3 ms·

I think it’s about makers gonna make mindset. If you like building things you spent all time building things. Sipping martini’s may be fun for the first week.

nonrandomstring 5y ago
That's fine in a truly affluent laissez-faire society that we've enjoyed through the 80s and 90s and some of this century. But here's what might happen when the good will and good faith of free labour that supports the machine is pushed too far. A little fictional retelling of "The Golden Goose" for our time [1] [1] http://techrights.org/2022/01/21/peak-code-before-the-wars/ http://techrights.org/2022/01/21/peak-code-before-the-wars/
bsedlm 5y ago
but it's not about making cool new things that everybody is interested on by this point the issue is maintaining boring old stuff everybody depends on maybe that's what happens to most (google for example), from being a cool new research program in search and document analysis to just another company trying to make money to keep up
ModernMech 5y ago
The makers who are going to make are making now, not making money at Facebook so they can later make. I have no idea if I'm going to die tomorrow and I'm not going to do so as a Facebook employee dreaming of the day I'm not.
- ehvatum 5y ago
  Getting paid a lot to sit behind a big desk on week days and occasionally write C++ in order to support my own venture eventually became untenable. I couldn’t bring myself to take the day job seriously: it’s useless corporate shit that does nothing but make the world a worse place, and it took time and attention away from making my own customers happy. Edit: the worst of it was that because I stopped caring about office politics, I ruthlessly called out process problems, and accumulated ridiculous amounts of responsibility far beyond my job description. I hope everything went OK after I stopped showing up.
Brian_K_White 5y ago
Exactly. Given unlimited budget of both time and money, how would I amuse myself with it? Buy a big house. Ok then what? Sit on my couch in my big house? What about the 2nd hour? Sure I'd travel and consume amusements like ziplining in the jungle or something and seeing plays and concerts. Ok but then what? What I would do is buy a big workshop and fill it with all kinds of tools in all kinds of different disciplines, from woodworking to 3d printing to welding to machining to chemistry to glassworking to software to electronics... (ok I lack imagination because in fact my garage, basement, guest room, and a rented 10x20 self storage unit are already stuffed to the gills with those exact things, plus guitars and aquarium stuff and cycling stuf...) and not just to look at them but to play with them. That IS my maitai on the beach. The beach is very enjoyable, and I do enjoy it, but it is not interesting. The users who get my stuff for free don't matter at all. I owe them nothing. If I care about a project or a project's reception or usefulness or quality, then I care about it. The users don't extract unwilling care out of me, I have to already care on my own, which means adressing bugs or features is just more of the same work I WANTED to do just like the developing in the first place. It's totally backwards to think of the users as some kind of burden you hate. I mean, let's say you do hate that burden: ok then just don't release any of the stuff you built. But then what was the point in that? Yes you can't help building stuff and it was engaging and interesting to build, and you chose to do it when you had the choice to do anything you wanted... but still, part of what makes something worth doing is that it's at least theoretically not totally pointless. Even if in reality your github gains no real audience, it's good enough that it's at least published and out there and could possibly be found interesting or useful by someone else sometime. The mere possibility is enough. But to me unreleased code is a dead end. It's maybe good for exercise but what good is the exercise if not to eventually use the strength for something somewhere that is something other than exercise? So you build and publish and so what if some users whinge?

nonrandomstring 5y ago

That's fine in a truly affluent laissez-faire society that we've enjoyed through the 80s and 90s and some of this century. But here's what might happen when the good will and good faith of free labour that supports the machine is pushed too far. A little fictional retelling of "The Golden Goose" for our time [1] [1] http://techrights.org/2022/01/21/peak-code-before-the-wars/ http://techrights.org/2022/01/21/peak-code-before-the-wars/

bsedlm 5y ago

but it's not about making cool new things that everybody is interested on by this point the issue is maintaining boring old stuff everybody depends on maybe that's what happens to most (google for example), from being a cool new research program in search and document analysis to just another company trying to make money to keep up

ModernMech 5y ago

The makers who are going to make are making now, not making money at Facebook so they can later make. I have no idea if I'm going to die tomorrow and I'm not going to do so as a Facebook employee dreaming of the day I'm not.

ehvatum 5y ago
Getting paid a lot to sit behind a big desk on week days and occasionally write C++ in order to support my own venture eventually became untenable. I couldn’t bring myself to take the day job seriously: it’s useless corporate shit that does nothing but make the world a worse place, and it took time and attention away from making my own customers happy. Edit: the worst of it was that because I stopped caring about office politics, I ruthlessly called out process problems, and accumulated ridiculous amounts of responsibility far beyond my job description. I hope everything went OK after I stopped showing up.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

Exactly. Given unlimited budget of both time and money, how would I amuse myself with it? Buy a big house. Ok then what? Sit on my couch in my big house? What about the 2nd hour? Sure I'd travel and consume amusements like ziplining in the jungle or something and seeing plays and concerts. Ok but then what? What I would do is buy a big workshop and fill it with all kinds of tools in all kinds of different disciplines, from woodworking to 3d printing to welding to machining to chemistry to glassworking to software to electronics... (ok I lack imagination because in fact my garage, basement, guest room, and a rented 10x20 self storage unit are already stuffed to the gills with those exact things, plus guitars and aquarium stuff and cycling stuf...) and not just to look at them but to play with them. That IS my maitai on the beach. The beach is very enjoyable, and I do enjoy it, but it is not interesting. The users who get my stuff for free don't matter at all. I owe them nothing. If I care about a project or a project's reception or usefulness or quality, then I care about it. The users don't extract unwilling care out of me, I have to already care on my own, which means adressing bugs or features is just more of the same work I WANTED to do just like the developing in the first place. It's totally backwards to think of the users as some kind of burden you hate. I mean, let's say you do hate that burden: ok then just don't release any of the stuff you built. But then what was the point in that? Yes you can't help building stuff and it was engaging and interesting to build, and you chose to do it when you had the choice to do anything you wanted... but still, part of what makes something worth doing is that it's at least theoretically not totally pointless. Even if in reality your github gains no real audience, it's good enough that it's at least published and out there and could possibly be found interesting or useful by someone else sometime. The mere possibility is enough. But to me unreleased code is a dead end. It's maybe good for exercise but what good is the exercise if not to eventually use the strength for something somewhere that is something other than exercise? So you build and publish and so what if some users whinge?