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> open source doesn't work What could you mean by that? It's an extremely successful model organizationally and technically. > it indirectly kills the vast ma

by mmooss 2y ago

> open source doesn't work What could you mean by that? It's an extremely successful model organizationally and technically. > it indirectly kills the vast majority of programming jobs All software kills the vast majority of jobs - think of all the jobs there would be if we had no software. Anyway, are we short of programming jobs? Efficiencies create new, higher-value possibilities than, for example, JPEG decoders.

alexvitkov 2y ago
> It's an extremely successful model organizationally and technically. There are technically impressive open source projects - e.g. Linux, and most of them have people paid to work on them full time. Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" required to make a technically sound package. > Anyway, are we short of programming jobs? Yes. Especially good ones. > Efficiencies create new, higher-value possibilities than, for example, JPEG decoders. I don't see it - a large portion of programming jobs have devolved to gluing together a bunch of open-source libraries, doing the boring gruntwork to actually make them work, and dealing with the inevitable hell, caused by using 500 components that were never designed to work together.
- otherme123 2y ago
  > Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" required to make a technically sound package. OTOH some commercial software only solve problems that make money, and ignore the technically sound part unless it makes money. E.g. the enshittification of Google, Windows or Facebook, and friends, from a product that worked to a product that nobody asked for. All the technicality spent in tracking users, more ads, etc. These are a lot of commercial software that are not much more than a repackaging of open source software and a UI layer (ffmpeg, for example).
- thayne 2y ago
  > Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. And most proprietary software becomes completely unavailable when the company making it goes out of business. At least with the open source software, if there is interest in it, someone else can pick it up, if the original creator stops maintaining it. > a large portion of programming jobs have devolved to gluing together a bunch of open-source libraries, doing the boring gruntwork to actually make them work, and dealing with the inevitable hell, caused by using 500 components that were never designed to work together. And you think that would be any different without open source? A large portion of programming would still be gluing together a bunch of components, but instead of open source libraries you would have proprietary libraries, where if the documentation is inadequate or wrong, you have no option of looking at the source code to see what it actually does. Or in-house libraries that were designed for some specific purpose that doesn't match yours at all, and are very low quality, because they were made under a tight deadline, and no one ever went back to pay the tech debt after the MVP was released. Or maybe instead of a library you make API calls to some SaaS with no SLA and barely any documentation.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  > Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. It also applies to proprietary software.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  > Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. E.g. exactly how Linux was created? ;)
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. 90% of everything is crud: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- grandempire 2y ago
  > Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" Yes > required to make a technically sound package. No. What they don’t do is take the time to turn it into a product used by a general audience. Technical soundness is usually something corporations don’t have time for.
ape4 2y ago
I don't think there would be jobs manually doing many things that software currently does.
- mmooss 2y ago
  If software doesn't automate things, why are we investing so much in it? Maybe I misunderstand, but computers make us much more efficient: writing, graphics, computation, communication, storage and retrieval of information, searching information, machine control, ... for a time, 'computers' were rooms full of people doing computations. Think of the software stack that runs HN. What would we do? Write letters to a journal for publication? Gather in a room someplace?

by mmooss 2y ago

alexvitkov 2y ago

> It's an extremely successful model organizationally and technically. There are technically impressive open source projects - e.g. Linux, and most of them have people paid to work on them full time. Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" required to make a technically sound package. > Anyway, are we short of programming jobs? Yes. Especially good ones. > Efficiencies create new, higher-value possibilities than, for example, JPEG decoders. I don't see it - a large portion of programming jobs have devolved to gluing together a bunch of open-source libraries, doing the boring gruntwork to actually make them work, and dealing with the inevitable hell, caused by using 500 components that were never designed to work together.

otherme123 2y ago
> Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" required to make a technically sound package. OTOH some commercial software only solve problems that make money, and ignore the technically sound part unless it makes money. E.g. the enshittification of Google, Windows or Facebook, and friends, from a product that worked to a product that nobody asked for. All the technicality spent in tracking users, more ads, etc. These are a lot of commercial software that are not much more than a repackaging of open source software and a UI layer (ffmpeg, for example).
thayne 2y ago
> Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. And most proprietary software becomes completely unavailable when the company making it goes out of business. At least with the open source software, if there is interest in it, someone else can pick it up, if the original creator stops maintaining it. > a large portion of programming jobs have devolved to gluing together a bunch of open-source libraries, doing the boring gruntwork to actually make them work, and dealing with the inevitable hell, caused by using 500 components that were never designed to work together. And you think that would be any different without open source? A large portion of programming would still be gluing together a bunch of components, but instead of open source libraries you would have proprietary libraries, where if the documentation is inadequate or wrong, you have no option of looking at the source code to see what it actually does. Or in-house libraries that were designed for some specific purpose that doesn't match yours at all, and are very low quality, because they were made under a tight deadline, and no one ever went back to pay the tech debt after the MVP was released. Or maybe instead of a library you make API calls to some SaaS with no SLA and barely any documentation.
prmoustache 2y ago
> Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. It also applies to proprietary software.
flohofwoe 2y ago
> Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. E.g. exactly how Linux was created? ;)
throw0101d 2y ago
> Those are the exception, not the rule. Most open source projects are some guy's hobby, done for free in their free time. 90% of everything is crud: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
grandempire 2y ago
> Hobbyists solve problems they find interesting, and often ignore a lot of the "gruntwork" Yes > required to make a technically sound package. No. What they don’t do is take the time to turn it into a product used by a general audience. Technical soundness is usually something corporations don’t have time for.

ape4 2y ago

I don't think there would be jobs manually doing many things that software currently does.

mmooss 2y ago
If software doesn't automate things, why are we investing so much in it? Maybe I misunderstand, but computers make us much more efficient: writing, graphics, computation, communication, storage and retrieval of information, searching information, machine control, ... for a time, 'computers' were rooms full of people doing computations. Think of the software stack that runs HN. What would we do? Write letters to a journal for publication? Gather in a room someplace?