5 ms·
> It's the whole damn point. Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.
by wiseowise 5mo ago
> It's the whole damn point.
Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.
- grim_io 5mo agoNo one is taking away programming as a hobby from you :)
- tempaccount5050 5mo agoWhether or not you want to admit that is up to you. If you're selling automation or efficiency gains, you're removing human labor.
- gravypod 5mo agoMy first "job" in computing, where someone else paid me for code, was in a research context where we were modeling radio propagation. Nothing about that was removing human labor. It in face eventually called for a bunch of humans to interact with each other. See: https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclipse https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclips... I don't think it is fair to claim computers are about putting people out of jobs.
- Georgelemental 5mo agoHuman labor could do the math by hand
- aaomidi 5mo agoAnd in fact, was how it was done.
- tempaccount5050 5mo agoI think it is. Before computers you would have had to write all that down on paper logs. By using code, you saved yourself time. If it wasn't less labor, you wouldn't have done it that way.
- dash2 5mo agoBefore it was less labor, they might not have done it at all. Computers let you do things quicker. So you do more things.
- gravypod 5mo agoPeople *did* write down these logs, manually, and submit them.
- tempaccount5050 5mo agoAnd without software, what then, make a bunch of books and mail it to all these people? On this site of all sites, it's blowing my mind that this kind of thing isn't obvious to everyone. I guess maybe it isn't if you were born before the internet, but man, I'm really surprised by some of these comments.
- gravypod 5mo agoWe did allow people to send us letters with QSO logs on paper.
- oarsinsync 5mo ago> Before computers Computer used to mean "human who does math". Before machine computers, we had human computers. Machine computers replaced all of these human computers.
- wiseowise 5mo agoI'm improving error prone systems to make the world more efficient, not to replace people.
- skeledrew 5mo agoWhy else would one create software, if not to do something that a human does/did?
- matt_kantor 5mo agoA few off the top of my head: - Video games - Medical device firmware - Synthesizers - Detailed universe-scale physics simulations - Mars rover control software - The Linux kernel
- tempaccount5050 5mo agoThis list is funny. All of these things existed in pre computer form. A scheduler used to be a person putting punch cards into a machine.
- TheRoque 5mo agoWhat's the human form of a video game ?
- matt_kantor 5mo agoMy reply in a sibling thread[0] is applicable here too. I'm not sure if you have the same things in mind as skeledrew, but at least this seems probably relevant: > If you broaden the criteria enough then you can interpret most anything as "something that a human does/did". Like: humans "have fun" and therefore video games don't count, or humans can jump therefore they "travel through the air" therefore airplanes are just "doing something that humans do". But I don't think this reading of the upthread comment leads to interesting discussion. I'd be happy to discuss specific examples of the "pre computer forms", if you provide some. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083805
- ori_b 5mo agoThe purpose of a system is what it does. If people constantly use your device to turn kittens into pulp, you have built a kitten grinder, even if the label you slapped on the side says "coffee beans only".