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This article echoes a few of my most unpopular opinions. * The current generation could not invent the internet. They don't have the attention span or the cul

This article echoes a few of my most unpopular opinions. * The current generation could not invent the internet. They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. * People who spurn well thought out technologies like SQL or relational databases, are doomed to re-invent them, badly.

kortilla 4y ago
> The current generation could not invent the internet. They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. You vastly underestimate how much thought went into the internet. Look at: - TCP delayed acks + Nagle’s algorithm - IPv4 address size (Vincent said 32-bits was roughly as likely as 24 or 48). - the 7 layer OSI - class-based (A, B, C, …) routing - most of the options in IPv4 headers The Internet was as much hacks and a playground as other layers of the stack are today. The good stuff is still in use but there is a vast graveyard of bad ideas that didn’t pan out because they were security nightmares, couldn’t scale, etc. The same applies to core protocols like BGP. BGP hijacking is still possible today.
- betaby 4y ago
  > BGP hijacking is still possible today. .. in the same sense as http hijacking is possible today, i.e. without httpS. For BGP we have RPKI ROA for a quite a while, and ASPA is coming.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    RPKI ROA is trivially by-passable with a path modification attack. It only helps stopping hijackings of really well connected networks. And sadly it’s still not required. > and ASPA is coming Yeah, but it’s not here and requires verification at each AS append, which means we’re a good 5 years before it’s really enforceable on arbitrary prefixes across transit networks.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > > Old thing was hard, too hard for this generation > You're vastly underestimating how hard the old thing was Sounds like you're agreeing with him, if anything. Where is gerbilly's 'underestimation'?
  - pitched 4y ago
    It took me a moment to get it too. I think they’re saying that the internet wasn’t a waterfall-style design. It wasn’t a one-off big thing, it was a huge collection of small projects where most of them have since died because the trade-offs didn’t work. Agile is way more work than waterfall.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      Surely it takes quite a bit of perseverance to try all the things that don't work until you find the things that do work. The false starts and dead ends all count towards the process.
_xnmw 4y ago
Absolutely agree. And let me add: * 99.99% of modern software startups could be built, maintained, and scaled in production by a single dedicated programmer and served on a single machine. Yes, even with tens of millions of users. * Most tech companies hire for the prestige and to not feel lonely, not because they need to hire. (And to have pretty young interns walking around the office). * YCombinator has deviated far from the original vision of Paul Graham and his essays. Nowadays all of the startups coming out of YC batches are just trash, and the YC panel has suffered "death by committee", i.e. bland risk-averse pop conformism riding the trends with no deep understanding of anything.
- penjelly 4y ago
  > served on a single machine. Yes, even with tens of millions of users i don't understand how this would work
  - _xnmw 4y ago
    There used to be FTP services in the 90s that served millions of users from a single machine. (Sorry can't find the reference right now). Even production Twitter in 2023 is estimated to be able to fit on a very beefy machine: https://thume.ca/2023/01/02/one-machine-twitter/ https://thume.ca/2023/01/02/one-machine-twitter/ Of course we would use a CDN in 2023, which is cheating, but from a business point of view it is juse one machine you manage.
hot_gril 4y ago
I've seen the second thing happen department-wide where I work, three times now, with databases in particular.
frodowtf 4y ago
> They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. Meanwhile $GENERATION is inventing general AI. Your so-called unpopular opinion is basically "old man yells at younger people", but with even less foundation.
- gerbilly 4y ago
  Yeah sure. ChatGPT confabulates constantly and has no understanding of what it's saying. I think it fails the 'I' part of 'AI.' I've had it confidently invent URLs when challenged to show the sources for an obviously false claim. It invented a URL which has never existed. I mean it's impressive, but it has a long way to go to become intelligent.
  - rebolek 4y ago
    AI is Artificial Ignorance.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    You're using ChatGPT as a strawman. You claimed the younger generation doesn't have the attention span to invent the internet. Someone else mentioned the clear and ongoing progress in machine learning, which involves many things not named ChatGPT, and has become one of the biggest economic engines of the world. You're just making an inane generalization. You will rightly be criticized for this. And you're completely missing out on the inevitable fact that those zoomers could teach you a lot of things you don't know too.
- bakugo 4y ago
  > Meanwhile $GENERATION is inventing general AI They're not inventing anything, they're just taking the concept of machine learning that has been around for ages and throwing more data and hardware at it. Underneath it all, it's still just an algorithm that finds and repeats patterns and nothing more, the patterns are just getting more complex. It's not in any way comparable to the invention of the internet in terms of innovation.
- hagbarth 4y ago
satvikpendem 4y ago
Not sure about that, there are always smart people abound. The guy who made SerenityOS, the CommaAI founder, etc. This simply reads to me like a "kids these days" type of old-man argument, which has, as we know, existed since time immemorial.
- gerbilly 4y ago
  > This simply reads to me like a "kids these days" type of old-man argument, which has, as we know, existed since time immemorial. And this counterargument has existed since time immemorial + 1. It proves nothing.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    It also disproves nothing, ie your argument bears no weight either. At least I have shown some examples where smart people of this generation are building complex things that, were they born 50 years ago, would likely have been able to build the Internet too.
    - gerbilly 4y ago
      Ok, I never said there weren't smart people still around. But I stand behind what I claim. A large collaborative, and disinterested project like DARPANET could not get off the ground today. Are you seriously arguing that the generation who used pocket protectors and HP calculators didn't have an advantage in concentration over the one who's been shown to distractedly check their phones every 15sec in case a cat might be doing something interesting? But really the argument behind your argument seems to be that there is a monotone increasing function to 'progress'. I'm arguing that it's not and that sometimes we regress. We can't even agree on what is real anymore, isn't that a serious disadvantage?
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        > But really the argument behind your argument seems to be that there is a monotone increasing function to 'progress'. I'm arguing that it's not and that sometimes we regress. Where did I ever say that? Your claim was about the Internet, not "progress" in general. > Are you seriously arguing that the generation who used pocket protectors and HP calculators didn't have an advantage in concentration over the one who's been shown to distractedly check their phones every 15sec in case a cat might be doing something interesting? Yes, because again you're generalizing to an entire population based on a stereotype. Do you think everyone back 50 years ago was similarly concentrating? No, because certain people can simply concentrate more than others, and those are the people building the Internet back then, and those are the same kinds of people who can build an Internet today. 99% of people were not doing so, we are talking about the differences of 0.0...1% of the population who built the Internet, so let's compare the same amount of people today too.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
To be fair: current generation does not exist in a time where inventing the Internet is necessary. And there probably are some big ideas out there incubating in obscurity that will only show themselves to be important much later. Do we lack the vision for such big projects? Absolutely. Is it only the current generation's fault? Absolutely not. This is very widespread. > They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. I'd argue there is almost _no_ technical culture whatsoever. It is basically "trending on HN" and comment section discourse. This is a massive problem and contributes to the shoddy state of a lot of software nowadays.
jklinger410 4y ago
Please don't forget that every accusation lobbied at the next generation is an implicit admission that the previous generation created an unsuitable environment for raising children. Or that those people were failures as parents individually. Or you could just not make broad generalizations about different generations. Which is preferable.
- carapace 4y ago
  I think you're making a good point in general, but in this case I think we arguably did create an unsuitable environment for raising children, first with television and then the Internet itself. I don't blame anyone, every step down this path has seemed like a good idea at the time, eh?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kortilla 4y ago

> The current generation could not invent the internet. They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. You vastly underestimate how much thought went into the internet. Look at: - TCP delayed acks + Nagle’s algorithm - IPv4 address size (Vincent said 32-bits was roughly as likely as 24 or 48). - the 7 layer OSI - class-based (A, B, C, …) routing - most of the options in IPv4 headers The Internet was as much hacks and a playground as other layers of the stack are today. The good stuff is still in use but there is a vast graveyard of bad ideas that didn’t pan out because they were security nightmares, couldn’t scale, etc. The same applies to core protocols like BGP. BGP hijacking is still possible today.

betaby 4y ago
> BGP hijacking is still possible today. .. in the same sense as http hijacking is possible today, i.e. without httpS. For BGP we have RPKI ROA for a quite a while, and ASPA is coming.
- kortilla 4y ago
  RPKI ROA is trivially by-passable with a path modification attack. It only helps stopping hijackings of really well connected networks. And sadly it’s still not required. > and ASPA is coming Yeah, but it’s not here and requires verification at each AS append, which means we’re a good 5 years before it’s really enforceable on arbitrary prefixes across transit networks.
LarryMullins 4y ago
> > Old thing was hard, too hard for this generation > You're vastly underestimating how hard the old thing was Sounds like you're agreeing with him, if anything. Where is gerbilly's 'underestimation'?
- pitched 4y ago
  It took me a moment to get it too. I think they’re saying that the internet wasn’t a waterfall-style design. It wasn’t a one-off big thing, it was a huge collection of small projects where most of them have since died because the trade-offs didn’t work. Agile is way more work than waterfall.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    Surely it takes quite a bit of perseverance to try all the things that don't work until you find the things that do work. The false starts and dead ends all count towards the process.

_xnmw 4y ago

Absolutely agree. And let me add: * 99.99% of modern software startups could be built, maintained, and scaled in production by a single dedicated programmer and served on a single machine. Yes, even with tens of millions of users. * Most tech companies hire for the prestige and to not feel lonely, not because they need to hire. (And to have pretty young interns walking around the office). * YCombinator has deviated far from the original vision of Paul Graham and his essays. Nowadays all of the startups coming out of YC batches are just trash, and the YC panel has suffered "death by committee", i.e. bland risk-averse pop conformism riding the trends with no deep understanding of anything.

penjelly 4y ago
> served on a single machine. Yes, even with tens of millions of users i don't understand how this would work
- _xnmw 4y ago
  There used to be FTP services in the 90s that served millions of users from a single machine. (Sorry can't find the reference right now). Even production Twitter in 2023 is estimated to be able to fit on a very beefy machine: https://thume.ca/2023/01/02/one-machine-twitter/ https://thume.ca/2023/01/02/one-machine-twitter/ Of course we would use a CDN in 2023, which is cheating, but from a business point of view it is juse one machine you manage.

hot_gril 4y ago

I've seen the second thing happen department-wide where I work, three times now, with databases in particular.

frodowtf 4y ago

> They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. Meanwhile $GENERATION is inventing general AI. Your so-called unpopular opinion is basically "old man yells at younger people", but with even less foundation.

gerbilly 4y ago
Yeah sure. ChatGPT confabulates constantly and has no understanding of what it's saying. I think it fails the 'I' part of 'AI.' I've had it confidently invent URLs when challenged to show the sources for an obviously false claim. It invented a URL which has never existed. I mean it's impressive, but it has a long way to go to become intelligent.
- rebolek 4y ago
  AI is Artificial Ignorance.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  You're using ChatGPT as a strawman. You claimed the younger generation doesn't have the attention span to invent the internet. Someone else mentioned the clear and ongoing progress in machine learning, which involves many things not named ChatGPT, and has become one of the biggest economic engines of the world. You're just making an inane generalization. You will rightly be criticized for this. And you're completely missing out on the inevitable fact that those zoomers could teach you a lot of things you don't know too.
bakugo 4y ago
> Meanwhile $GENERATION is inventing general AI They're not inventing anything, they're just taking the concept of machine learning that has been around for ages and throwing more data and hardware at it. Underneath it all, it's still just an algorithm that finds and repeats patterns and nothing more, the patterns are just getting more complex. It's not in any way comparable to the invention of the internet in terms of innovation.
hagbarth 4y ago

satvikpendem 4y ago

Not sure about that, there are always smart people abound. The guy who made SerenityOS, the CommaAI founder, etc. This simply reads to me like a "kids these days" type of old-man argument, which has, as we know, existed since time immemorial.

gerbilly 4y ago
> This simply reads to me like a "kids these days" type of old-man argument, which has, as we know, existed since time immemorial. And this counterargument has existed since time immemorial + 1. It proves nothing.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  It also disproves nothing, ie your argument bears no weight either. At least I have shown some examples where smart people of this generation are building complex things that, were they born 50 years ago, would likely have been able to build the Internet too.
  - gerbilly 4y ago
    Ok, I never said there weren't smart people still around. But I stand behind what I claim. A large collaborative, and disinterested project like DARPANET could not get off the ground today. Are you seriously arguing that the generation who used pocket protectors and HP calculators didn't have an advantage in concentration over the one who's been shown to distractedly check their phones every 15sec in case a cat might be doing something interesting? But really the argument behind your argument seems to be that there is a monotone increasing function to 'progress'. I'm arguing that it's not and that sometimes we regress. We can't even agree on what is real anymore, isn't that a serious disadvantage?
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      > But really the argument behind your argument seems to be that there is a monotone increasing function to 'progress'. I'm arguing that it's not and that sometimes we regress. Where did I ever say that? Your claim was about the Internet, not "progress" in general. > Are you seriously arguing that the generation who used pocket protectors and HP calculators didn't have an advantage in concentration over the one who's been shown to distractedly check their phones every 15sec in case a cat might be doing something interesting? Yes, because again you're generalizing to an entire population based on a stereotype. Do you think everyone back 50 years ago was similarly concentrating? No, because certain people can simply concentrate more than others, and those are the people building the Internet back then, and those are the same kinds of people who can build an Internet today. 99% of people were not doing so, we are talking about the differences of 0.0...1% of the population who built the Internet, so let's compare the same amount of people today too.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

To be fair: current generation does not exist in a time where inventing the Internet is necessary. And there probably are some big ideas out there incubating in obscurity that will only show themselves to be important much later. Do we lack the vision for such big projects? Absolutely. Is it only the current generation's fault? Absolutely not. This is very widespread. > They don't have the attention span or the culture for it. I'd argue there is almost _no_ technical culture whatsoever. It is basically "trending on HN" and comment section discourse. This is a massive problem and contributes to the shoddy state of a lot of software nowadays.

jklinger410 4y ago

Please don't forget that every accusation lobbied at the next generation is an implicit admission that the previous generation created an unsuitable environment for raising children. Or that those people were failures as parents individually. Or you could just not make broad generalizations about different generations. Which is preferable.

carapace 4y ago
I think you're making a good point in general, but in this case I think we arguably did create an unsuitable environment for raising children, first with television and then the Internet itself. I don't blame anyone, every step down this path has seemed like a good idea at the time, eh?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]