y ago
      I'd argue that Microsoft, Google and Apple have enabled massive growth in technology. New uses for OSs, new places for them to run, and ways to make starting far more accessible/collaborative. Even if there is 2 step forwards, one step back, the overall benefit of options available due to the vast number of people contributing their creativity is only possible due to these companies.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        They enabled new users for computers, and killed desktop computing in the process. I don't think the trade off is with it.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      Facebook is a major contributor (sometimes the primary one) to many famous open-source projects: Linux, mercurial, MySQL, React, jemalloc, PyTorch, GraphQL, and probably several others I’m not thinking of. They’re also one of the top AI/ML research institutions in the world with a huge chunk of the papers published at top conferences. Similar statements are also true of Google.
keyle 5y ago
Have you ever wondered why? It's because today isn't about programmer productivity. It's about enabling teams to work together without tripping over their own feet and killing the business. So much complexity to solve essentially what is a human problem. It takes 5 people to do the job of 1 back then, and that's what the industry wants. No one would trust an individual. Too much money flowed into this industry, leading to waste, as it became clearly a pillar of the future.
- frostwarrior 5y ago
  It took many years to realize the role of software is to be flexible to maintain and modify at the code level. That's the entire point of "soft"ware. Otherwise there would be no point on doing on a CPU what could be made on an integrated circuit 1000 times faster. A single guy writing whatever code they decided to do, may create a good program. But as requirements change, and the ownership gets passed on, it quickly becomes a nightmare to modify or refactor. Good code made in SlowScript® by a team based on consensus on architecture and coding style has more potential for success as a product than the fast and optimized spaghetti code made by the best hacker in the world.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Your evidence for this? It took a whole damn team to build a single website with "HTML programming" back then. Software was still shrinkwrapped. Modern platforms on web frameworks with CI/CD I think make today's dev a hell of a lot more productive.

pjmlp 5y ago

Comparing Delphi and C++ Builder with modern SPAs, or dealing with the Kubernetes boilerplate doesn't really sound that productive to me.