31 ms·

they were not right and I promise when I’m old, I will not have this attitude. it’s one of my least favorite types of people; and that’s precisely my point, old

by dkdcio 10mo ago

they were not right and I promise when I’m old, I will not have this attitude. it’s one of my least favorite types of people; and that’s precisely my point, old men have been saying society is collapsing since ancient times, yet here we are, with things better than ever

Gormo 10mo ago
> they were not right If you don't think they were at least sometimes right, to what do you instead attribute the various cases of socio-economic collapse documented throughout history?
- dkdcio 10mo ago
  if I predict a recession every year I’ll be right eventually
  - Gormo 10mo ago
    I'm not sure that's directly analogous, though. We're talking about people looking at specific cultural trends and making reasoned arguments about specific causes and effects, not just saying "X will happen". Specific models and assumptions about how human societies work are often validated by historical example, and don't just predict end states, but sequences of events that extend over longer terms. When people say they see history repeating itself, it's worth hearing them out.
    - dkdcio 10mo ago
      I’m saying if every generation has old men screaming “society is collapsing”, they aren’t right, even when they’re locally “right” (broken clock right twice a day) I’m all for hearing well-reasoned arguments; presenting pithy quotes as fact is absurd; claiming programming peaked 15 years ago is absurd
      - Gormo 10mo ago
        > I’m saying if every generation has old men screaming “society is collapsing”, they aren’t right, even when they’re locally “right” But every generation doesn't have old men screaming "society is collapsing" at the same rate. There's always a baseline of people with a "get off my grass" mentality, but if you factor that out, occurrence of people actually pointing out that the world is on a dangerous path isn't uniform from one era to the next. Very few people, if any, were seriously making such an argument 30 years ago. People who are genuinely making reasoned arguments, and not just complaining about things being outside their comfort zone, should absolutely be taken seriously. > claiming programming peaked 15 years ago is absurd Well, what are you measuring? It certainly peaked in some dimensions 15 years ago. Whether you personally see those dimensions as important is of course a subjective question.
BoiledCabbage 10mo ago
> I promise when I’m old, I will not have this attitude. To my ears this is a hilariously naive statement. It sounds to me to be roughly the equivalent or a 7-year old saying "Adults have boring jobs where they sit at a desk all day. I hate it. I promise when I'm old I'm gonna be an Astronaut or play Major League Baseball." It's not that they don't mean it, it's that one should make promises about a situation they can't yet understand. While some of those kids probably did end up being astronauts or baseball players 99%+ who made that promise didn't. It turns out that being an adult gives them perspective that helps them realize the reasons they want a desk job even if they don't like it, or for many they actually enjoy their desk job (ex they like to program). So the same if a million young people all thought similarly, and then magically changed their view when they got there dont promises your going to be the one who will break the streak. You might turn out to be an astronaut, but many people listening, based on good previous evidence will rightly assume you won't.
- dkdcio 10mo ago
  > situation they can't yet understand you’re wrong right here — I understand. you’re just speaking nonsense and bullshit; you sound naive to me
  - Nevermark 10mo ago
    Read what you just wrote. You are just declaring a belief, not making an actual point. Do you expect to learn? Get wiser? If you do, you will eventually develop wisdom that younger people don’t have yet - or may never get. Younger people find new ways to do many things better, but regress in other ways. Lacking your (and your generation’s common) experiences. Which is why the only old people who can’t see any real regression are … well I have yet to meet that kind of old person, other than those unfortunate to have dementia. Also, every new better (or perceived better) way to do things has to reinvent many obvious things all over again. Things many won’t realize were already solved by previous practices. Which takes time. So meanwhile, regressions. And there is no assurance that new ways will really be better, after all regressions are addressed. Because it is impossible to see all the implications of complex changes. Anyone who isn’t aware that the amount of today’s glue code, rewriting of common algorithms for slightly different contexts, the mush mash of different tools, platforms, and dependencies, and all their individual quirks, was a non-optimal outcome… But the current pain points will drive a new way. And so it goes. Progress is not smooth or monotonic. It is a compliment to discount that you won’t also notice. Not a critique.
skrebbel 10mo ago
Fwiw I'm with you here. It's perfectly possible to stay excited about new stuff. Just.. take it for a spin! Find the good parts even when they re-make mistakes from the last time someone tried sth like this 2 decades ago. Like, when React was new I had total Delphi deja vu. And then they went about reinventing MVC (not the Rails MVC, real MVC) and calling it "unidirectional data flow" instead of just MVC, and feeling all smart about themselves and doing proud conference talks, and I was like "this is just MVC but with worse naming". But React also made it so that every component is designed to be reusable. Like, in Delphi you had a "Form" on which you dropped "Controls" and then you could also create your own controls if you were really advanced. But most people didn't feel like they were advanced enough, so code reuse was a mess. React made it so that every control (cough component) is reusable, because using components is the same as making components. That's a good idea! Purely functional UI, that's also a good idea! Then they threw OO out instead of fixing it, that was a terrible idea, but bottom line it's still great! Plus, Delphi didn't have to deal with the horrible mess that is HTML and CSS so it had it easy. But yeah lots of people my age saw the same, saw how it was just Delphi all over again but with different mistakes, and focused on the mistakes. It really is purely an attitude thing. I'm having a lot of fun with signals and SolidJS and observables now and it baffles me that something so elegant and fast took this long to be discovered (or more like, to get ergonomic and mainstream enough).

by dkdcio 10mo ago

Gormo 10mo ago

> they were not right If you don't think they were at least sometimes right, to what do you instead attribute the various cases of socio-economic collapse documented throughout history?

dkdcio 10mo ago
if I predict a recession every year I’ll be right eventually
- Gormo 10mo ago
  I'm not sure that's directly analogous, though. We're talking about people looking at specific cultural trends and making reasoned arguments about specific causes and effects, not just saying "X will happen". Specific models and assumptions about how human societies work are often validated by historical example, and don't just predict end states, but sequences of events that extend over longer terms. When people say they see history repeating itself, it's worth hearing them out.
  - dkdcio 10mo ago
    I’m saying if every generation has old men screaming “society is collapsing”, they aren’t right, even when they’re locally “right” (broken clock right twice a day) I’m all for hearing well-reasoned arguments; presenting pithy quotes as fact is absurd; claiming programming peaked 15 years ago is absurd
    - Gormo 10mo ago
      > I’m saying if every generation has old men screaming “society is collapsing”, they aren’t right, even when they’re locally “right” But every generation doesn't have old men screaming "society is collapsing" at the same rate. There's always a baseline of people with a "get off my grass" mentality, but if you factor that out, occurrence of people actually pointing out that the world is on a dangerous path isn't uniform from one era to the next. Very few people, if any, were seriously making such an argument 30 years ago. People who are genuinely making reasoned arguments, and not just complaining about things being outside their comfort zone, should absolutely be taken seriously. > claiming programming peaked 15 years ago is absurd Well, what are you measuring? It certainly peaked in some dimensions 15 years ago. Whether you personally see those dimensions as important is of course a subjective question.

BoiledCabbage 10mo ago

> I promise when I’m old, I will not have this attitude. To my ears this is a hilariously naive statement. It sounds to me to be roughly the equivalent or a 7-year old saying "Adults have boring jobs where they sit at a desk all day. I hate it. I promise when I'm old I'm gonna be an Astronaut or play Major League Baseball." It's not that they don't mean it, it's that one should make promises about a situation they can't yet understand. While some of those kids probably did end up being astronauts or baseball players 99%+ who made that promise didn't. It turns out that being an adult gives them perspective that helps them realize the reasons they want a desk job even if they don't like it, or for many they actually enjoy their desk job (ex they like to program). So the same if a million young people all thought similarly, and then magically changed their view when they got there dont promises your going to be the one who will break the streak. You might turn out to be an astronaut, but many people listening, based on good previous evidence will rightly assume you won't.

dkdcio 10mo ago
> situation they can't yet understand you’re wrong right here — I understand. you’re just speaking nonsense and bullshit; you sound naive to me
- Nevermark 10mo ago
  Read what you just wrote. You are just declaring a belief, not making an actual point. Do you expect to learn? Get wiser? If you do, you will eventually develop wisdom that younger people don’t have yet - or may never get. Younger people find new ways to do many things better, but regress in other ways. Lacking your (and your generation’s common) experiences. Which is why the only old people who can’t see any real regression are … well I have yet to meet that kind of old person, other than those unfortunate to have dementia. Also, every new better (or perceived better) way to do things has to reinvent many obvious things all over again. Things many won’t realize were already solved by previous practices. Which takes time. So meanwhile, regressions. And there is no assurance that new ways will really be better, after all regressions are addressed. Because it is impossible to see all the implications of complex changes. Anyone who isn’t aware that the amount of today’s glue code, rewriting of common algorithms for slightly different contexts, the mush mash of different tools, platforms, and dependencies, and all their individual quirks, was a non-optimal outcome… But the current pain points will drive a new way. And so it goes. Progress is not smooth or monotonic. It is a compliment to discount that you won’t also notice. Not a critique.

skrebbel 10mo ago

Fwiw I'm with you here. It's perfectly possible to stay excited about new stuff. Just.. take it for a spin! Find the good parts even when they re-make mistakes from the last time someone tried sth like this 2 decades ago. Like, when React was new I had total Delphi deja vu. And then they went about reinventing MVC (not the Rails MVC, real MVC) and calling it "unidirectional data flow" instead of just MVC, and feeling all smart about themselves and doing proud conference talks, and I was like "this is just MVC but with worse naming". But React also made it so that every component is designed to be reusable. Like, in Delphi you had a "Form" on which you dropped "Controls" and then you could also create your own controls if you were really advanced. But most people didn't feel like they were advanced enough, so code reuse was a mess. React made it so that every control (cough component) is reusable, because using components is the same as making components. That's a good idea! Purely functional UI, that's also a good idea! Then they threw OO out instead of fixing it, that was a terrible idea, but bottom line it's still great! Plus, Delphi didn't have to deal with the horrible mess that is HTML and CSS so it had it easy. But yeah lots of people my age saw the same, saw how it was just Delphi all over again but with different mistakes, and focused on the mistakes. It really is purely an attitude thing. I'm having a lot of fun with signals and SolidJS and observables now and it baffles me that something so elegant and fast took this long to be discovered (or more like, to get ergonomic and mainstream enough).