4 ms·

The incentives are still there for churning out more and more code, compile it on more and more CI/CD pipelines, run it on clusters of more and more powerful ma

The incentives are still there for churning out more and more code, compile it on more and more CI/CD pipelines, run it on clusters of more and more powerful machines, and interface it to more and more powerful computers in our pockets which have gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of storage, mad gigahertz multi-core CPUs but somehow still amount to being slow dumb terminals. Damn, even open source world favors constant churn. New libraries come with breakage that demands every application out there to adapt with little to no reward, those applications aren’t becoming any better, they just keep chasing new languages, new frameworks, new windowing systems, re-solve problems solved long ago, and all of it is just to keep up. Gosh, there was this comparison on how long would it take to cold boot a machine, open a document in a text processor, and print it out. The contenders were a 8-bit Commodore with floppies and a modern MacBook Pro. Guess what, while Mac won, it wasn’t by a wide margin at all. The Mac could likely easily emulate a dozen Commodores. Where are all the gains? If I were to become a dictator of a large part of the world, I’d tax heavily all the extra cycles, all extra watts of power wasted, all extra RAM, and all excess bytes sent over the wire, and tax it enough to eat into profits of big tech. Incentives done right would make the developers think of efficiency from day one. There’s also this thing that while we rely on tech more and more, we are just as far from actually automating the boring stuff away as we have been for the last 40 years. The stories about a plucky worker automating their job and not telling anyone are just as appealing today as they were two decades ago. And all this tech has bugs, is fragile, sucks big time and brings in a lot of frustration. (Steps away from the soapbox and walks into the sunset.)

0thgen 5y ago
"If I were to become a dictator of a large part of the world, I’d tax heavily all the extra cycles, all extra watts of power wasted, all extra RAM, and all excess bytes sent over the wire, and tax it enough to eat into profits of big tech. Incentives done right would make the developers think of efficiency from day one" The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't. It's a great way to ensure the technology gains of the world don't go to any of the countries that need them "we are just as far from actually automating the boring stuff away as we have been for the last 40 years." that's quite a statement. millions of white papers on new technology and billions (probably trillions) of dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  > The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't. Well, if your way of dealing with such tax would be to outsource all the "dirty" bits to developing countries where they just don't care, or be like Germany, claiming of being oh so green while buying dirty electricity made from coal from Poland and Czechia, sorry, can't stand behind this. > dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for? Things do get automated in, say, factories, but not in the everyday life. When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century. Another thing is the increasing siloization of platforms and APIs moving like quicksand, so if you ever try to integrate stuff to automate some of your workflows, you get into this place where there's constant churn. And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair.
  - the-alt-one 5y ago
    >When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century. This isn't the case in many European countries. So many things are super easy to do in Sweden digitally. Denmark was also pretty good, one thing I liked about Denmark's system was how easy it was to get a hold of a real human. >And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair. The real home automation solutions are the washer, drier, and dish washer. Maybe also the robot vacuum (I've heard good things but never used one myself). These are all excellent, though I don't use my drier in favour of a rack.
  - 0thgen 5y ago
    fair enough
agumonkey 5y ago
Mostly computing has become a "thing" and not a tool. I've noticed this at "work", network failed one day, no more printer; elders told me they had paper templates to fill in case computers don't work. It took 30s to fill it while listening to the person[0]. It takes 3 good minutes on a computer. I guess it's how cycle goes.. things go obese until they have to crash and be redesigned. ps: Not only this but the process is hyper redundant, and humanly heavier .. on paper I listen to the person, fill as data comes, that person doesn't wait alone, while I wait for the app to respond and have to input the same data 3 times in different forms (data that can be inferred from that person's case id). We all make more efforts, waste more time. [0] similar to the abacus vs pocket calculator contest done long ago
MisterSandman 5y ago
> "Where are all the gains?" Are you serious? You're using opening a text document as the criteria here? So the fact that the MacBook Pro can run code and simulations that would've taken an unimaginable amount of energy and effort in the commodore days is moot to you? Barring Bitcoin, pretty much every technology has made processing of information and data far, far more efficient. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the United Airlines app is 200 MB larger than it should be, if it's saving the company millions of dollars and saving everybody else energy.

0thgen 5y ago

"If I were to become a dictator of a large part of the world, I’d tax heavily all the extra cycles, all extra watts of power wasted, all extra RAM, and all excess bytes sent over the wire, and tax it enough to eat into profits of big tech. Incentives done right would make the developers think of efficiency from day one" The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't. It's a great way to ensure the technology gains of the world don't go to any of the countries that need them "we are just as far from actually automating the boring stuff away as we have been for the last 40 years." that's quite a statement. millions of white papers on new technology and billions (probably trillions) of dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for?

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
> The best part about this is all the current first world countries could deal with that tax increase, and all the developing countries can't. Well, if your way of dealing with such tax would be to outsource all the "dirty" bits to developing countries where they just don't care, or be like Germany, claiming of being oh so green while buying dirty electricity made from coal from Poland and Czechia, sorry, can't stand behind this. > dollars spent on automation moved us zero steps in the direction we've been aiming for? Things do get automated in, say, factories, but not in the everyday life. When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century. Another thing is the increasing siloization of platforms and APIs moving like quicksand, so if you ever try to integrate stuff to automate some of your workflows, you get into this place where there's constant churn. And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair.
- the-alt-one 5y ago
  >When it comes to dealing with some governments who jumped onto this newfangled digitalization bandwagon, it looks like they have taken all the shit parts from the online processes, all the shit parts from the old paper-based processes and jumbled them together into the most abominable, inefficient form ever, while pretending to be so 21st century. This isn't the case in many European countries. So many things are super easy to do in Sweden digitally. Denmark was also pretty good, one thing I liked about Denmark's system was how easy it was to get a hold of a real human. >And don't get me started on home automation, the only things the existing home automation solutions really automate are frustration and despair. The real home automation solutions are the washer, drier, and dish washer. Maybe also the robot vacuum (I've heard good things but never used one myself). These are all excellent, though I don't use my drier in favour of a rack.
- 0thgen 5y ago
  fair enough

agumonkey 5y ago

Mostly computing has become a "thing" and not a tool. I've noticed this at "work", network failed one day, no more printer; elders told me they had paper templates to fill in case computers don't work. It took 30s to fill it while listening to the person[0]. It takes 3 good minutes on a computer. I guess it's how cycle goes.. things go obese until they have to crash and be redesigned. ps: Not only this but the process is hyper redundant, and humanly heavier .. on paper I listen to the person, fill as data comes, that person doesn't wait alone, while I wait for the app to respond and have to input the same data 3 times in different forms (data that can be inferred from that person's case id). We all make more efforts, waste more time. [0] similar to the abacus vs pocket calculator contest done long ago

MisterSandman 5y ago

> "Where are all the gains?" Are you serious? You're using opening a text document as the criteria here? So the fact that the MacBook Pro can run code and simulations that would've taken an unimaginable amount of energy and effort in the commodore days is moot to you? Barring Bitcoin, pretty much every technology has made processing of information and data far, far more efficient. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the United Airlines app is 200 MB larger than it should be, if it's saving the company millions of dollars and saving everybody else energy.