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And yet there's a difference between a cheaply made coat from an Asian sweat shop and one made with quality materials by a skilled tailor.
by kleiba 8mo ago
And yet there's a difference between a cheaply made coat from an Asian sweat shop and one made with quality materials by a skilled tailor.
- solarisos 8mo agoExactly. The 'Asian sweat shop' vs. 'skilled tailor' is a perfect analogy for the state of software today. We’ve optimized for speed of delivery (Zippos and fast fashion) but we’ve lost the durability and resource-efficiency that comes from a tailor-made approach. It’s fascinating that in 2026, we’re needing more and more powerful hardware just to keep up with the bloat of basic applications, whereas the Seawolves devs were finding ways to squeeze 'art' out of 64 kilobytes.
- monkpit 8mo agoYou’re absolutely right!
- publicdebates 8mo agoAnd a difference in price that amortizes about the same.
- solarisos 8mo agoThat’s true for the consumer's wallet, but the 'amortization' breaks down when you look at the systemic cost. In software, the 'cheaply made coat' equivalent (bloated frameworks, unoptimized dependencies) creates a massive technical debt that doesn't just affect the buyer—it affects the entire ecosystem's energy consumption and hardware requirements. The Seawolves devs weren't just saving money; they were respecting the constraints of the medium. When we treat resources as infinite because they are 'cheap,' we stop being engineers and start being assemblers.