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> People love to work. Maybe software folks are a different breed (perhaps because code and computers are like Adult Legos) but I can’t agree more. I love wha

> People love to work. Maybe software folks are a different breed (perhaps because code and computers are like Adult Legos) but I can’t agree more. I love what I do, and I often struggle with “my employer is clearly exploiting my desire to work late this weekend” with my literal desire to work late this weekend. I can’t imagine a world where code is written by computers, that’s maximum cruelty to me.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Given that we still have today people crafting leather belt by hand and sell them for a premium, I assume there will always be a niche market for craftmanship-type software. And only people that really love it will be able to work in that.
- sgu999 3y ago
  I'm not that hopeful. It does look like we will eventually get code of the quality of a good SWE. Usually that's not the case for craftsmanship-type items... shoes, knives, teapots, etc. I'm a sucker for this kind of objects but I can't see myself care about a handmade iOS app. Most people don't understand what coding entails anyway, whereas everyone has a rough idea that you need to hammer hot metal a lot to make a knife. Software written by a human may feel more like hand woven cotton than hand made shoes.
  - nemomarx 3y ago
    It would be interesting to have an iOS app where you're in a discord with the developer and can make feature requests really directly, or say that a font or some UI thing needs changing and get that patched in a week. Small game dev communities are close to this, but I can't think of other software that's really similar.
    - wizardwes 3y ago
      There's a discord for worldbuilding software that's like this, though, due to the main dev's health issues and the original architecture being relatively weak, such changes have been very delayed, buy it is picking up again now
      - braden-lk 3y ago
        Is it LegendKeeper? :D
        wizardwes 3y ago
        No, actually, it's Fantasia Archive
    - braden-lk 3y ago
      This is how LegendKeeper’s Discord is. I interact with my users daily, reply to bug reports and feature requests, and overall shoot the breeze. Been a great way to stay close to the community, and been going on 5 years now. :D
MR4D 3y ago
A lot (most?) people like to work. What they don't seem to like is other people having massive control over their schedule to perform their work. Of course, some people hate to work, and some people have crappy jobs no matter how much flexibility they have.
- yungporko 3y ago
  i think this was probably true for most of history but i'm not sure it's true now. anecdotally there isn't a single person i know well who, if they didn't have to work, wouldn't just sit around drinking, smoking and eating 24/7 while doing nothing except binge watching netflix and scrolling through social media.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    I know many people who volunteer, contribute to open source, exercise, and play sports. They'd seem to run counter to your idea of what people would do if they didn't have to work.
    - wharvle 3y ago
      Childcare, gardening (with surplus to share, maybe!), elder care, home improvement projects. Art, writing. Collecting stories and genealogies for family. Knitting and sewing. People do tons of work even when they’re not being told to, in my experience. It’s sometimes “worth” a ton less than the time they put into it, and they’re usually making little or no money at it, but that doesn’t make it not-work.
      - pcthrowaway 3y ago
        I think "getting paid for it" is really the distinguishing point between work and a hobby or chore. But yes, people do many things as hobbies that other people do as work.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I suppose it speaks well for the skills (and perhaps poorly for the morals) of our best minds that they've now developed the tech to be so addictive that they can override peoples' innate desire to be useful. If I didn't have work to go to, things would indeed be pretty dark, but that doesn't mean I'd prefer falling into a hole of substance abuse and tech addiction.
AA-BA-94-2A-56 3y ago
I love the job a lot, but I can't get myself to work more than about 4-6 hours a day. I mentally burn out and get so exhausted I need to lie on the couch to recover.
- wharvle 3y ago
  I find that, for me, this is a symptom of specialization and the “day job”. If I can dive into some coding one week and whip the garden and landscaping into shape the next and work on a book the next et c, I thrive working longer hours than that. It’s when I’m doing the same. Damn. Shit. Day after day, week after week, month after month, that I feel drained to exhaustion after doing just a few hours of it.
tivert 3y ago
>> People love to work. > Maybe software folks are a different breed (perhaps because code and computers are like Adult Legos) but I can’t agree more. This is worth a read: "Why did the metaverse die? Because Silicon Valley doesn’t understand the concept of fun" (https://www.fastcompany.com/90965361/why-did-the-metaverse-die-silicon-valley-doesnt-understand-fun https://www.fastcompany.com/90965361/why-did-the-metaverse-d...): > The problems begin with the way Silicon Valley looks at the value of time. This is something I explored as part of the research project I run, called Components. In mid-2022, I analyzed seven years of Product Hunt, the popular clearinghouse for new tech products that has been described as “a must-read website in the VC world,” and a site that investors have come to use “as a sourcing mechanism.” ... > First, throughout the seven-year period studied, apps tagged with “productivity” gradually dominated the field, going from a minor attribute in the beginning to more than 40 percent of all new products launched by the end.... > ...These apps didn’t metastasize out of nowhere—they reflected the value system of their funders and creators. ... In other words, Wajcman learned, these productivity tools were used to facilitate the creation of more productivity tools. ... > This leads to the third, and most crucial, finding: Those promoting productivity apps on Product Hunt and those promoting games did not simply tend to be different people—they were the least likely to be the same people among any pair of the 120 most common categories on the site. ... > In Bataille’s framing, then, what separates the two opposite groups in our Product Hunt analysis is how they understand waste, and means and ends. The gamers assign meaning to wasted time by viewing it as an end in itself to which other means are directed, and naturally orienting all activities toward the maximization of that waste. The productivity app cohort forces itself into an infinite cycle of waste minimization, in which surplus time must be continuously reinvested for further saving, and the means become the ends themselves. The perfectly ordered Google calendar does not facilitate other goals — it is the goal. > ... > There are plenty of exceptions to this whole rubric, of course. Any gamer who has had to contend with the petty coerciveness of large studios like Rockstar or Activision Blizzard knows that accountability in the games industry only goes so far. But unlike the bulk of what Silicon Valley has produced over its nearly 15-year bull run, the metaverse had to actually work as advertised, and what it advertised was freeform play. Not only is the Silicon Valley ecosystem not really interested in playing games, but fails to understand why anyone else would either. As London School of Economics professor Wajcman put it, “Calendars will never ask us what we want to save time for,” and neither will any of the other productivity tools. They might be able to help us save time, but they can’t help us waste it.
angarg12 3y ago
Is this a cultural difference? Do we have any data on this? Where I'm from (southern Europe) my experience is this is far from true. Most people work as a means to an end, and often look for ways to skimp on it. Sure, people might say "I like my job", with the implicit concession that they indeed need a job to live. If they could keep the same lifestyle without a job, I doubt most of them would keep doing what they do.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  I think people benefit from doing things they don't like in moderation. Lots of people don't enjoy grinding away at the gym, but they enjoy the results they get. But those results would be devalued if it wasn't for the grind it took to get them. It's like cheating in a video game, there might be one part that's really hard and you really just want to get past it, if you grind away and eventually succeed, it's far more rewarding than if you use cheats to skip it.
marssaxman 3y ago
> I can’t imagine a world where code is written by computers, that’s maximum cruelty to me. We've been living in that world since the '80s, most of us; almost nobody writes code anymore. Computers write all the code for us, via software we call "compilers", and we merely give the computers high-level instructions indicating what we want them to do. In fact the majority of programmers these days don't even bother to generate or interact with code, preferring to feed their instructions into interpreters instead!
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Why do I think you've never had a job involving writing code? Python, Java, C++: it's all code, not "high-level instructions indicating what we want them to do" "feed their instructions into interpreters instead" : that's what "writing code" has meant, since the invention of COBOL and FORTRAN. If that weren't true, then liberal arts majors wouldn't need a code school to learn to do it.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    > Python, Java, C++: it's all code That is rather my point, which I perhaps expressed in too ironic a mode: when people newly discovering the capabilities of LLMs worry about the idea of machines writing code for us, I think they are missing historical perspective, in which we can clearly see layer after layer of machines writing code for us. Whatever mature form LLM-driven tools may take, operating them will ultimately be just another form of coding.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      > That is rather my point It was very well disguised, then. You said: "We've been living in that world since the '80s, most of us; almost nobody writes code anymore" which implies that only Assembler counts as "writing code."
      - marssaxman 3y ago
        Yes, indeed: a reductio ad absurdum, with respect to the original commenter's fears about a world where "code is written by computers". Alas, not all attempts at humor succeed; not for everyone, anyway.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Given that we still have today people crafting leather belt by hand and sell them for a premium, I assume there will always be a niche market for craftmanship-type software. And only people that really love it will be able to work in that.

sgu999 3y ago
I'm not that hopeful. It does look like we will eventually get code of the quality of a good SWE. Usually that's not the case for craftsmanship-type items... shoes, knives, teapots, etc. I'm a sucker for this kind of objects but I can't see myself care about a handmade iOS app. Most people don't understand what coding entails anyway, whereas everyone has a rough idea that you need to hammer hot metal a lot to make a knife. Software written by a human may feel more like hand woven cotton than hand made shoes.
- nemomarx 3y ago
  It would be interesting to have an iOS app where you're in a discord with the developer and can make feature requests really directly, or say that a font or some UI thing needs changing and get that patched in a week. Small game dev communities are close to this, but I can't think of other software that's really similar.
  - wizardwes 3y ago
    There's a discord for worldbuilding software that's like this, though, due to the main dev's health issues and the original architecture being relatively weak, such changes have been very delayed, buy it is picking up again now
    - braden-lk 3y ago
      Is it LegendKeeper? :D
      - wizardwes 3y ago
        No, actually, it's Fantasia Archive
  - braden-lk 3y ago
    This is how LegendKeeper’s Discord is. I interact with my users daily, reply to bug reports and feature requests, and overall shoot the breeze. Been a great way to stay close to the community, and been going on 5 years now. :D

MR4D 3y ago

A lot (most?) people like to work. What they don't seem to like is other people having massive control over their schedule to perform their work. Of course, some people hate to work, and some people have crappy jobs no matter how much flexibility they have.

yungporko 3y ago
i think this was probably true for most of history but i'm not sure it's true now. anecdotally there isn't a single person i know well who, if they didn't have to work, wouldn't just sit around drinking, smoking and eating 24/7 while doing nothing except binge watching netflix and scrolling through social media.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  I know many people who volunteer, contribute to open source, exercise, and play sports. They'd seem to run counter to your idea of what people would do if they didn't have to work.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    Childcare, gardening (with surplus to share, maybe!), elder care, home improvement projects. Art, writing. Collecting stories and genealogies for family. Knitting and sewing. People do tons of work even when they’re not being told to, in my experience. It’s sometimes “worth” a ton less than the time they put into it, and they’re usually making little or no money at it, but that doesn’t make it not-work.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      I think "getting paid for it" is really the distinguishing point between work and a hobby or chore. But yes, people do many things as hobbies that other people do as work.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I suppose it speaks well for the skills (and perhaps poorly for the morals) of our best minds that they've now developed the tech to be so addictive that they can override peoples' innate desire to be useful. If I didn't have work to go to, things would indeed be pretty dark, but that doesn't mean I'd prefer falling into a hole of substance abuse and tech addiction.

AA-BA-94-2A-56 3y ago

I love the job a lot, but I can't get myself to work more than about 4-6 hours a day. I mentally burn out and get so exhausted I need to lie on the couch to recover.

wharvle 3y ago
I find that, for me, this is a symptom of specialization and the “day job”. If I can dive into some coding one week and whip the garden and landscaping into shape the next and work on a book the next et c, I thrive working longer hours than that. It’s when I’m doing the same. Damn. Shit. Day after day, week after week, month after month, that I feel drained to exhaustion after doing just a few hours of it.

tivert 3y ago

>> People love to work. > Maybe software folks are a different breed (perhaps because code and computers are like Adult Legos) but I can’t agree more. This is worth a read: "Why did the metaverse die? Because Silicon Valley doesn’t understand the concept of fun" (https://www.fastcompany.com/90965361/why-did-the-metaverse-die-silicon-valley-doesnt-understand-fun https://www.fastcompany.com/90965361/why-did-the-metaverse-d...): > The problems begin with the way Silicon Valley looks at the value of time. This is something I explored as part of the research project I run, called Components. In mid-2022, I analyzed seven years of Product Hunt, the popular clearinghouse for new tech products that has been described as “a must-read website in the VC world,” and a site that investors have come to use “as a sourcing mechanism.” ... > First, throughout the seven-year period studied, apps tagged with “productivity” gradually dominated the field, going from a minor attribute in the beginning to more than 40 percent of all new products launched by the end.... > ...These apps didn’t metastasize out of nowhere—they reflected the value system of their funders and creators. ... In other words, Wajcman learned, these productivity tools were used to facilitate the creation of more productivity tools. ... > This leads to the third, and most crucial, finding: Those promoting productivity apps on Product Hunt and those promoting games did not simply tend to be different people—they were the least likely to be the same people among any pair of the 120 most common categories on the site. ... > In Bataille’s framing, then, what separates the two opposite groups in our Product Hunt analysis is how they understand waste, and means and ends. The gamers assign meaning to wasted time by viewing it as an end in itself to which other means are directed, and naturally orienting all activities toward the maximization of that waste. The productivity app cohort forces itself into an infinite cycle of waste minimization, in which surplus time must be continuously reinvested for further saving, and the means become the ends themselves. The perfectly ordered Google calendar does not facilitate other goals — it is the goal. > ... > There are plenty of exceptions to this whole rubric, of course. Any gamer who has had to contend with the petty coerciveness of large studios like Rockstar or Activision Blizzard knows that accountability in the games industry only goes so far. But unlike the bulk of what Silicon Valley has produced over its nearly 15-year bull run, the metaverse had to actually work as advertised, and what it advertised was freeform play. Not only is the Silicon Valley ecosystem not really interested in playing games, but fails to understand why anyone else would either. As London School of Economics professor Wajcman put it, “Calendars will never ask us what we want to save time for,” and neither will any of the other productivity tools. They might be able to help us save time, but they can’t help us waste it.

angarg12 3y ago

Is this a cultural difference? Do we have any data on this? Where I'm from (southern Europe) my experience is this is far from true. Most people work as a means to an end, and often look for ways to skimp on it. Sure, people might say "I like my job", with the implicit concession that they indeed need a job to live. If they could keep the same lifestyle without a job, I doubt most of them would keep doing what they do.

Gigachad 3y ago
I think people benefit from doing things they don't like in moderation. Lots of people don't enjoy grinding away at the gym, but they enjoy the results they get. But those results would be devalued if it wasn't for the grind it took to get them. It's like cheating in a video game, there might be one part that's really hard and you really just want to get past it, if you grind away and eventually succeed, it's far more rewarding than if you use cheats to skip it.

marssaxman 3y ago

> I can’t imagine a world where code is written by computers, that’s maximum cruelty to me. We've been living in that world since the '80s, most of us; almost nobody writes code anymore. Computers write all the code for us, via software we call "compilers", and we merely give the computers high-level instructions indicating what we want them to do. In fact the majority of programmers these days don't even bother to generate or interact with code, preferring to feed their instructions into interpreters instead!

AlbertCory 3y ago
Why do I think you've never had a job involving writing code? Python, Java, C++: it's all code, not "high-level instructions indicating what we want them to do" "feed their instructions into interpreters instead" : that's what "writing code" has meant, since the invention of COBOL and FORTRAN. If that weren't true, then liberal arts majors wouldn't need a code school to learn to do it.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  > Python, Java, C++: it's all code That is rather my point, which I perhaps expressed in too ironic a mode: when people newly discovering the capabilities of LLMs worry about the idea of machines writing code for us, I think they are missing historical perspective, in which we can clearly see layer after layer of machines writing code for us. Whatever mature form LLM-driven tools may take, operating them will ultimately be just another form of coding.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    > That is rather my point It was very well disguised, then. You said: "We've been living in that world since the '80s, most of us; almost nobody writes code anymore" which implies that only Assembler counts as "writing code."
    - marssaxman 3y ago
      Yes, indeed: a reductio ad absurdum, with respect to the original commenter's fears about a world where "code is written by computers". Alas, not all attempts at humor succeed; not for everyone, anyway.