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This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring. Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue.

by wg0 5mo ago

This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring. Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.

theLiminator 5mo ago
> Writing software has never been difficult. That's not true at all, sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner.
- wg0 5mo ago
  Yes. Audio, video encoders, decoders etc, 3D modeling, rendering etc. That too is "domain" even it feels like it is NOT. Domain of signal processing, Euclidian spaces, information theory and what not. Thar too is all "domain" and that "domain" part is difficult to write.
  - theLiminator 5mo ago
    Then what do you mean by pure software? I think there's essentially zero domain-free software.
    - dapperdrake 5mo ago
      I prefer co-domain free software. Has no side-effects.
  - threethirtytwo 5mo ago
    You do realize that all the domains you used in your example are trivial for an LLM to write?
  - asdff 5mo ago
    It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even see the difference between 1080p and 4k from a couch, and people are trying to sell me 8k to watch the same stuff. It just does not matter. The ideas matter. Novel functionality matters. But that isn't what any of that is. Same old. And the effort spent, the resources, the energy. All for more polygons on Lara Croft.
    - saulpw 5mo ago
      I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.
      - asdff 5mo ago
        That took until skype in 2003 I guess. The idea is pretty old though and people were trying for it for a while from different angles.
      - bigfatkitten 4mo ago
        CU-SeeMe worked pretty well in 1995 if you had access to a half decent Internet connection, which admittedly most people didn’t. For well funded organisations, ISDN video conferencing facilities were reasonably common.
        detourdog 4mo ago
        Verizon in NYC was trying to make ISDN happen in the home in the mid 90's. I had it. The hard part was getting an ISP that supported SLIP.
        bigfatkitten 4mo ago
        In Australia ISDN was available pretty much everywhere to any residential customer who wanted to pay for it, but it was not particularly popular. It was widely used by businesses, however. The main reason was that the line rental was significantly higher, POTS lines had untimed flat rate local calls, whereas ISDN didn’t, and ISPs charged more for ISDN plans. Towards the end of the 90s that changed for voice calls, and so a fair number of folks who couldn’t get ADSL for one reason or another got DoV (Data over Voice) Internet services. This is where you make a single channel ISDN “voice” call, and then use it for 64Kbps data. Most ISPs supported it on ordinary dialup plans. This gave you significantly better speed, and much improved latency compared with what could realistically be achieved with V.90.
- jazz9k 4mo ago
  "sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner." I was a developer for 20 years, before I pivoted to cybersecurity. My hobby projects were always more complex than the software I wrote at my day job. The majority of software developers are writing some type of CRUD code or glue code for business processes. A small minority are writing complex code at big tech companies. AI will most likely replace the need for many software developers.
jandrewrogers 5mo ago
Writing software for a domain is itself a domain of expertise, with a similar learning curve. It isn't enough to know the programming language. For example, it takes years to develop the knowledge and idioms required to effectively write high-performance systems code, which is separate from the language the code is written in. You can have decades of experience in a systems language and zero experience writing modern systems code in that language. Same with embedded code, supercomputing code, etc. Writing software is only "not difficult" if you've already learned how to write it.
overgard 4mo ago
The type of software the average hacker news commentator writes is not difficult. That does not mean there aren't industries where the code is legitimately difficult. Games, embedded, etc.

by wg0 5mo ago

This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring. Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.

theLiminator 5mo ago

> Writing software has never been difficult. That's not true at all, sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner.

wg0 5mo ago
Yes. Audio, video encoders, decoders etc, 3D modeling, rendering etc. That too is "domain" even it feels like it is NOT. Domain of signal processing, Euclidian spaces, information theory and what not. Thar too is all "domain" and that "domain" part is difficult to write.
- theLiminator 5mo ago
  Then what do you mean by pure software? I think there's essentially zero domain-free software.
  - dapperdrake 5mo ago
    I prefer co-domain free software. Has no side-effects.
- threethirtytwo 5mo ago
  You do realize that all the domains you used in your example are trivial for an LLM to write?
- asdff 5mo ago
  It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even see the difference between 1080p and 4k from a couch, and people are trying to sell me 8k to watch the same stuff. It just does not matter. The ideas matter. Novel functionality matters. But that isn't what any of that is. Same old. And the effort spent, the resources, the energy. All for more polygons on Lara Croft.
  - saulpw 5mo ago
    I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.
    - asdff 5mo ago
      That took until skype in 2003 I guess. The idea is pretty old though and people were trying for it for a while from different angles.
    - bigfatkitten 4mo ago
      CU-SeeMe worked pretty well in 1995 if you had access to a half decent Internet connection, which admittedly most people didn’t. For well funded organisations, ISDN video conferencing facilities were reasonably common.
      - detourdog 4mo ago
        Verizon in NYC was trying to make ISDN happen in the home in the mid 90's. I had it. The hard part was getting an ISP that supported SLIP.
        bigfatkitten 4mo ago
        In Australia ISDN was available pretty much everywhere to any residential customer who wanted to pay for it, but it was not particularly popular. It was widely used by businesses, however. The main reason was that the line rental was significantly higher, POTS lines had untimed flat rate local calls, whereas ISDN didn’t, and ISPs charged more for ISDN plans. Towards the end of the 90s that changed for voice calls, and so a fair number of folks who couldn’t get ADSL for one reason or another got DoV (Data over Voice) Internet services. This is where you make a single channel ISDN “voice” call, and then use it for 64Kbps data. Most ISPs supported it on ordinary dialup plans. This gave you significantly better speed, and much improved latency compared with what could realistically be achieved with V.90.
jazz9k 4mo ago
"sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner." I was a developer for 20 years, before I pivoted to cybersecurity. My hobby projects were always more complex than the software I wrote at my day job. The majority of software developers are writing some type of CRUD code or glue code for business processes. A small minority are writing complex code at big tech companies. AI will most likely replace the need for many software developers.

jandrewrogers 5mo ago

Writing software for a domain is itself a domain of expertise, with a similar learning curve. It isn't enough to know the programming language. For example, it takes years to develop the knowledge and idioms required to effectively write high-performance systems code, which is separate from the language the code is written in. You can have decades of experience in a systems language and zero experience writing modern systems code in that language. Same with embedded code, supercomputing code, etc. Writing software is only "not difficult" if you've already learned how to write it.

overgard 4mo ago

The type of software the average hacker news commentator writes is not difficult. That does not mean there aren't industries where the code is legitimately difficult. Games, embedded, etc.