9 ms·

I Love the Computer

311 points by speckx 5mo ago

fasterik 5mo ago
I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. AI does more or less what it's marketed to do, sometimes badly. I still write code by hand. But LLMs have been a legitimately useful tool when I've wanted to dig into a new field like computer graphics, theoretical physics, or numerical analysis. Or even just asking the LLM to write a piece of code and learning from its output. I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster and spend more time programming.
- drchickensalad 5mo ago
  > The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do In my opinion you should interpret the usage of "AI" here to mean "the entire business/management/financial/bubble ecosystem surrounding LLMs". The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized rather than a specific technical assessment (although that often is an issue too)
  - fasterik 5mo ago
    My prediction is that it will go the same way as the dot com bubble. The hypesters and fraudsters will eventually collide with objective reality, but the technology will persist and society at large will benefit from the infrastructure and the increased access to knowledge.
    - Shellban 5mo ago
      Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.
      - echelon 5mo ago
        > As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.
        anon7725 5mo ago
        I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
        echelon 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        Jtsummers 5mo ago
        > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
        girvo 5mo ago
        This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
        5mo ago
    - gyomu 5mo ago
      > society at large will benefit from the infrastructure Data centers as infrastructure are very different from DSL rollout though. Much, much more expensive to maintain, with a much much shorter timespan. If the bubble pops and data centers get shut down because there’s no one to pay the bills, there won’t be much left 5-10 years later in terms of infrastructure.
      - m0llusk 5mo ago
        Maybe we could repurpose old processors to power toaster ovens.
        bigbuppo 5mo ago
        I mean, a 125kW server stuffed into 5U will definitely work nicely for toast.
  - api 5mo ago
    The same thing happened around PCs, gaming, the Internet, the web, and cryptocurrency. It's a hit driven industry that loves hype.
  - patates 5mo ago
    I think then the AI-hype should be disregarded as snake-oil, not the tech itself. I know it sounds pretentious, but I need to say that words do matter.
  - indymike 5mo ago
    > The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.
    - datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
      I think you just simply repeated the mistake that the comment responding to you was pointing out, i.e. conflating “LLM” the technology with “AI” the hysterical product hype bubble phenomenon.
- AgentME 5mo ago
  LLMs remind me of being a kid again being in wonder of all the possible things that could be done with a computer that haven't been figured out yet. The internet was relatively new and everyone had their own ideas of what that would enable. Fast forward to a few years ago and it was easy to believe that a lot of the low-hanging fruit of things an individual could do with the internet, apps, 3d graphics, etc, had been decently picked over and that things were stabilizing. Now I have no idea again what computing will look like in 5 years and it's exciting.
  - dosisking 5mo ago
    I have a pretty good idea of what computing will look like in 5 years and it's pretty depressing.
    - knownjorbist 5mo ago
      You have convinced yourself of having a pretty good idea, not to be confused with having anything close to a crystal ball's view.
  - keybored 5mo ago
    Nestlé can give us our daily allowance of baby formula and [AI corporation winner] can give us our daily allowance of free compute. These years will bring interesting times!
- ux266478 5mo ago
  The fats in Chinese Water Snakes are rich in omega 3s and do have genuine benefits to consumption. The problem with snake oil wasn't that it was useless. The problem was with hucksters selling it as a cure-all for everything from cancer to syphilis. The metaphor is pretty apt IMO.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Yes, I got that Google summary too. But "snake oil" patent medicine didn't contain snake oil. "Snake oil" refers to something sold as a medicament that has no beneficial effect.
  - tcmart14 5mo ago
    Exactly what I was thinking. It's not that snake oil sales people sold totally useless stuff, its just that the stuff they sold did not deliver the value that was promised. Another example that is still going on today. There is a community of people that swear the ingesting silver prevents all kinds of things, even so far as a cure for cancer. It's snake oil, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have any medicinal purposes. Silver does have anti-microbial properties and can be used topically to manage infections.
  - zem 5mo ago
    the problem, ironically, is that hucksters were selling other oils as "snake oil" when they didn't have the same omega 3s. the bad reputation was due to fake snake oil.
- specproc 5mo ago
  AI is snake oil. It sells you a slot machine in the guise of a colleague. Oh, not using it right? Not the right model? Insert coin to continue. Snake oil, total snake oil.
  - holoduke 5mo ago
    I just reversed engineered large parts of my 2011 car odb comms. Was able to hook a stm32 board to the car communication and have full control over a lot of stuff so that I can build my own instrument cluster from a lcd screen. It literally took me one evening to get the first proof of concept working. I never touched stm32 stuff before.
    - specproc 5mo ago
      Good for you, son. I've just spent the whole f*king day screaming at an agent on a deadline.
      - rolandog 5mo ago
        This right here. People simp for LLM companies as if their experience of using the out-of-pocket top-of-the-line "team of PhD's" paid models will be what is deployed when trying to contact your bank, insurance, etc. No,... once tech companies stop playing the "no/some revenue until we own the world" VC game, we'll all be stuck trying to talk to GlueSnifferGPT when reporting an emergency.
        holoduke 5mo ago
        That will never happen. You know that. It will only become more and more. there is no return. My advise: don't stick with those blocker ideas.
        rolandog 5mo ago
        Not sure I follow; more and more what? And what do you mean by blocker ideas?
- echelon 5mo ago
  This is less an anti-AI post and more a post against the greed of the industry: > But things feel different now. I can relate to what Chris Person said when he expressed his frustrations about how these slick conmen are using the technology I adore as tools for exploitation and disempowerment. The Internet, built by idealists on a foundation of openness and community, has become a mire of dark patterns and gardens with ever thicker walls, desperate to keep people within an ecosystem where their attention is the prized commodity. I’ve witnessed a nerdy space full of nerds be invaded by marketers, callous capitalists, and “brogrammers”—exaggerating the worst, most toxic, aspects of geek culture in their pursuit of money and power. I’ve poured hundreds of hours of work into open source projects only to have it all be scraped into a plagiarism machine and then aggressively sold back to me. It feels that the hope I had for the future technology could give us, the naïve and starry-eyed fantasies I fostered in my youth, has been eroded when faced with a reality where the thing I love can make a lot of money for people who don’t care for any of it. You can simultaneously believe that AI is really cool and also that also a lot of companies are degrading the internet, society, and private ownership at large.
- mid-kid 5mo ago
  The snake oil is how the people at the top scream "in x years we won't need programmers" and end up proving themselves wrong time and time again. It's a real technology and it can do a lot, but it's being sold like snake oil while we're still figuring out what it's actually useful for and how to leverage it properly.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Snake oil implies that it does nothing, not that it doesn't do everything it's boosters claim it does. Snake oils were medicines sold as cure-alls with no active ingredients.
    - girvo 5mo ago
      I wonder what the better pithy phrase would be then for "thing that is obviously useful, but is being hyped beyond it's (current) ability by those with a vested interest in doing so"
      - akerl_ 5mo ago
        That seems pretty par for the course for every major advancement in technology. So maybe just “capitalism”? It’s hard for me to think of any piece of new tech that hasn’t been over hyped by the people selling it.
        girvo 5mo ago
        For sure. I'd argue this cycle is operating at a different scale though
      - tptacek 5mo ago
        You could reasonably call it "overhyped". People will disagree with you, but that's fine; you won't be making a falsifiable claim.
  - lostmsu 5mo ago
    > "in x years we won't need programmers" and end up proving themselves wrong time and time again This is how it looks in your head, maybe. But in reality since Sonnet 3.5 - when the whole "no need programmers" started - no "years" have passed. Sonnet 3.5 came out on June 20, 2024. We are still 5 days away from the lowest possible "years". So even if you quoted them literally, they could not have possibly proved themselves wrong yet even once, let alone "time and time again".
- overgard 5mo ago
  Isn't coding solved and we should all be out of a job by now according to Dario? Or what about AI 2027 -- we're only 6 months away! Time to build a bunker!! LLMs themselves aren't snake oil, they're just a useful technology, but all the marketing around them is FUD mixed with hype mixed with the most irritating people on the planet (the ones that aren't bots at least).
  - lostmsu 5mo ago
    > Isn't coding solved and we should all be out of a job by now according to Dario? You sound like you have a quote in mind.
- tines 5mo ago
  > I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster faster != better
  - JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
    For me, the painful banging my head against the wall to figure something out is usually the most rewarding sort of learning experience.
- spamizbad 5mo ago
  I would say the claim that AI is going to replace most white collar work a very snake-oily term. The technology behind it however is very compelling and interesting.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    I don't know enough about most white collar work to make any predictions. But I know a lot about software development and information technology because I've been a professional since 1995. The claims being made about AI's impact on that profession do not seem at all snake-oily to me.
- godelski 5mo ago
  > The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. Because it doesn't. What AI is being sold as is incredibly different than what it actually does. I love AI. I spent years in grad school researching it because I loved it so much (it was never about the money to me). But what it is and what it can do is so different from what it is being sold as. Snake Oil is an apt comparison because it is being sold as a cure-all. Medical problems? AI. Financial problems? AI. Scientific research? AI. <Insert problem>: AI... It isn't that ML[0] can't help with these problems (it can!), it is that "AI" is being sold as a solution to these problems. As if humans will be obsolete in 6months[1]. LLMs are a fantastic example. We (lossy) compressed the entire internet and build a human language interface into it. That's some real Sci-Fi shit right there. That's an incredible achievement with a lot of utility! But how is it sold? If you call it what it is people will act like you're diminishing its status. We've exaggerated the accomplishments so far out of proportion that we can't even recognize big of an advancement that these machines actually were. LLMs were a huge step forward, but even a giant is small when you compare it to a titan. So yeah, I do think it is being sold as Snake Oil. And that's been my fear for quite some time (you can dig up my history if you're that passionate). But that's also what we've done with every major tech recently. Hell, even cryptocurrency has real value. The thing that killed it was all the hype built around it when the tech was just in its infancy. Do we really want to do the same thing to AI? It certainly has more utility to it than cryptocurrencies. But it doesn't matter how good the actual product is if people are sold on something else. What matters is how the actual product matches to peoples' expectations. There is such a thing as "overselling", and we're certainly doing that as a community. I know it is an exciting field and there's lots of exciting technology, but we can't promise the moon if we can't deliver. [0] It wasn't long ago that "AI" was a red flag and "ML" was seen as less likely to be bullshit. [1] I'm still waiting on my self-driving car...
  - bigbuppo 5mo ago
    And why was AI seen as a red flag?
    - totallymike 5mo ago
      It was a red flag because artificial intelligence doesn’t exist, and anyone claiming to use it or work on it is either lying or delusional in thinking they could accomplish it. Nowadays people just say “AI” when they mean “LLM,” which is an unrelated thing entirely, but people want people who use it.
- bigstrat2003 5mo ago
  > I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. Well yeah, because it doesn't. AI is being claimed to be a magical genius intelligence which will solve everything forever, but in reality LLMs are still idiots you can't trust to not screw up without a tight leash. They can't even do the one thing they are supposed to be good at (programming) well, despite all the effort which has been focused on trying to make them good at it. They don't remotely do what they are marketed to do, not even close!
- moron4hire 5mo ago
  We don't need the caveat that it's sometimes useful on every post about the problems of AI.
- dosisking 5mo ago
  > I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." Not to worry, a fool and his money will soon be parted. I think the main problem is that there is no definition for "AI". And from your use case, I don't see any difference between that and a search engine.
- keybored 5mo ago
  And we’re back to the pitch.
pmg101 5mo ago
I love the computer too. Never more than while writing 6502 assembler for a decades-defunct home computer for literally no purpose at all. Meanwhile, the economy needs software to be written and I need employment, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that hews somewhat close to my interests, whether that be learning the latest JS framework or to prompt Claude. It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day.
- fpereiro 5mo ago
  > It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day. Your comment has made my day, perhaps my week. Well said.
Yhippa 5mo ago
This post resonates with me. I remember in Kindergarten getting my very first life experience with computing tech: grounding myself by touching the bottom screws of a Apple IIe. I've loved them in nearly the same way as OP. I get the way he feels. I remember how special this stuff used to be because of how niche it was. It does feel a bit like the normies co-opted it but that is my personal and selfish view.
skydhash 5mo ago
My first computer was a pentium II. After one year learning about computing in my school lab and friends’ computers, it was amazing to have something to tinker with. And it and its successors brought me plenty of delight over the year. First discovering Linux (with Linux Mint and Gnome 2 as I couldn’t install Debian), learning assembly and C, learning Blender, learning how windows internals worked,… It has been a tool that has shaped my life. And yes, the current trend of presenting it as a mere source of entertainment and a very small sets of features is sickening. But this day, I dabble with OpenBSD and Linux (Alpine) and it’s a bit of fresh air. There’s some convenience lost, but you get the freedom of computing back.
deleted 5mo ago
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Shellban 5mo ago
Mr. Enger echos a lot of thoughts that I (and a lot of people on these forums) seem to have. We can still make an attempt to remake what we love, with personal websites and self-hosting. However modern architecture kills even that with DDoS attacks and IP blacklists on everything. It is no wonder that people are starting to promote alternate protocols like Gemini (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467) that explicitly make it impossible for many of the evils of the World Wide Web to be repeated.
charcircuit 5mo ago
I think the author simply grew up. It's easy to ignore all of the business stuff and just have fun when you are kid. Nothing is stopping the author from generating all sorts of crazy stuff with AI if he wants to live on the bleeding edge of technology.
- ryan_n 5mo ago
  Generating things and going through the process of learning how it works and making it from scratch are very, very different. The feeling each leaves you with are also very different. If the only thing you care about is output, then yea maybe generating a bunch of stuff feels great, but if you care about the process, learning, and discovery, just prompting an llm doesn't feel great.
  - charcircuit 5mo ago
    Most programmers do not care about how platforms work. How many kid web developers do you think actively read Chromium's source code? It's already plenty stimulating staying at a higher level, letting abstractions hide implementation details.
ebbi 5mo ago
I love the computer, too. I remember when I was around 10 and we got out first PC - Compaq Presario - that we shared among us 4 siblings. And I was instantly hooked to. And then about a year later, we got internet connected and the first website we visited was Pokemon. I remember at my high school, the computer room in the library was fitted out with the new colored iMacs. I was shocked! How could a computer look like this. You had to register to use it each day during lunch breaks because so many people wanted to use them. I remember the first time I came across an Apple magazine, and it was showing screenshots of the new OS X. The Aqua interface got me hooked. I'd read, and re-read, every page, drooling over the screenshots. It wasn't until ~10 years later I got my first Mac and I was obsessed with it!
tptacek 5mo ago
I think the author doesn't realize how gatekeepy this sentiment is; that they earned their love of "the computer", that it was formative to them, that they put all this uncomfortable effort into learning how to program, and thus (subtextually) they should have a say in how other people use "the computer".
- kridsdale1 5mo ago
  Long time fans of a thing are allowed to be upset when assholes come in a drastically change it, whether it be Star Wars, your sports team, or programming.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    As long as we're clear that the sentiment here is analogous to people being protective of Star Wars, like you said, I'm good.
    - overgard 5mo ago
      I think a better analogy should be: should you take a job writing a Star Wars movie if you're not a fan of Star Wars? (or sub in: Star Trek, or Dr. Who, or any other recent nerd property that's been kind of ruined by people who don't understand the source material screwing it up by thinking they know better than the fans). In that context at least, the proof is in the pudding: Star Wars is a mess because it's been written by people that mostly don't care about Star Wars, same with Star Trek. I think coding is kind of like that. People that don't care are going to make a mediocre-to-bad product.
      - kevinmchugh 5mo ago
        JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau: all big Star Wars fans. Tony Gilroy is not!
  - protocolture 5mo ago
    Arguably its worse. Star Wars fans can still watch the stuff they like without being weird smelly nerds on the internet about the bits they dont like. You cant really have 90's computing again very easily. Its not as simple as putting a DVD on play. It was a zeitgeist, a vibe.
suyavuz 5mo ago
I still like the computer itself. Breaking something, poking at it, fixing it, and then it suddenly works. The hard part now is liking the industry around it.
- aykutseker 5mo ago
  The machine is still fun. It's the five layers of product growth between you and the machine that get tiring.
  - trhway 5mo ago
    check the ping time between your nodes, whatever they are, in the same datacenter. I bet it will be at least 10-20ms. 15 years ago it was 0.1-0.2 ms.
    - ivantop 5mo ago
      still 150 micros here. why would this go up?
      - throwup238 5mo ago
        Software defined networking adding latency. 10ms within a datacenter is crazy though.
      - bandrami 5mo ago
        Those NSA MITM attacks aren't free or fast
    - glitchc 5mo ago
      Given that I get ~1 ms between basement and upstairs, going through three switches, this is indeed a sad state of affairs.
- acedTrex 5mo ago
  > The hard part now is liking the industry around it This has always been the hardest part, its just the past few years its gotten exponentially more difficult.
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noncoml 5mo ago
One of the main reasons I fell in love with computers was determinism. I always felt weird seeing people get upset and curse at the C++ compiler. In my mind, the “computer” will always give you the same output for the same input. Therefore, you must be doing something wrong if you’re fighting the compiler. The answer to your problems is in the source code. This is something LLMs took away from me. I can’t just look at the source code and figure out why a prompt didn’t produce the expected outcome. I have to go with my gut feeling, and with the little I know about LLMs. On the other hand, LLMs have enabled me to code prototypes that I would have only dreamed about a few years ago. Do you want your own fancy terminal emulator? Done. A couple of weekends’ worth of work. How about your own Linux windowing system, running Firefox and a terminal? Done. A couple more weekends. You always hated KiCad routing, but never had time to go through the code and change it to meet your requirements? No worries. A day’s work. Of course, none of this is production quality, but it gets you started very fast. And I’m sure you can turn it into a solid, production-quality product in much less time than it would take without using an LLM.
sscaryterry 5mo ago
I make computer go beep-boop. I love computer.
glimshe 5mo ago
Working at FAANG made me stop liking computers. As soon as I left, it all came back.
m463 5mo ago
Computers used to have unlimited promise and potential. then at some point, the balance started tipping. Things I specifically remember: - half life required you to register online to install your single-player game from CD - turbotax would only install on one computer. - software started rooting around on your system and uploading the findings - the iphone didn't let you install your own software - microsoft. enough said.
- noosphr 5mo ago
  The personal computer is empowering, the thing client connecting to a mainframe isn't. AI local rigs feel like the pc did in 1980.
- matheusmoreira 5mo ago
  At some point, we were the owners of the machine. More importantly, this was normal. We could do whatever we wanted, and the corporations just had to accept it. World changing technology. Limitless potential. Now it's the opposite. The computers belong to the corporations. They're just generously allowing us to use them, and only in ways that they profit off of. Computers, arguably humanity's most important invention, reduced to interactive television, a mere vehicle for corporate advertsing and surveillance capitalism. It's truly disgusting. Makes me sad like nothing else.
  - helloplanets 5mo ago
    Computers started as massively costly, corporation / government only mainframes, that much is clear. They've been productivity machines from the get go, they've been machines made for war. What computers "are" has been ebbing and flowing decade after decade. They've been repurposed to something that they initially weren't. It was originally niche, and not at all the norm. Then, there was a brief period when counter culture was pop culture. That was reflected in everything in the 90's, from music to computers.
  - ryandrake 5mo ago
    Computers were great when the user was in control and got to decide what gets run and what doesn’t get run. When the user was in the driver’s seat. When software developers asked “what does the user want to do with their computer?” and not “what do we want the user to do?” Now instead of driving the car, users are just passengers going wherever software companies are taking them.
ladax72707 5mo ago
There's a spirit in the machine, and if you are quiet enough, and patient enough, and willing to let yourself believe, you can even heart it talk to you, long into the night.
Patchistry 5mo ago
[dead]
hoc 5mo ago
For me, in the early 80s, this was all about state. Reliably keeping a state, well defined, numbers or strings, bytes preferably, and being able to act upon them. Only later I learned that this, ehat I was missing in the analog world back then, was what made up the core of a turing machine. So this beauty is still the same for me. Just the sheer amount of state that is available and provided by others make the concept much less powerful than back in the day. Now AI brings that back a bit, by finding the right items that you can keep and iterate on. But we tend to let AI also do rhe iteration and that introduces that non-deterministic character that the computer had overcome. So, no wonder, that I, and quite a few others, at the moment, still mostly use AI for finding and typing code to describe the structures for the machine, but keep trying to define the iterations ourselves, guaranteeing clear insight and access to the state we are trying to work with. Everything else is more like working with an assistant back then (or today), extending your actionable potential instean of your mind. And depending on how you see the world or what the tasl at hand might be, you might prefer one over the other, control over action, insight and perspective over tinkering with the matter to push it somehow in the right direction or implementing a known process. But that state thing, still priceless, timeless. The right augmentation to our fuzzy brains and better than paper, since, who thought, we can express the algorithms in the same way. So, I guess I will always see this beauty, even in a simple flip-flop, coin, switch and any array thereof, and anything that can be controlled by that binary configuration.
munificent 5mo ago
> Nearly two decades after that first introduction, a therapist would speculate that my interest in computers could stem from how it was a rare point of stability in a life where I ended up leaving my home and my friends every few years. This line hits really close to home. :-/
- alex_x 5mo ago
  I got emotional here as well.
pmarreck 5mo ago
I, too, love the computer. Nothing will take that away. I have plenty of evidence for it, too. I think those of us who truly love the mechanism will not only survive the AI wave but will surf that motherfucker because WE KNOW, AT A VERY DEEP LEVEL, THE THING FROM WHENCE IT CAME. (and honestly, I’ve been waiting for something like this to help filter out all the fucking posers diluting my market value)
patates 5mo ago
I love the fact that if you speak German and English, it's possible to understand a lot of Dutch text. I also love the Computer AND the Internet, allowing me to interact with and experience the world like this.
- Cockbrand 5mo ago
  If you're referring to the mag covers, they're Norwegian in fact. (Bokmål or Nynorsk, you ask? Idk)
  - patates 5mo ago
    Yeah, so Norwegian it is :)
    - 1313ed01 5mo ago
      Except the one on the right is in Swedish.
      - patates 5mo ago
        To me, all seems like a bunch of words I can recognize surrounded with stuff I mostly can't recognize but can sort of work out from the context.
      - Cockbrand 5mo ago
        *Every* time I try to be smart on HN, there's ~someone who outsmarts me~ an opportunity to learn - and that's one of the reasons why I keep coming back. Thank you :)
- wolvesechoes 5mo ago
  > allowing me to interact with and experience the world like this. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into the Internet.
lewisjoe 5mo ago
Takes me back to the time where I would pickup any books that taught anything about computers/programming. I was too young to understand any of it, but the fact that there's this knowledge to be unlocked, that would then let me do new things with this white boxy device on my table top - was truly addictive. I can't say the feeling remains because most new stuff that I learn now is not runnable on my machine now. Tech has gone back to the days when owning hardware that's capable of running the latest has become a costly affair.
teekert 5mo ago
I think we all sympathize and feel this way. But it's also because we are getting older, and we are romanizing those sleepless nights getting 3D acceleration to work in Slackware with Dropline Gnome. Our first chat experiences, first emails, IRC, making your first website, getting your first server online... It's easy to think that the weary giants of steel messed up our beloved internet, and they certainly took a large share of it (and indeed messed it up). But our internet is still there, faster and better than ever, and there are still social spaces naturally independent of the tyrannies they seek to impose on us. When I go to i.e. FOSDEM I feel that feeling from my youth, it's still very much there. Ok, it is very annoying that they are messing with the prices of our hardware and I feel that. But that will pass. Perhaps in a year or so we get a wrinkle effect and stuff will be cheap for some time. And we can do "AI" our way (on our terms and hardware). Let's not get so negative, just try to ignore the negative things and focus on the positive (like my gigabit symmetrical connection whoop whoop, yes it has cgNAT but I have WireGuard).
rldjbpin 5mo ago
this industry has made people way too much money. so it attracts those who wants to make a quick buck with whichever means possible. it took me a decade from falling in love with pc building to finally build one for myself. the crypto bros ruined it earlier, then now the crankers. both underlying tech is amazing. but any interesting idea or "breakthrough" trigger a gold rush mania. same with the people working in certain parts of the globe. we were compensated disproportionately compared to other industries, thanks to the above tailwind and ZIRP. i wonder how many people in the industry would be there if it wasn't the "future", at least in putting zeroes in our bank balance. personally would have not been here if not for the money, but would still have love for computers themselves and what we can do with thme.
baumschubser 5mo ago
> I decided to try something that would probably work: I copied the code from the magazine into Notepad and saved the file as .exe instead of .txt. Exactly my first attempt to "convert to .exe" as well :) Browsing through C:\DOTS, I discovered qbasic.exe (a QuickBasic variant without a compiler) and wanted to "compile" (as I now know is the right term) my first, wonky five-liner.
dwroberts 5mo ago
> However, having had much success with experimentation so far I decided to try something that would probably work: I copied the code from the magazine into Notepad and saved the file as .exe instead of .txt. Glad to hear I’m not alone in these kind of early experiments. I remember having no idea what the concept of programming actually was, and opening game EXEs in notepad to try and understand how they worked. The demo of Majesty was one I particularly wanted to modify and had no idea how
bronlund 5mo ago
These snake oil salesmen have been ruining every space we love for a while now. That is hardly news.
JKCalhoun 5mo ago
I loved (past tense) the computer. Many of us here can wax nostalgic on our first memories of a computer in our home. And when we look at the current slab now in front of us with a little less wonder, it's easy to dismiss this as us having grown up with the machines, having become older, perhaps even a little jaded. That spark is gone? It's also possible though that the machines now just aren't the same as the ones we grew up with. Personally, I remember beginning to dislike computers a little when I was suddenly tasked with remembering passwords. At first it was simply to log into my machine (didn't need to do that on Mac System 6.0). Then when the internet came along, suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine… After working 25+ years at Apple, when I finally retired, people have asked me since if I miss working at Apple. I have to tell them "no and yes". I don't miss working at Apple in the 2010's or the 2020's (when I finally retired). I do however miss working at Apple in the 90's, when I began. It was a very different time to be working at Apple. I miss it and have been missing it for several decades now.
- neuropacabra 5mo ago
  What a story. I never had a chance to play with System 6.0, my first one was Mac OSX Maverick...before DOS/W95-98/XP and Debian/Ubuntu...what was it like?
  - JKCalhoun 5mo ago
    You can play with it in an emulator. There was no internet then so all your tools were local, not web-based, not cloud-based. (Given that, the idea of a subscription-based app was ludicrous.) It's not that the OS itself was magical. (In fact there are a lot of things that I realize I miss when I go back—lack of sticky menus gets me every time). It was just: no passwords, everything local, no worrying about spam/ads/security, etc. We just worried about backups and head crashes…
- fusslo 5mo ago
  > suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine… That really rings true. I can't believe how frustrating it is to get to a place where I can actually focus and do some work. 1. log into my computer with a pincode 2. log into jira, gitlab, confluence with sso (no automatic sign on) 3. ssh into dev containers with key that requires a password 4. open vscode, again ssh into dev containers with a password protected key 5. Close all the popups from IT (usually get 3-5 a day) in the notification area Heaven help me if IT decided to force an update (I timed one to be 53 minutes). Some days I feel like a custodian instead of an engineer. I know it's very much a first world problem, but it's shocking how many barriers exist to get any work done in US corporate world. Startups I've worked at didn't have this problem - just get a macbook and here's your gsuite user/pass.
neuropacabra 5mo ago
This is so nice and resonates with me deeply. For quite a while I have been stuggeling to love modern computer. When I was reading this, I saw myself - this is more or less me. We got a 386 when I was 4, and as much as I can remember I was playing DOS games and later on Windows I have been exploring this whole concept of computers and dreaming about writing a game or learn how to program. This was so transformative. I remember the whole hacker like community - tweaking registries, shareware on floppy drives, demo scene, the dawn of the internet, Altavista - yes no Google, every generation was a leap forward. Golden time? Maybe I romantize it too much? I don't know, but I remember I was technology positivist and loved computers. How am I suppose to love the machine that is snooping on me and selling my behavioral data to 3rd party and making people selling me ads based on this rich. Every app needs an account, now also age verification - what the ***. I want my computer to be mine. I want my data to be mine - how did we let happen all of that...Apologies for the rant :-) today's technology is equally exciting and cool, but one have to be careful about it much more. After reading this, I am certain I do love computers...but for few years now, I was a bit in lethargic mode thinking I once loved the computers.
- stasomatic 5mo ago
  I was at CUNY/Baruch in '91, discovering Usenet, Gopher etc at the campus' VMS, getting the thrill of using GameDoctor on my SNES. Then the civilians came onboard and all stopped feeling ... exclusive? How dare they voice their thoughts on comp.*, I am out... It's all pure nostalgia for the times long gone. I get an urge once a year to get a thing from that era, and I do but I don't use it. That 90's Zelda does nothing for me anymore, but TOTK does.
n3mo-dev 5mo ago
I think I loved my first computer not the my latest one since the alot of thing changed ,I learnt my first coding language on their , it was fun , now I have a new computer but I hate it every time I open it I feel like it's a burden,open laptop take lectures ,do leetcode. So it just the time changed for me
arbuge 5mo ago
I fondly remember programming my Amstrad CPC 464, my first computer, in 1984 in Malta when I was ~11 years old. It booted straight into Locomotive Basic. Still remember my excitement at getting it to draw a circle on the screen for the first time. Good times.
NoSalt 5mo ago
The computer is awesome, and so helpful. However, what some people, companies, governments, organizations have done with the computer are NOT so awesome.

311 points by speckx 5mo ago

I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. AI does more or less what it's marketed to do, sometimes badly. I still write code by hand. But LLMs have been a legitimately useful tool when I've wanted to dig into a new field like computer graphics, theoretical physics, or numerical analysis. Or even just asking the LLM to write a piece of code and learning from its output. I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster and spend more time programming.

drchickensalad 5mo ago
> The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do In my opinion you should interpret the usage of "AI" here to mean "the entire business/management/financial/bubble ecosystem surrounding LLMs". The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized rather than a specific technical assessment (although that often is an issue too)
- fasterik 5mo ago
  My prediction is that it will go the same way as the dot com bubble. The hypesters and fraudsters will eventually collide with objective reality, but the technology will persist and society at large will benefit from the infrastructure and the increased access to knowledge.
  - Shellban 5mo ago
    Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.
    - echelon 5mo ago
      > As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for your hobby. You have to lease an H200 behind an API to do it. Which one will you choose? I know which one I'm choosing.
      - anon7725 5mo ago
        I choose A. I know that many others choose A as well. A wonderful service known as the web has connected people who choose A with others who choose A and of course with a great many who don’t need to make a choice and benefit from the work of others. I mourn a world in which few will choose A, because for many to choose B seems to lock us all, tragedy of the commons style, into a worse world.
        echelon 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        Jtsummers 5mo ago
        > None of the things we build today are going to last. Exactly, so why do you care how some people build things? It's not that important.
        girvo 5mo ago
        This is so needlessly combative and performative, which is especially hilarious as you claim the others are the ones being so. > AI is better at this than you. You just won't admit it. And it's going to get 10,000x better than you in just a short while. Where is the 10x (not even 10,000x) revenue? No companies other than those selling the AI itself are seeing it.
        5mo ago
  - gyomu 5mo ago
    > society at large will benefit from the infrastructure Data centers as infrastructure are very different from DSL rollout though. Much, much more expensive to maintain, with a much much shorter timespan. If the bubble pops and data centers get shut down because there’s no one to pay the bills, there won’t be much left 5-10 years later in terms of infrastructure.
    - m0llusk 5mo ago
      Maybe we could repurpose old processors to power toaster ovens.
      - bigbuppo 5mo ago
        I mean, a 125kW server stuffed into 5U will definitely work nicely for toast.
- api 5mo ago
  The same thing happened around PCs, gaming, the Internet, the web, and cryptocurrency. It's a hit driven industry that loves hype.
- patates 5mo ago
  I think then the AI-hype should be disregarded as snake-oil, not the tech itself. I know it sounds pretentious, but I need to say that words do matter.
- indymike 5mo ago
  > The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.
  - datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
    I think you just simply repeated the mistake that the comment responding to you was pointing out, i.e. conflating “LLM” the technology with “AI” the hysterical product hype bubble phenomenon.
AgentME 5mo ago
LLMs remind me of being a kid again being in wonder of all the possible things that could be done with a computer that haven't been figured out yet. The internet was relatively new and everyone had their own ideas of what that would enable. Fast forward to a few years ago and it was easy to believe that a lot of the low-hanging fruit of things an individual could do with the internet, apps, 3d graphics, etc, had been decently picked over and that things were stabilizing. Now I have no idea again what computing will look like in 5 years and it's exciting.
- dosisking 5mo ago
  I have a pretty good idea of what computing will look like in 5 years and it's pretty depressing.
  - knownjorbist 5mo ago
    You have convinced yourself of having a pretty good idea, not to be confused with having anything close to a crystal ball's view.
- keybored 5mo ago
  Nestlé can give us our daily allowance of baby formula and [AI corporation winner] can give us our daily allowance of free compute. These years will bring interesting times!
ux266478 5mo ago
The fats in Chinese Water Snakes are rich in omega 3s and do have genuine benefits to consumption. The problem with snake oil wasn't that it was useless. The problem was with hucksters selling it as a cure-all for everything from cancer to syphilis. The metaphor is pretty apt IMO.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Yes, I got that Google summary too. But "snake oil" patent medicine didn't contain snake oil. "Snake oil" refers to something sold as a medicament that has no beneficial effect.
- tcmart14 5mo ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. It's not that snake oil sales people sold totally useless stuff, its just that the stuff they sold did not deliver the value that was promised. Another example that is still going on today. There is a community of people that swear the ingesting silver prevents all kinds of things, even so far as a cure for cancer. It's snake oil, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have any medicinal purposes. Silver does have anti-microbial properties and can be used topically to manage infections.
- zem 5mo ago
  the problem, ironically, is that hucksters were selling other oils as "snake oil" when they didn't have the same omega 3s. the bad reputation was due to fake snake oil.
specproc 5mo ago
AI is snake oil. It sells you a slot machine in the guise of a colleague. Oh, not using it right? Not the right model? Insert coin to continue. Snake oil, total snake oil.
- holoduke 5mo ago
  I just reversed engineered large parts of my 2011 car odb comms. Was able to hook a stm32 board to the car communication and have full control over a lot of stuff so that I can build my own instrument cluster from a lcd screen. It literally took me one evening to get the first proof of concept working. I never touched stm32 stuff before.
  - specproc 5mo ago
    Good for you, son. I've just spent the whole f*king day screaming at an agent on a deadline.
    - rolandog 5mo ago
      This right here. People simp for LLM companies as if their experience of using the out-of-pocket top-of-the-line "team of PhD's" paid models will be what is deployed when trying to contact your bank, insurance, etc. No,... once tech companies stop playing the "no/some revenue until we own the world" VC game, we'll all be stuck trying to talk to GlueSnifferGPT when reporting an emergency.
      - holoduke 5mo ago
        That will never happen. You know that. It will only become more and more. there is no return. My advise: don't stick with those blocker ideas.
        rolandog 5mo ago
        Not sure I follow; more and more what? And what do you mean by blocker ideas?
echelon 5mo ago
This is less an anti-AI post and more a post against the greed of the industry: > But things feel different now. I can relate to what Chris Person said when he expressed his frustrations about how these slick conmen are using the technology I adore as tools for exploitation and disempowerment. The Internet, built by idealists on a foundation of openness and community, has become a mire of dark patterns and gardens with ever thicker walls, desperate to keep people within an ecosystem where their attention is the prized commodity. I’ve witnessed a nerdy space full of nerds be invaded by marketers, callous capitalists, and “brogrammers”—exaggerating the worst, most toxic, aspects of geek culture in their pursuit of money and power. I’ve poured hundreds of hours of work into open source projects only to have it all be scraped into a plagiarism machine and then aggressively sold back to me. It feels that the hope I had for the future technology could give us, the naïve and starry-eyed fantasies I fostered in my youth, has been eroded when faced with a reality where the thing I love can make a lot of money for people who don’t care for any of it. You can simultaneously believe that AI is really cool and also that also a lot of companies are degrading the internet, society, and private ownership at large.
mid-kid 5mo ago
The snake oil is how the people at the top scream "in x years we won't need programmers" and end up proving themselves wrong time and time again. It's a real technology and it can do a lot, but it's being sold like snake oil while we're still figuring out what it's actually useful for and how to leverage it properly.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Snake oil implies that it does nothing, not that it doesn't do everything it's boosters claim it does. Snake oils were medicines sold as cure-alls with no active ingredients.
  - girvo 5mo ago
    I wonder what the better pithy phrase would be then for "thing that is obviously useful, but is being hyped beyond it's (current) ability by those with a vested interest in doing so"
    - akerl_ 5mo ago
      That seems pretty par for the course for every major advancement in technology. So maybe just “capitalism”? It’s hard for me to think of any piece of new tech that hasn’t been over hyped by the people selling it.
      - girvo 5mo ago
        For sure. I'd argue this cycle is operating at a different scale though
    - tptacek 5mo ago
      You could reasonably call it "overhyped". People will disagree with you, but that's fine; you won't be making a falsifiable claim.
- lostmsu 5mo ago
  > "in x years we won't need programmers" and end up proving themselves wrong time and time again This is how it looks in your head, maybe. But in reality since Sonnet 3.5 - when the whole "no need programmers" started - no "years" have passed. Sonnet 3.5 came out on June 20, 2024. We are still 5 days away from the lowest possible "years". So even if you quoted them literally, they could not have possibly proved themselves wrong yet even once, let alone "time and time again".
overgard 5mo ago
Isn't coding solved and we should all be out of a job by now according to Dario? Or what about AI 2027 -- we're only 6 months away! Time to build a bunker!! LLMs themselves aren't snake oil, they're just a useful technology, but all the marketing around them is FUD mixed with hype mixed with the most irritating people on the planet (the ones that aren't bots at least).
- lostmsu 5mo ago
  > Isn't coding solved and we should all be out of a job by now according to Dario? You sound like you have a quote in mind.
tines 5mo ago
> I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster faster != better
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
  For me, the painful banging my head against the wall to figure something out is usually the most rewarding sort of learning experience.
spamizbad 5mo ago
I would say the claim that AI is going to replace most white collar work a very snake-oily term. The technology behind it however is very compelling and interesting.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  I don't know enough about most white collar work to make any predictions. But I know a lot about software development and information technology because I've been a professional since 1995. The claims being made about AI's impact on that profession do not seem at all snake-oily to me.
godelski 5mo ago
> The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. Because it doesn't. What AI is being sold as is incredibly different than what it actually does. I love AI. I spent years in grad school researching it because I loved it so much (it was never about the money to me). But what it is and what it can do is so different from what it is being sold as. Snake Oil is an apt comparison because it is being sold as a cure-all. Medical problems? AI. Financial problems? AI. Scientific research? AI. <Insert problem>: AI... It isn't that ML[0] can't help with these problems (it can!), it is that "AI" is being sold as a solution to these problems. As if humans will be obsolete in 6months[1]. LLMs are a fantastic example. We (lossy) compressed the entire internet and build a human language interface into it. That's some real Sci-Fi shit right there. That's an incredible achievement with a lot of utility! But how is it sold? If you call it what it is people will act like you're diminishing its status. We've exaggerated the accomplishments so far out of proportion that we can't even recognize big of an advancement that these machines actually were. LLMs were a huge step forward, but even a giant is small when you compare it to a titan. So yeah, I do think it is being sold as Snake Oil. And that's been my fear for quite some time (you can dig up my history if you're that passionate). But that's also what we've done with every major tech recently. Hell, even cryptocurrency has real value. The thing that killed it was all the hype built around it when the tech was just in its infancy. Do we really want to do the same thing to AI? It certainly has more utility to it than cryptocurrencies. But it doesn't matter how good the actual product is if people are sold on something else. What matters is how the actual product matches to peoples' expectations. There is such a thing as "overselling", and we're certainly doing that as a community. I know it is an exciting field and there's lots of exciting technology, but we can't promise the moon if we can't deliver. [0] It wasn't long ago that "AI" was a red flag and "ML" was seen as less likely to be bullshit. [1] I'm still waiting on my self-driving car...
- bigbuppo 5mo ago
  And why was AI seen as a red flag?
  - totallymike 5mo ago
    It was a red flag because artificial intelligence doesn’t exist, and anyone claiming to use it or work on it is either lying or delusional in thinking they could accomplish it. Nowadays people just say “AI” when they mean “LLM,” which is an unrelated thing entirely, but people want people who use it.
bigstrat2003 5mo ago
> I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. Well yeah, because it doesn't. AI is being claimed to be a magical genius intelligence which will solve everything forever, but in reality LLMs are still idiots you can't trust to not screw up without a tight leash. They can't even do the one thing they are supposed to be good at (programming) well, despite all the effort which has been focused on trying to make them good at it. They don't remotely do what they are marketed to do, not even close!
moron4hire 5mo ago
We don't need the caveat that it's sometimes useful on every post about the problems of AI.
dosisking 5mo ago
> I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." Not to worry, a fool and his money will soon be parted. I think the main problem is that there is no definition for "AI". And from your use case, I don't see any difference between that and a search engine.
keybored 5mo ago
And we’re back to the pitch.

pmg101 5mo ago

I love the computer too. Never more than while writing 6502 assembler for a decades-defunct home computer for literally no purpose at all. Meanwhile, the economy needs software to be written and I need employment, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that hews somewhat close to my interests, whether that be learning the latest JS framework or to prompt Claude. It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day.

fpereiro 5mo ago
> It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day. Your comment has made my day, perhaps my week. Well said.

Yhippa 5mo ago

This post resonates with me. I remember in Kindergarten getting my very first life experience with computing tech: grounding myself by touching the bottom screws of a Apple IIe. I've loved them in nearly the same way as OP. I get the way he feels. I remember how special this stuff used to be because of how niche it was. It does feel a bit like the normies co-opted it but that is my personal and selfish view.

skydhash 5mo ago

My first computer was a pentium II. After one year learning about computing in my school lab and friends’ computers, it was amazing to have something to tinker with. And it and its successors brought me plenty of delight over the year. First discovering Linux (with Linux Mint and Gnome 2 as I couldn’t install Debian), learning assembly and C, learning Blender, learning how windows internals worked,… It has been a tool that has shaped my life. And yes, the current trend of presenting it as a mere source of entertainment and a very small sets of features is sickening. But this day, I dabble with OpenBSD and Linux (Alpine) and it’s a bit of fresh air. There’s some convenience lost, but you get the freedom of computing back.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

Shellban 5mo ago

Mr. Enger echos a lot of thoughts that I (and a lot of people on these forums) seem to have. We can still make an attempt to remake what we love, with personal websites and self-hosting. However modern architecture kills even that with DDoS attacks and IP blacklists on everything. It is no wonder that people are starting to promote alternate protocols like Gemini (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467) that explicitly make it impossible for many of the evils of the World Wide Web to be repeated.

charcircuit 5mo ago

I think the author simply grew up. It's easy to ignore all of the business stuff and just have fun when you are kid. Nothing is stopping the author from generating all sorts of crazy stuff with AI if he wants to live on the bleeding edge of technology.

ryan_n 5mo ago
Generating things and going through the process of learning how it works and making it from scratch are very, very different. The feeling each leaves you with are also very different. If the only thing you care about is output, then yea maybe generating a bunch of stuff feels great, but if you care about the process, learning, and discovery, just prompting an llm doesn't feel great.
- charcircuit 5mo ago
  Most programmers do not care about how platforms work. How many kid web developers do you think actively read Chromium's source code? It's already plenty stimulating staying at a higher level, letting abstractions hide implementation details.

ebbi 5mo ago

I love the computer, too. I remember when I was around 10 and we got out first PC - Compaq Presario - that we shared among us 4 siblings. And I was instantly hooked to. And then about a year later, we got internet connected and the first website we visited was Pokemon. I remember at my high school, the computer room in the library was fitted out with the new colored iMacs. I was shocked! How could a computer look like this. You had to register to use it each day during lunch breaks because so many people wanted to use them. I remember the first time I came across an Apple magazine, and it was showing screenshots of the new OS X. The Aqua interface got me hooked. I'd read, and re-read, every page, drooling over the screenshots. It wasn't until ~10 years later I got my first Mac and I was obsessed with it!

tptacek 5mo ago

I think the author doesn't realize how gatekeepy this sentiment is; that they earned their love of "the computer", that it was formative to them, that they put all this uncomfortable effort into learning how to program, and thus (subtextually) they should have a say in how other people use "the computer".

kridsdale1 5mo ago
Long time fans of a thing are allowed to be upset when assholes come in a drastically change it, whether it be Star Wars, your sports team, or programming.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  As long as we're clear that the sentiment here is analogous to people being protective of Star Wars, like you said, I'm good.
  - overgard 5mo ago
    I think a better analogy should be: should you take a job writing a Star Wars movie if you're not a fan of Star Wars? (or sub in: Star Trek, or Dr. Who, or any other recent nerd property that's been kind of ruined by people who don't understand the source material screwing it up by thinking they know better than the fans). In that context at least, the proof is in the pudding: Star Wars is a mess because it's been written by people that mostly don't care about Star Wars, same with Star Trek. I think coding is kind of like that. People that don't care are going to make a mediocre-to-bad product.
    - kevinmchugh 5mo ago
      JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau: all big Star Wars fans. Tony Gilroy is not!
- protocolture 5mo ago
  Arguably its worse. Star Wars fans can still watch the stuff they like without being weird smelly nerds on the internet about the bits they dont like. You cant really have 90's computing again very easily. Its not as simple as putting a DVD on play. It was a zeitgeist, a vibe.

suyavuz 5mo ago

I still like the computer itself. Breaking something, poking at it, fixing it, and then it suddenly works. The hard part now is liking the industry around it.

aykutseker 5mo ago
The machine is still fun. It's the five layers of product growth between you and the machine that get tiring.
- trhway 5mo ago
  check the ping time between your nodes, whatever they are, in the same datacenter. I bet it will be at least 10-20ms. 15 years ago it was 0.1-0.2 ms.
  - ivantop 5mo ago
    still 150 micros here. why would this go up?
    - throwup238 5mo ago
      Software defined networking adding latency. 10ms within a datacenter is crazy though.
    - bandrami 5mo ago
      Those NSA MITM attacks aren't free or fast
  - glitchc 5mo ago
    Given that I get ~1 ms between basement and upstairs, going through three switches, this is indeed a sad state of affairs.
acedTrex 5mo ago
> The hard part now is liking the industry around it This has always been the hardest part, its just the past few years its gotten exponentially more difficult.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

noncoml 5mo ago

One of the main reasons I fell in love with computers was determinism. I always felt weird seeing people get upset and curse at the C++ compiler. In my mind, the “computer” will always give you the same output for the same input. Therefore, you must be doing something wrong if you’re fighting the compiler. The answer to your problems is in the source code. This is something LLMs took away from me. I can’t just look at the source code and figure out why a prompt didn’t produce the expected outcome. I have to go with my gut feeling, and with the little I know about LLMs. On the other hand, LLMs have enabled me to code prototypes that I would have only dreamed about a few years ago. Do you want your own fancy terminal emulator? Done. A couple of weekends’ worth of work. How about your own Linux windowing system, running Firefox and a terminal? Done. A couple more weekends. You always hated KiCad routing, but never had time to go through the code and change it to meet your requirements? No worries. A day’s work. Of course, none of this is production quality, but it gets you started very fast. And I’m sure you can turn it into a solid, production-quality product in much less time than it would take without using an LLM.

sscaryterry 5mo ago

I make computer go beep-boop. I love computer.

glimshe 5mo ago

Working at FAANG made me stop liking computers. As soon as I left, it all came back.

m463 5mo ago

Computers used to have unlimited promise and potential. then at some point, the balance started tipping. Things I specifically remember: - half life required you to register online to install your single-player game from CD - turbotax would only install on one computer. - software started rooting around on your system and uploading the findings - the iphone didn't let you install your own software - microsoft. enough said.

noosphr 5mo ago
The personal computer is empowering, the thing client connecting to a mainframe isn't. AI local rigs feel like the pc did in 1980.
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
At some point, we were the owners of the machine. More importantly, this was normal. We could do whatever we wanted, and the corporations just had to accept it. World changing technology. Limitless potential. Now it's the opposite. The computers belong to the corporations. They're just generously allowing us to use them, and only in ways that they profit off of. Computers, arguably humanity's most important invention, reduced to interactive television, a mere vehicle for corporate advertsing and surveillance capitalism. It's truly disgusting. Makes me sad like nothing else.
- helloplanets 5mo ago
  Computers started as massively costly, corporation / government only mainframes, that much is clear. They've been productivity machines from the get go, they've been machines made for war. What computers "are" has been ebbing and flowing decade after decade. They've been repurposed to something that they initially weren't. It was originally niche, and not at all the norm. Then, there was a brief period when counter culture was pop culture. That was reflected in everything in the 90's, from music to computers.
- ryandrake 5mo ago
  Computers were great when the user was in control and got to decide what gets run and what doesn’t get run. When the user was in the driver’s seat. When software developers asked “what does the user want to do with their computer?” and not “what do we want the user to do?” Now instead of driving the car, users are just passengers going wherever software companies are taking them.

ladax72707 5mo ago

There's a spirit in the machine, and if you are quiet enough, and patient enough, and willing to let yourself believe, you can even heart it talk to you, long into the night.

Patchistry 5mo ago

[dead]

hoc 5mo ago

For me, in the early 80s, this was all about state. Reliably keeping a state, well defined, numbers or strings, bytes preferably, and being able to act upon them. Only later I learned that this, ehat I was missing in the analog world back then, was what made up the core of a turing machine. So this beauty is still the same for me. Just the sheer amount of state that is available and provided by others make the concept much less powerful than back in the day. Now AI brings that back a bit, by finding the right items that you can keep and iterate on. But we tend to let AI also do rhe iteration and that introduces that non-deterministic character that the computer had overcome. So, no wonder, that I, and quite a few others, at the moment, still mostly use AI for finding and typing code to describe the structures for the machine, but keep trying to define the iterations ourselves, guaranteeing clear insight and access to the state we are trying to work with. Everything else is more like working with an assistant back then (or today), extending your actionable potential instean of your mind. And depending on how you see the world or what the tasl at hand might be, you might prefer one over the other, control over action, insight and perspective over tinkering with the matter to push it somehow in the right direction or implementing a known process. But that state thing, still priceless, timeless. The right augmentation to our fuzzy brains and better than paper, since, who thought, we can express the algorithms in the same way. So, I guess I will always see this beauty, even in a simple flip-flop, coin, switch and any array thereof, and anything that can be controlled by that binary configuration.

munificent 5mo ago

> Nearly two decades after that first introduction, a therapist would speculate that my interest in computers could stem from how it was a rare point of stability in a life where I ended up leaving my home and my friends every few years. This line hits really close to home. :-/

alex_x 5mo ago
I got emotional here as well.

pmarreck 5mo ago

I, too, love the computer. Nothing will take that away. I have plenty of evidence for it, too. I think those of us who truly love the mechanism will not only survive the AI wave but will surf that motherfucker because WE KNOW, AT A VERY DEEP LEVEL, THE THING FROM WHENCE IT CAME. (and honestly, I’ve been waiting for something like this to help filter out all the fucking posers diluting my market value)

patates 5mo ago

I love the fact that if you speak German and English, it's possible to understand a lot of Dutch text. I also love the Computer AND the Internet, allowing me to interact with and experience the world like this.

Cockbrand 5mo ago
If you're referring to the mag covers, they're Norwegian in fact. (Bokmål or Nynorsk, you ask? Idk)
- patates 5mo ago
  Yeah, so Norwegian it is :)
  - 1313ed01 5mo ago
    Except the one on the right is in Swedish.
    - patates 5mo ago
      To me, all seems like a bunch of words I can recognize surrounded with stuff I mostly can't recognize but can sort of work out from the context.
    - Cockbrand 5mo ago
      *Every* time I try to be smart on HN, there's ~someone who outsmarts me~ an opportunity to learn - and that's one of the reasons why I keep coming back. Thank you :)
wolvesechoes 5mo ago
> allowing me to interact with and experience the world like this. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into the Internet.

lewisjoe 5mo ago

Takes me back to the time where I would pickup any books that taught anything about computers/programming. I was too young to understand any of it, but the fact that there's this knowledge to be unlocked, that would then let me do new things with this white boxy device on my table top - was truly addictive. I can't say the feeling remains because most new stuff that I learn now is not runnable on my machine now. Tech has gone back to the days when owning hardware that's capable of running the latest has become a costly affair.

teekert 5mo ago

I think we all sympathize and feel this way. But it's also because we are getting older, and we are romanizing those sleepless nights getting 3D acceleration to work in Slackware with Dropline Gnome. Our first chat experiences, first emails, IRC, making your first website, getting your first server online... It's easy to think that the weary giants of steel messed up our beloved internet, and they certainly took a large share of it (and indeed messed it up). But our internet is still there, faster and better than ever, and there are still social spaces naturally independent of the tyrannies they seek to impose on us. When I go to i.e. FOSDEM I feel that feeling from my youth, it's still very much there. Ok, it is very annoying that they are messing with the prices of our hardware and I feel that. But that will pass. Perhaps in a year or so we get a wrinkle effect and stuff will be cheap for some time. And we can do "AI" our way (on our terms and hardware). Let's not get so negative, just try to ignore the negative things and focus on the positive (like my gigabit symmetrical connection whoop whoop, yes it has cgNAT but I have WireGuard).

rldjbpin 5mo ago

this industry has made people way too much money. so it attracts those who wants to make a quick buck with whichever means possible. it took me a decade from falling in love with pc building to finally build one for myself. the crypto bros ruined it earlier, then now the crankers. both underlying tech is amazing. but any interesting idea or "breakthrough" trigger a gold rush mania. same with the people working in certain parts of the globe. we were compensated disproportionately compared to other industries, thanks to the above tailwind and ZIRP. i wonder how many people in the industry would be there if it wasn't the "future", at least in putting zeroes in our bank balance. personally would have not been here if not for the money, but would still have love for computers themselves and what we can do with thme.

baumschubser 5mo ago

> I decided to try something that would probably work: I copied the code from the magazine into Notepad and saved the file as .exe instead of .txt. Exactly my first attempt to "convert to .exe" as well :) Browsing through C:\DOTS, I discovered qbasic.exe (a QuickBasic variant without a compiler) and wanted to "compile" (as I now know is the right term) my first, wonky five-liner.

dwroberts 5mo ago

> However, having had much success with experimentation so far I decided to try something that would probably work: I copied the code from the magazine into Notepad and saved the file as .exe instead of .txt. Glad to hear I’m not alone in these kind of early experiments. I remember having no idea what the concept of programming actually was, and opening game EXEs in notepad to try and understand how they worked. The demo of Majesty was one I particularly wanted to modify and had no idea how

bronlund 5mo ago

These snake oil salesmen have been ruining every space we love for a while now. That is hardly news.

JKCalhoun 5mo ago

I loved (past tense) the computer. Many of us here can wax nostalgic on our first memories of a computer in our home. And when we look at the current slab now in front of us with a little less wonder, it's easy to dismiss this as us having grown up with the machines, having become older, perhaps even a little jaded. That spark is gone? It's also possible though that the machines now just aren't the same as the ones we grew up with. Personally, I remember beginning to dislike computers a little when I was suddenly tasked with remembering passwords. At first it was simply to log into my machine (didn't need to do that on Mac System 6.0). Then when the internet came along, suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine… After working 25+ years at Apple, when I finally retired, people have asked me since if I miss working at Apple. I have to tell them "no and yes". I don't miss working at Apple in the 2010's or the 2020's (when I finally retired). I do however miss working at Apple in the 90's, when I began. It was a very different time to be working at Apple. I miss it and have been missing it for several decades now.

neuropacabra 5mo ago
What a story. I never had a chance to play with System 6.0, my first one was Mac OSX Maverick...before DOS/W95-98/XP and Debian/Ubuntu...what was it like?
- JKCalhoun 5mo ago
  You can play with it in an emulator. There was no internet then so all your tools were local, not web-based, not cloud-based. (Given that, the idea of a subscription-based app was ludicrous.) It's not that the OS itself was magical. (In fact there are a lot of things that I realize I miss when I go back—lack of sticky menus gets me every time). It was just: no passwords, everything local, no worrying about spam/ads/security, etc. We just worried about backups and head crashes…
fusslo 5mo ago
> suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine… That really rings true. I can't believe how frustrating it is to get to a place where I can actually focus and do some work. 1. log into my computer with a pincode 2. log into jira, gitlab, confluence with sso (no automatic sign on) 3. ssh into dev containers with key that requires a password 4. open vscode, again ssh into dev containers with a password protected key 5. Close all the popups from IT (usually get 3-5 a day) in the notification area Heaven help me if IT decided to force an update (I timed one to be 53 minutes). Some days I feel like a custodian instead of an engineer. I know it's very much a first world problem, but it's shocking how many barriers exist to get any work done in US corporate world. Startups I've worked at didn't have this problem - just get a macbook and here's your gsuite user/pass.

neuropacabra 5mo ago

This is so nice and resonates with me deeply. For quite a while I have been stuggeling to love modern computer. When I was reading this, I saw myself - this is more or less me. We got a 386 when I was 4, and as much as I can remember I was playing DOS games and later on Windows I have been exploring this whole concept of computers and dreaming about writing a game or learn how to program. This was so transformative. I remember the whole hacker like community - tweaking registries, shareware on floppy drives, demo scene, the dawn of the internet, Altavista - yes no Google, every generation was a leap forward. Golden time? Maybe I romantize it too much? I don't know, but I remember I was technology positivist and loved computers. How am I suppose to love the machine that is snooping on me and selling my behavioral data to 3rd party and making people selling me ads based on this rich. Every app needs an account, now also age verification - what the ***. I want my computer to be mine. I want my data to be mine - how did we let happen all of that...Apologies for the rant :-) today's technology is equally exciting and cool, but one have to be careful about it much more. After reading this, I am certain I do love computers...but for few years now, I was a bit in lethargic mode thinking I once loved the computers.

stasomatic 5mo ago
I was at CUNY/Baruch in '91, discovering Usenet, Gopher etc at the campus' VMS, getting the thrill of using GameDoctor on my SNES. Then the civilians came onboard and all stopped feeling ... exclusive? How dare they voice their thoughts on comp.*, I am out... It's all pure nostalgia for the times long gone. I get an urge once a year to get a thing from that era, and I do but I don't use it. That 90's Zelda does nothing for me anymore, but TOTK does.

n3mo-dev 5mo ago

I think I loved my first computer not the my latest one since the alot of thing changed ,I learnt my first coding language on their , it was fun , now I have a new computer but I hate it every time I open it I feel like it's a burden,open laptop take lectures ,do leetcode. So it just the time changed for me

arbuge 5mo ago

I fondly remember programming my Amstrad CPC 464, my first computer, in 1984 in Malta when I was ~11 years old. It booted straight into Locomotive Basic. Still remember my excitement at getting it to draw a circle on the screen for the first time. Good times.

NoSalt 5mo ago

The computer is awesome, and so helpful. However, what some people, companies, governments, organizations have done with the computer are NOT so awesome.