9 ms·

Don't Take the Black Pill [video]

252 points by signa11 3mo ago

fellowniusmonk 3mo ago
Crazy to see how many people miss 26:15.
- gregdaniels421 3mo ago
  This comment is on a part of the video on Free Software Disillusionment, where people don't want to have their code ingested and used by AI. Andrew's thingy is basically that if you don't participate in open source there won't be high quality code for others/yourself in the future. People generally don't like the AI using their code for a few reasons, one is replacement, like an AI can just copy your project without attribution. Two is that it feels like you are providing value for a soulless corporate machine without compensation. If a person uses your code you get maybe happy that it was useful and maybe something cool gets made out it. If an AI uses your work it feels like you just did free labor. I don't feel like Andrew made any particularly great points, but comments both here and on the youtube link have mentioned really liking that point.
  - fellowniusmonk 3mo ago
    This "theft" is not a new argument, and its always been run by people who have a vested interest in killing open-source or who aren't part of it. In 2001 I had a guy at Oracle tell me it was a suckers game to write open source code. I've had M$ heads tell me ruby was a joke that would never amount to much because you couldn't use it in a "real business". I've had bad phil bros tell me in 2004 that open source was "anti american communism bullshit". It's ok to be a humanist and not a corporatist. It's ok to show generosity. It's ok to reject the crab bucket framing. Some of us are mature enough to be ok living in a better world even if still imperfect.
    - nz 3mo ago
      The argument is not just "theft", and to the extent that "theft" is a part of it, it is not the most important part, not by large margin. The reason that "theft" is not a solid argument, is because people creating open-source often distribute it for free themselves. Piracy is not the issue. The issue is that all attributions get stripped away by the LLM (even in cases where it is trivial to avoid). For example, as a test, I asked DeepSeek to tell me how one can do an exact substring-boolean-test in Common Lisp, and it gave me code that was, character for character, _identical_ to the code that appears in Seibel's Common Lisp Book. It clearly memorized the code. It stands to reason, that it could have also memorized where it saw it, and been trained to tell the user that the code was from that book (which is NOT in the public domain, despite being free to read on the internet)[0]. To give you an analogy, nobody has a problem with someone downloading and distributing the public domain works of Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or Karl Marx, etc. But to remove their names from those works, and placing your (or someone else's) name on them instead, is plainly malicious behavior. Such behavior needs to shunned. LLMs (I believe) _can_ be trained to not plagiarize. They do not have to be original, nor to use public domain training-data, they just have to give attribution (which, as far as I can tell, requires little more than a corpus and a stack of similarity-measures). I suspect that they are not trained this way, because fully automated plagiarism creates an ambiguous situation, where a copyleft license (like GPL or EUPL etc) can be unknowingly violated, and there is hardly any trace of the violation. Plagiarism is the product. [0]: Such attribution can only make LLMs _more_ useful and _more_ widely and confidently integrated into workflows. The lack of such attributions, risks diluting the value of open source projects, as (1) a high-signal indicator of skill and achievement, and (2) a way to ensure the provenance and quality of the code (both very important, if you are considering to build a business on top of one or more such projects). Just look at all those repos that claim to have "made" Minecraft-like game or Unix-like OS, when all they did was have an LLM plagiarize the code for them. This is a kind of, at best, spam and, at worst, fraud.
      - fhdkweig 3mo ago
        In addition to giving credit where credit is due, attribution is important for verifying the trustworthiness of "facts". When someone tells me they asked a LLM and it says xxxxx, I want to know did it get it from a bad source, or worse, hallucinated it from thin air. And if it turns out to be good information, I might want to check out other things the guy has written. At least with the old school web search engines, you got a hyperlink that you could use to find out more. Now the only way to learn more is to keep asking the LLM more questions. There is no way to get from the LLM to a source outside the LLM.
    - bee_rider 3mo ago
      Although, I do with these LLM companies would be better about licensing their derivative works (the models) under GPL, when they ingest GPL’d code.
  - as1mov 3mo ago
    > I don't feel like Andrew made any particularly great points, but comments both here and on the youtube link have mentioned really liking that point. What they completely missed was that LLMs are a golden opportunity for the corpo-ratfuckers to completely work around the issue of those pesky OS licenses. Who cares if it's GPL/AGPL, just run it through the slop machine and everything is fine. Open-source doesn't exist in a vacuum, they rely on inherently restrictive licenses to force corporations into contributing back instead of just sucking up everything.
  - wannabe44 3mo ago
    [dead]
mikewarot 3mo ago
So, today I'm one of the lucky 10,000[1] who finally understands what "black pilled" actually means. (Edit: The video explains what black pilled means) As a mapper[2], that knowledge now gets subconsciously checked for matches and usefulness against all the other chunks of knowledge I'm fairly certain of. The first thing that popped out (and there will be more over the next 24+ hours) is that y'all are black pilled about computers and security. You believe, incorrectly, that computers can't be safe AND secure AND easy to use all at the same time. I believe otherwise, and this might help convey that at some future point. Currently my best hope is that the upcoming release of Genode offers a way forward. Their roadmap[3] features this line when describing the upcoming release Sketch of a capability-based desktop environment Right now, that's where my hope rests, it's been a LONG time coming, but I think Genode might become a widely used OS if they can pull it off. If they can break enough people out of being black pilled, that is. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://garden.joehallenbeck.com/container/mappers-and-packers https://garden.joehallenbeck.com/container/mappers-and-packe... [3] https://genode.org/about/road-map https://genode.org/about/road-map
- listic 3mo ago
  I expected the link [1] to be to the explaination of what "black pilled" means, but only because I already read and remember xkcd 1053.
  - newsy-combi 3mo ago
    Blue pill: The supplier of the thing you want is friendly and has your best interest in mind. (Suppliers can be corporations, government, the opposite sex,...) Red pill: The supplier is corrupt and should be treated as such. Black pill: You can't win against the corrupt supplier. White pill: You can win/convert the supplier/find a good one in a sea of bad ones/find a complete alternative.
    - listic 3mo ago
      Oh. It's the essence of the common meaning of it, right?
jagadaga 3mo ago
I watched 8 minutes and feel like my time was wasted. Thank you. Yeah, we always knew how to build reliable software, but it's expensive.
- dang 3mo ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive, shallow criticisms? So far all 3 of your comments have been of this sort, and we're trying for more thoughtful conversation here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Don't be snarky."
  - jagadaga 3mo ago
    No problem. I love you.
- nz 3mo ago
  Unreliable software is also expensive. Rather, building reliable software is incompatible with a management policy that rewards and punishes people based on KPIs (basically leading indicators). The concept of KPIs is fine, but they should (a) be actual indicators of progress, and (b) be kept secret from employees (so that we can avoid or mitigate Goodhart's Law). Both of those things are difficult, because you need a rigorous statistical model of what correlates, and you need to keep that model a secret, while also changing the KPIs periodically, to prevent employees from intuitively overfitting. That whole process would be very expensive (and if it would not, why is nobody doing it). Furthermore, software that is reliable, is also software that is done (in the sense that AVL Trees, and ZFS, and DTrace, and ZSTD, and slab allocators are done -- they are very close to perfect, and require minimal changes, related to compilers and kernels and computer architectures). A team that builds reliable software, is a team that cannot be "managed". What exactly is there to manage?
  - jagged-chisel 3mo ago
    > … kept secret from employees [to] mitigate Goodhart's Law While I empathize with the need for mitigation, secret goals and milestones are an excellent way to mistreat employees and eliminate morale.
keinzirp 3mo ago
Does anyone know what the "discord alternative" is that Andrew says he's working on at the end[0] of the video? [0]: https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4?si=45knBo2Hsy_6wjEM&t=2092 https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4?si=45knBo2Hsy_6wjEM&t=2092
- some_furry 3mo ago
  https://codeberg.org/awebo-chat/awebo https://codeberg.org/awebo-chat/awebo
  - keinzirp 3mo ago
    Thank you!
  - kristoff_it 3mo ago
    (reposting my comment from lobsters) For anybody reading, the project tracks new Zig to get all the new async I/O goodies but was hit by some regressions in Zig's translate-c because it recently became fully independent from LLVM. Other contributors and I took this as an opportunity to contribute some fixes to translate-c and in my case I also switched for a bit to my other projects, mainly https://zine-ssg.io https://zine-ssg.io, which I had neglected for a few months while going all-in on awebo. I plan to resume development of awebo in a month or two, I just want to leave Zine in a good spot before switching again (I have a bad time paging between different projects too often and prefer doing continuous work for a while before switching back).
smalltorch 3mo ago
Generally agreed with most of the points. Building software that serves you only...and then sharing with others is like serving others. It's good stuff and we need more of it. I'm not sure how the deconversion of his faith needed to be conflated as related to the main ideas, especially when the next point was about weilding technology for good or evil in the next point as if these aren't pre-existing realities of our world or universe.
- TimTheTinker 3mo ago
  Yeah, I wasn't clear how his (lack of) religion/faith related to the theme. I like personal details shared thoughtfully in conference talks, but he structured the talk as if those details mattered to the overall message.
  - flumpcakes 3mo ago
    I think it was trying to find a moral standard that wasn't being set by established places. I think it was showing a level of self-reflection (going through a process of finding your set of principals after leaving an established faith translates very well into questioning the morality of how established software operates). I did find a few things adventuring into the off topic in the video. Considering all the drama lately and certain opinions that always come out with threads on this person, I was thinking "oh no, people aren't going to like this" while watching, despite broadly agreeing with the substance of the message.
- scott01 3mo ago
  This was a prelude to his argument for needing a set of moral standards.
spudlyo 3mo ago
So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such things, often engage in acts of "benevolent noncompliance". Common workarounds are "asking for forgiveness instead of permission", secrecy, and misdirection. Alternately you can confront management and fight for doing what you think is right. These sorts of things can be risky. You can be fired, you can be reprimanded if caught, you can be retaliated against or lose political advantage. In the past, software engineers had a lot more agency than they do now, because nowadays the supply/demand ratio no longer favors software engineers, and as a result we have weaker negotiation power. Now we're more afraid of being fired and not being able to find a job, and managers aren't afraid of us quitting and not being able to replace us. I haven't yet finished the whole thing, but there are sections around dark patterns and other forms of user-hostile software. I'll probably finish it.
- conqrr 3mo ago
  This hits so hard. I used to admire Senior developers who would do this. Now, I find myself in a place where there is no one to do this, and I've taken up to playing this role. It is the hardest job, but I cannot do any thing else as my team is committed to just non-stop slop thanks to management directives. I realize all the time I spent admiring, and now I have become.
  - repeekad 3mo ago
    If the engineers were right the bill will come due on that tech debt eventually. Likely when that happens the company will just spend more than they needed to fixing the issues and no one will be around to say I told you so.
    - wk_end 3mo ago
      The problem is that the counterfactual isn't obvious. The company spends more time - and money - than they needed to fixing those issues, but how do they know? And how do they know that it would've amounted to less if they'd done those fixes sooner? Figuring that out, and figuring it out accurately, is often extremely difficult. A serious attempt might cost more than the fixes. ...and often the amount more isn't catastrophically more, so they don't even think about it. The company might be bleeding from paper cuts, it might be terribly unhealthy because of it, but still not unhealthy enough to kill it.
weinzierl 3mo ago
"Our task as the older generation is to shield the young from those who would exploit their naïveté without infecting them with our own accumulated pain and cynicism." [33:53] stuck with me and is my take away.
- javcasas 3mo ago
  Shield is the wrong word. At some point, the shield must fall, and then the young are no longer young, but are still näive. There will always be exploiters, don't believe that they will die once we manage to shield the young for enough time for the exploiters to die of old age.
  - mdgld 3mo ago
    Shield them long enough to teach them how to defend themselves, maybe?
dijksterhuis 3mo ago
his flagged "goodbye" submission mentioned at the circa 26 minute mark for those who are curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928645 and while i'm not a massive fan of the music (not my kind of electronic) the mentioned Ninajirachi - Infohazard music video really is fucking cool (strobe warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c i definitely feel like my jaded oldtimer critic got called out there. edit -- jfc, from one of the youtube comments > From Ninajirachi, in a RollingStone interview about this song: “I love my computer for a million reasons, but it’s also exposed me to some pretty dubious material when I was far too young to see it. Infohazard is about the first time I encountered a snuff film as a kid. It’s kinda like a rite of passage and loss of innocence moment for people who grew up online. If I’d been in high school a hundred years ago, without ever touching a computer, would I even know things like that existed? I can’t ever really forget about it.”
leecommamichael 3mo ago
> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this just feels mean and divisive from the perspective of a conservative OR a Christian, and I find that to be a message made in poor taste... which is difficult because this is such a potentially inspiring and positive talk. I lost the energy to be inspired by the talk due to this style of messaging, but I don't think you should have to. I'm just a bit thrown off, I guess.
- joshcsimmons 3mo ago
  This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place. I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!
  - zoobaloo 3mo ago
    While I can't speak to the universality or novelty of the world falling apart, I feel the same way. Some people aren't yet in a place to understand this perspective. Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. Some slander the faith based on ignorance or misunderstanding. We're called to forgive our enemies and respond with patience, humility, and compassion. I've found that doing this without losing sight of God's commandments is a struggle that requires daily prayer and reflection. Have a good weekend, and peace be with you.
    - slyall 3mo ago
      A thing you might want to consider is that how "good" a person is is largely independent from their level of religious faith. It is common for religious people to assume they are linked and that a religious person does good deeds because they are faithful while somebody who does bad deeds has less faith. Which leads to an assumption by some that atheists are have no morals and priest are exception good.
helloplanets 3mo ago
In the same vein, Jonathan Blow's modestly named "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko Crazy how time flies, given that talk is seven years old at this point. But could've been given today, with the points being more relevant than ever.
- christophilus 3mo ago
  One of my favorite talks.
- cambaceres 3mo ago
  This concept of knowledge degenerating between generations is relevant for software developmnent of today, since many junior developers have a hard time finding a job and if they do they just prompt the AI until they get a result.
  - sureglymop 3mo ago
    Can't blame them. What they need is a senior dev as a mentor to pass down tacit knowledge and experience. They might not get that even if they can find a job. Then they not only stagnate but simply have to prompt to even deliver anything.
DangitBobby 3mo ago
I'm much more interested in a realistic bang for your buck discussion about software value for effort and diminishing returns rather than a conversation about whether it's possible to build great software. Also notable that not up for discussion was any second order effects about user interaction with software; software always must serve its user in the immediate first order. Why? I suppose it's because if you attempt to examine nth order effects the proposition completely falls apart because the world is much more complicated than "software must serve the end user". Finally, the purpose of software isn't determined by the end user, nor necessarily its author. A user can have their goals, the author(s) theirs, the funding body theirs, and so on. The "purpose" is diffused in this way until what's left is what it does. Saying it _must_ serve the user is a principled stance reflecting a world view, but it's just that. That are other coherent worldviews where software has more than one master. Or no master.
- nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
  Yeah, I generally agree with him but there are plenty of fun counterexamples: 1. You go to the DMV to renew your driver's license at a kiosk there. There's a warrant for your arrest. Should the kiosk serve the user directly interacting with it and print out a new license anyway? 2. Grocery store: should a self-checkout serve the user and give them free groceries? 3. ATM: does the user get free money?
  - flumpcakes 3mo ago
    I think you are concentrating on 'free' too much here. It's not about giving away resources, it's about serving the user. 1. No, a kiosk shouldn't be hooked up to some crime database, it should function exactly as expected in situ. 2. A self-service checkout machine shouldn't 'give away' free stuff, it should however let you pay and leave. 3. An ATM should give the user money from their account - without added charge for the convienance. I think 2 and 3 are bad examples because they actually already exist in the way that Andrew is saying things should exist. If they didn't (for example, they played a 30 second advert before you could checkout) then people would never have started using them. Software/SaaS/startups are much more inclined to use dark patterns and attempt to bleed the users dry (either their cash or their attention) - established conveniences like self checkout and ATMs on the whole just do their job - the general public would NOT accept it any other way. It's a shame the general public don't share the same sentiment when it comes to more glamorous technology.
spongebobstoes 3mo ago
I really enjoyed this. This talk contains a powerful message of optimism, possibility, agency and power that resonates strongly with me. Computers and technology are force multipliers for humanity. As coders, we are lucky to be gifted with such high agency and global reach, all at a fairly affordable price tag. I love computers.
- austy69 3mo ago
  I loved the talk as well. The recommended music video by Ninajirachi was really cool as well! Have a good day fellow computer enjoyer :)
  - qwm 3mo ago
    I found that music video last year, and it blew my mind. So good
flossly 3mo ago
I hope this guy gets an option to inherit the FSF. But in a way that does not diminish his work on Zig.
sporadicism 3mo ago
I didn't find any of the arguments for optimism compelling, even if I wanted to agree with the talk's message. Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession.
- skinfaxi 3mo ago
  > Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession. Can you elaborate on this?
- nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
  What does your alternate timeline look like? Because I'm just imagining if Linux never took off, all internet servers would run Windows or a commercial Unix. That sure sounds like concentrated corporate power to me.
  - senderista 3mo ago
    Nah, if it hadn't been for the SCO lawsuit, BSD would have taken Linux's place. The main difference would have been that copyleft licenses probably wouldn't have gotten much traction.
- voakbasda 3mo ago
  Open source did that. Free software would have helped prevent it.
- abetusk 3mo ago
  [0]: > If you refrain from participating in the software of the commons, the only thing that you're doing is surrendering more of our collective agency to abusive centralized powers. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4&t=1622s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4&t=1622s
  - sporadicism 3mo ago
staticshock 3mo ago
The comments here indicate a surprisingly, in my view, mixed reception, for such an unambiguously good talk? The main thrust is simple: - Technology is not good or bad, it is an amplifier of human values and our collective ambitions. - Those of us who are terrified of where technology is going are actually terrified that humans are, on the net, bad, and technology will amplify that, bringing about dystopia. - Believing this this is self-fulfilling. By embracing such beliefs you surrender your agency, which is what actually brings about dystopia. If you, instead, have a positive vision of humanity, then you are one of the people that drives society forwards rather than backwards. We are currently at a moment in history where this message bears repeating. A lot of things feel unstable, and as a result we have an opportunity to redefine the world in good ways and bad ones. Those who choose to redefine it in ways that are intractably bad will often do so from the point of view of a system observer, not a system participant. This is cope, because in reality everyone, whether they choose to accept it or not, is a system participant.
- vouaobrasil 3mo ago
  I don't really think the main thrust is correct, though, if that's what it really is. Because humans don't have to be bad for tech to bring about a dystopia even under your first premise. They just have to have enough instincts that are even potentially adaptive in times of scarcity that become maladaptive in a high-tech environment for tech to bring about a dystopia. And I don't think that dystopia will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, even if your second premise is correct, because if humans have a sufficient number of instincts to interact with technology to bring about a dystopia, it's very likely to happen whether we believe it or not. Finally, even the majority can be optimistic about humanity or even everyone, and it could still lead to a tech dystopia because of the additive effects of good intentions sometimes adding to bad (see fossil fuel use for example). I don't think we have many opportunities to redefine the world. We're already in a state where people just trying to get by is contributing to the destruction.
- jdub 3mo ago
  A positive vision of humanity alone doesn't bestow personal agency. Personal agency alone doesn't solve structural dystopia.
jasonmp85 3mo ago
[dead]
jwsteigerwalt 3mo ago
After 3 years in a US public company’s IT department between 2013 and 2016, I had been working in private closely help companies with revenue between $100 and $500 million the last few years. Cashflow to invest in good systems and software, but conscious about investments. I recently took a consulting engagement with another US public (pink sheets) company and remembered how dysfunctional some software development structures/cultures are.
aljgz 3mo ago
This is exactly what I needed, ending my work week for the company, and transitioning to working on my own project over the weekend. Good to know I'm not alone, still dreaming of making things that serve people the way they (the people, not the things) want. I hope I can get this out soon
mdgld 3mo ago
Wow. I have been really put off by seeing some of the vitriol he’s spewed lately, but this is a shockingly engaging and simultaneously thought-provoking talk. I’m totally going to riff on this in the future, for something completely unconnected to computer science and with credit, of course.
- staticshock 3mo ago
  What are some examples of his vitriol? I'm not familiar.
  - king_geedorah 3mo ago
    They’re likely referring to his post / thoughts on the bun rust rewrite and specifically those he shared about the lead developer of the bun project and the bun project at large. I would not characterize what he shared as vitriolic, but from the comments when the post was submitted one would get the impression that is not a majority opinion here. https://andrewkelley.me/post/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.html https://andrewkelley.me/post/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.ht...
jdw64 3mo ago
I think Andrew Kelly is just a rockstar. Honestly, I find a lot of his overall perspective hard to understand. I get that he's an idealist. He talks about developers not standing up to management's unreasonable demands, but doesn't he himself receive donations from wealthy people at his foundation? Everything seems contradictory. The concept of 'pure will' is also really hard for me to grasp. It feels like trying to bring Plato's Forms into reality. I always feel like the purity advocates on HN are contradictory. They just try to package their own superiority as purity. Honestly, in what sense are they pure? I don't really get it. Is not using AI somehow superior? Is using a hand drill instead of an electric drill more admirable? I also know that dark patterns undermine user autonomy. But that has clear limits. It's like Prohibition. I understand the criticism of A/B testing in context, but shouldn't we be criticizing Goodhart's law, trying to hit metrics without understanding user behavior, rather than demonizing the tool itself? The younger generation never experienced the open web or software sovereignty. How can they give up system convenience and choose free software? I understand that there are problems arising from the nature of capitalism. And I agree that the world needs ethical brakes. But honestly, what I find hard to understand about this person's argument reminds me of a line from Russian literary criticism: 'Those who praise the land are those who do not farm it. I acknowledge Andrew Kelly's technical achievements are impressive. But honestly, I find it hard to understand the people on HN who keep echoing his words. The Zig foundation runs on sponsorships from big tech companies. The development cost of 'free software' paradoxically comes from the 'excessive profits of monopolistic big tech' that they despise. Kelly's uncompromising will is not actually built on pure individual will alone—it rests on the autonomy provided by a very unique sponsorship structure. Can that really be presented as a universal developer ethic? Ordinary developers don't get $300,000 in sponsorship from anyone. If they refuse a Jira ticket, they could be kicked out of their room next month. I wish he wouldn't speak while erasing his own economic conditions. It's not that developers are evil—they're just working within the system as a condition of survival. Honestly, the fact that he achieved that life through his abilities is admirable. But whether it's right to generalize his own minority experience and insist that everyone should follow it is a different matter. How is that any different from a high-class courtesan telling a cheap one, 'I'm different'? Andrew Kelly's words are just a symbol of vicarious satisfaction for cogs in the machine. Not just me, but the vast majority of programmers live as cogs—solving Jira tickets, chasing deadlines and KPIs. To them, Kelly appears as an icon of rebellion, refusing to compromise with reality and preserving his purity. But the irony of rockstars is always that they are the most devoted to capitalism. When I strip away the halo effect around Andrew Kelly, I can't make sense of the contradictions inside.
adamdb 3mo ago
I once had an argument with a close friend of mine while earning her PHD in a non-computer engineering field. It was about the semantics of "Computer Engineering" and "Software Engineering", or any variant involving computers. Her argument was that every (virtually, I think?) other engineering discipline requires a certificate after graduation to ensure their competency. Every since then I've also argued for similar industry standard certifications for Computer and Software Engineers. I was a hiring manager for over a decade at a well known MNC, so I can attest that this doesn't, or didn't exist (since the global mass-layoff). I tried to improve interview standards in the past and help establish some forward momentum, but pulling-the-ladder-up and biased-hiring-practices have made this even more elusive. Edit: I know there are some certifications that may be required by some software engineers, computer engineers, etc. But this is limited to critical/near-failure-proof systems. Which I willing to wager is less than 1% of those employed in these fields.
- rererereferred 3mo ago
  There was one teacher/dean who was adamant at getting the career out of the "engineering" area at my country's universities and that "Software Engineering" should not exist as a career. One funny interaction I remember, MariaDB's Monty came to give a talk and he asked "If one wants to help with MariaDB should they be a software engineer or a computer scientist?" Monty's answer was "you just need to know C."
newsomix9xl 3mo ago
Why isn't software better is a complex question and can be a matter of market forces. For example, who remembers a company that sold buggy software and made you a beta tester, then sold the fixes to their customers as updates? Clearly they had discovered or created an incentive to write "bad software", push testing onto users, and sell the fixes. Bad software or smart business? Look at Rock stars GTA V Online a money printing machine: still has bugs. Are we to assume they are incapable of fixing them? Or that there is no market for doing so. People play anyway. The "developers are no good" is a red herring that blames individuals who are doing what they are told to do, or not do.
mindwok 3mo ago
Props to Andrew for a refreshing and optimistic message in what is an increasingly uncertain and scary industry to be in. Appreciate you Andrew!
scott01 3mo ago
This is an amazing and inspiring talk. Humanising and empathetic, especially when compared to the vast majority of other related content.
Borborygymus 3mo ago
As an old school Free Software kinda guy, I was a little shocked at the lack of enthusiastic support for "if you do not own the source code, you are not in control". From where does this apathy come?
dzonga 3mo ago
people like Andrew give me hope - that they're smart people out there with a moral compass.

252 points by signa11 3mo ago

fellowniusmonk 3mo ago

Crazy to see how many people miss 26:15.

gregdaniels421 3mo ago
This comment is on a part of the video on Free Software Disillusionment, where people don't want to have their code ingested and used by AI. Andrew's thingy is basically that if you don't participate in open source there won't be high quality code for others/yourself in the future. People generally don't like the AI using their code for a few reasons, one is replacement, like an AI can just copy your project without attribution. Two is that it feels like you are providing value for a soulless corporate machine without compensation. If a person uses your code you get maybe happy that it was useful and maybe something cool gets made out it. If an AI uses your work it feels like you just did free labor. I don't feel like Andrew made any particularly great points, but comments both here and on the youtube link have mentioned really liking that point.
- fellowniusmonk 3mo ago
  This "theft" is not a new argument, and its always been run by people who have a vested interest in killing open-source or who aren't part of it. In 2001 I had a guy at Oracle tell me it was a suckers game to write open source code. I've had M$ heads tell me ruby was a joke that would never amount to much because you couldn't use it in a "real business". I've had bad phil bros tell me in 2004 that open source was "anti american communism bullshit". It's ok to be a humanist and not a corporatist. It's ok to show generosity. It's ok to reject the crab bucket framing. Some of us are mature enough to be ok living in a better world even if still imperfect.
  - nz 3mo ago
    The argument is not just "theft", and to the extent that "theft" is a part of it, it is not the most important part, not by large margin. The reason that "theft" is not a solid argument, is because people creating open-source often distribute it for free themselves. Piracy is not the issue. The issue is that all attributions get stripped away by the LLM (even in cases where it is trivial to avoid). For example, as a test, I asked DeepSeek to tell me how one can do an exact substring-boolean-test in Common Lisp, and it gave me code that was, character for character, _identical_ to the code that appears in Seibel's Common Lisp Book. It clearly memorized the code. It stands to reason, that it could have also memorized where it saw it, and been trained to tell the user that the code was from that book (which is NOT in the public domain, despite being free to read on the internet)[0]. To give you an analogy, nobody has a problem with someone downloading and distributing the public domain works of Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or Karl Marx, etc. But to remove their names from those works, and placing your (or someone else's) name on them instead, is plainly malicious behavior. Such behavior needs to shunned. LLMs (I believe) _can_ be trained to not plagiarize. They do not have to be original, nor to use public domain training-data, they just have to give attribution (which, as far as I can tell, requires little more than a corpus and a stack of similarity-measures). I suspect that they are not trained this way, because fully automated plagiarism creates an ambiguous situation, where a copyleft license (like GPL or EUPL etc) can be unknowingly violated, and there is hardly any trace of the violation. Plagiarism is the product. [0]: Such attribution can only make LLMs _more_ useful and _more_ widely and confidently integrated into workflows. The lack of such attributions, risks diluting the value of open source projects, as (1) a high-signal indicator of skill and achievement, and (2) a way to ensure the provenance and quality of the code (both very important, if you are considering to build a business on top of one or more such projects). Just look at all those repos that claim to have "made" Minecraft-like game or Unix-like OS, when all they did was have an LLM plagiarize the code for them. This is a kind of, at best, spam and, at worst, fraud.
    - fhdkweig 3mo ago
      In addition to giving credit where credit is due, attribution is important for verifying the trustworthiness of "facts". When someone tells me they asked a LLM and it says xxxxx, I want to know did it get it from a bad source, or worse, hallucinated it from thin air. And if it turns out to be good information, I might want to check out other things the guy has written. At least with the old school web search engines, you got a hyperlink that you could use to find out more. Now the only way to learn more is to keep asking the LLM more questions. There is no way to get from the LLM to a source outside the LLM.
  - bee_rider 3mo ago
    Although, I do with these LLM companies would be better about licensing their derivative works (the models) under GPL, when they ingest GPL’d code.
- as1mov 3mo ago
  > I don't feel like Andrew made any particularly great points, but comments both here and on the youtube link have mentioned really liking that point. What they completely missed was that LLMs are a golden opportunity for the corpo-ratfuckers to completely work around the issue of those pesky OS licenses. Who cares if it's GPL/AGPL, just run it through the slop machine and everything is fine. Open-source doesn't exist in a vacuum, they rely on inherently restrictive licenses to force corporations into contributing back instead of just sucking up everything.
- wannabe44 3mo ago
  [dead]

mikewarot 3mo ago

So, today I'm one of the lucky 10,000[1] who finally understands what "black pilled" actually means. (Edit: The video explains what black pilled means) As a mapper[2], that knowledge now gets subconsciously checked for matches and usefulness against all the other chunks of knowledge I'm fairly certain of. The first thing that popped out (and there will be more over the next 24+ hours) is that y'all are black pilled about computers and security. You believe, incorrectly, that computers can't be safe AND secure AND easy to use all at the same time. I believe otherwise, and this might help convey that at some future point. Currently my best hope is that the upcoming release of Genode offers a way forward. Their roadmap[3] features this line when describing the upcoming release Sketch of a capability-based desktop environment Right now, that's where my hope rests, it's been a LONG time coming, but I think Genode might become a widely used OS if they can pull it off. If they can break enough people out of being black pilled, that is. [1] https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ [2] https://garden.joehallenbeck.com/container/mappers-and-packers https://garden.joehallenbeck.com/container/mappers-and-packe... [3] https://genode.org/about/road-map https://genode.org/about/road-map

listic 3mo ago
I expected the link [1] to be to the explaination of what "black pilled" means, but only because I already read and remember xkcd 1053.
- newsy-combi 3mo ago
  Blue pill: The supplier of the thing you want is friendly and has your best interest in mind. (Suppliers can be corporations, government, the opposite sex,...) Red pill: The supplier is corrupt and should be treated as such. Black pill: You can't win against the corrupt supplier. White pill: You can win/convert the supplier/find a good one in a sea of bad ones/find a complete alternative.
  - listic 3mo ago
    Oh. It's the essence of the common meaning of it, right?

jagadaga 3mo ago

I watched 8 minutes and feel like my time was wasted. Thank you. Yeah, we always knew how to build reliable software, but it's expensive.

dang 3mo ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive, shallow criticisms? So far all 3 of your comments have been of this sort, and we're trying for more thoughtful conversation here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Don't be snarky."
- jagadaga 3mo ago
  No problem. I love you.
nz 3mo ago
Unreliable software is also expensive. Rather, building reliable software is incompatible with a management policy that rewards and punishes people based on KPIs (basically leading indicators). The concept of KPIs is fine, but they should (a) be actual indicators of progress, and (b) be kept secret from employees (so that we can avoid or mitigate Goodhart's Law). Both of those things are difficult, because you need a rigorous statistical model of what correlates, and you need to keep that model a secret, while also changing the KPIs periodically, to prevent employees from intuitively overfitting. That whole process would be very expensive (and if it would not, why is nobody doing it). Furthermore, software that is reliable, is also software that is done (in the sense that AVL Trees, and ZFS, and DTrace, and ZSTD, and slab allocators are done -- they are very close to perfect, and require minimal changes, related to compilers and kernels and computer architectures). A team that builds reliable software, is a team that cannot be "managed". What exactly is there to manage?
- jagged-chisel 3mo ago
  > … kept secret from employees [to] mitigate Goodhart's Law While I empathize with the need for mitigation, secret goals and milestones are an excellent way to mistreat employees and eliminate morale.

keinzirp 3mo ago

Does anyone know what the "discord alternative" is that Andrew says he's working on at the end[0] of the video? [0]: https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4?si=45knBo2Hsy_6wjEM&t=2092 https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4?si=45knBo2Hsy_6wjEM&t=2092

some_furry 3mo ago
https://codeberg.org/awebo-chat/awebo https://codeberg.org/awebo-chat/awebo
- keinzirp 3mo ago
  Thank you!
- kristoff_it 3mo ago
  (reposting my comment from lobsters) For anybody reading, the project tracks new Zig to get all the new async I/O goodies but was hit by some regressions in Zig's translate-c because it recently became fully independent from LLVM. Other contributors and I took this as an opportunity to contribute some fixes to translate-c and in my case I also switched for a bit to my other projects, mainly https://zine-ssg.io https://zine-ssg.io, which I had neglected for a few months while going all-in on awebo. I plan to resume development of awebo in a month or two, I just want to leave Zine in a good spot before switching again (I have a bad time paging between different projects too often and prefer doing continuous work for a while before switching back).

smalltorch 3mo ago

Generally agreed with most of the points. Building software that serves you only...and then sharing with others is like serving others. It's good stuff and we need more of it. I'm not sure how the deconversion of his faith needed to be conflated as related to the main ideas, especially when the next point was about weilding technology for good or evil in the next point as if these aren't pre-existing realities of our world or universe.

TimTheTinker 3mo ago
Yeah, I wasn't clear how his (lack of) religion/faith related to the theme. I like personal details shared thoughtfully in conference talks, but he structured the talk as if those details mattered to the overall message.
- flumpcakes 3mo ago
  I think it was trying to find a moral standard that wasn't being set by established places. I think it was showing a level of self-reflection (going through a process of finding your set of principals after leaving an established faith translates very well into questioning the morality of how established software operates). I did find a few things adventuring into the off topic in the video. Considering all the drama lately and certain opinions that always come out with threads on this person, I was thinking "oh no, people aren't going to like this" while watching, despite broadly agreeing with the substance of the message.
scott01 3mo ago
This was a prelude to his argument for needing a set of moral standards.

spudlyo 3mo ago

So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark. Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such things, often engage in acts of "benevolent noncompliance". Common workarounds are "asking for forgiveness instead of permission", secrecy, and misdirection. Alternately you can confront management and fight for doing what you think is right. These sorts of things can be risky. You can be fired, you can be reprimanded if caught, you can be retaliated against or lose political advantage. In the past, software engineers had a lot more agency than they do now, because nowadays the supply/demand ratio no longer favors software engineers, and as a result we have weaker negotiation power. Now we're more afraid of being fired and not being able to find a job, and managers aren't afraid of us quitting and not being able to replace us. I haven't yet finished the whole thing, but there are sections around dark patterns and other forms of user-hostile software. I'll probably finish it.

conqrr 3mo ago
This hits so hard. I used to admire Senior developers who would do this. Now, I find myself in a place where there is no one to do this, and I've taken up to playing this role. It is the hardest job, but I cannot do any thing else as my team is committed to just non-stop slop thanks to management directives. I realize all the time I spent admiring, and now I have become.
- repeekad 3mo ago
  If the engineers were right the bill will come due on that tech debt eventually. Likely when that happens the company will just spend more than they needed to fixing the issues and no one will be around to say I told you so.
  - wk_end 3mo ago
    The problem is that the counterfactual isn't obvious. The company spends more time - and money - than they needed to fixing those issues, but how do they know? And how do they know that it would've amounted to less if they'd done those fixes sooner? Figuring that out, and figuring it out accurately, is often extremely difficult. A serious attempt might cost more than the fixes. ...and often the amount more isn't catastrophically more, so they don't even think about it. The company might be bleeding from paper cuts, it might be terribly unhealthy because of it, but still not unhealthy enough to kill it.

weinzierl 3mo ago

"Our task as the older generation is to shield the young from those who would exploit their naïveté without infecting them with our own accumulated pain and cynicism." [33:53] stuck with me and is my take away.

javcasas 3mo ago
Shield is the wrong word. At some point, the shield must fall, and then the young are no longer young, but are still näive. There will always be exploiters, don't believe that they will die once we manage to shield the young for enough time for the exploiters to die of old age.
- mdgld 3mo ago
  Shield them long enough to teach them how to defend themselves, maybe?

dijksterhuis 3mo ago

his flagged "goodbye" submission mentioned at the circa 26 minute mark for those who are curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928645 and while i'm not a massive fan of the music (not my kind of electronic) the mentioned Ninajirachi - Infohazard music video really is fucking cool (strobe warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c i definitely feel like my jaded oldtimer critic got called out there. edit -- jfc, from one of the youtube comments > From Ninajirachi, in a RollingStone interview about this song: “I love my computer for a million reasons, but it’s also exposed me to some pretty dubious material when I was far too young to see it. Infohazard is about the first time I encountered a snuff film as a kid. It’s kinda like a rite of passage and loss of innocence moment for people who grew up online. If I’d been in high school a hundred years ago, without ever touching a computer, would I even know things like that existed? I can’t ever really forget about it.”

leecommamichael 3mo ago

> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently. Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this just feels mean and divisive from the perspective of a conservative OR a Christian, and I find that to be a message made in poor taste... which is difficult because this is such a potentially inspiring and positive talk. I lost the energy to be inspired by the talk due to this style of messaging, but I don't think you should have to. I'm just a bit thrown off, I guess.

joshcsimmons 3mo ago
This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place. I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!
- zoobaloo 3mo ago
  While I can't speak to the universality or novelty of the world falling apart, I feel the same way. Some people aren't yet in a place to understand this perspective. Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. Some slander the faith based on ignorance or misunderstanding. We're called to forgive our enemies and respond with patience, humility, and compassion. I've found that doing this without losing sight of God's commandments is a struggle that requires daily prayer and reflection. Have a good weekend, and peace be with you.
  - slyall 3mo ago
    A thing you might want to consider is that how "good" a person is is largely independent from their level of religious faith. It is common for religious people to assume they are linked and that a religious person does good deeds because they are faithful while somebody who does bad deeds has less faith. Which leads to an assumption by some that atheists are have no morals and priest are exception good.

helloplanets 3mo ago

In the same vein, Jonathan Blow's modestly named "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko Crazy how time flies, given that talk is seven years old at this point. But could've been given today, with the points being more relevant than ever.

christophilus 3mo ago
One of my favorite talks.
cambaceres 3mo ago
This concept of knowledge degenerating between generations is relevant for software developmnent of today, since many junior developers have a hard time finding a job and if they do they just prompt the AI until they get a result.
- sureglymop 3mo ago
  Can't blame them. What they need is a senior dev as a mentor to pass down tacit knowledge and experience. They might not get that even if they can find a job. Then they not only stagnate but simply have to prompt to even deliver anything.

DangitBobby 3mo ago

I'm much more interested in a realistic bang for your buck discussion about software value for effort and diminishing returns rather than a conversation about whether it's possible to build great software. Also notable that not up for discussion was any second order effects about user interaction with software; software always must serve its user in the immediate first order. Why? I suppose it's because if you attempt to examine nth order effects the proposition completely falls apart because the world is much more complicated than "software must serve the end user". Finally, the purpose of software isn't determined by the end user, nor necessarily its author. A user can have their goals, the author(s) theirs, the funding body theirs, and so on. The "purpose" is diffused in this way until what's left is what it does. Saying it _must_ serve the user is a principled stance reflecting a world view, but it's just that. That are other coherent worldviews where software has more than one master. Or no master.

nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
Yeah, I generally agree with him but there are plenty of fun counterexamples: 1. You go to the DMV to renew your driver's license at a kiosk there. There's a warrant for your arrest. Should the kiosk serve the user directly interacting with it and print out a new license anyway? 2. Grocery store: should a self-checkout serve the user and give them free groceries? 3. ATM: does the user get free money?
- flumpcakes 3mo ago
  I think you are concentrating on 'free' too much here. It's not about giving away resources, it's about serving the user. 1. No, a kiosk shouldn't be hooked up to some crime database, it should function exactly as expected in situ. 2. A self-service checkout machine shouldn't 'give away' free stuff, it should however let you pay and leave. 3. An ATM should give the user money from their account - without added charge for the convienance. I think 2 and 3 are bad examples because they actually already exist in the way that Andrew is saying things should exist. If they didn't (for example, they played a 30 second advert before you could checkout) then people would never have started using them. Software/SaaS/startups are much more inclined to use dark patterns and attempt to bleed the users dry (either their cash or their attention) - established conveniences like self checkout and ATMs on the whole just do their job - the general public would NOT accept it any other way. It's a shame the general public don't share the same sentiment when it comes to more glamorous technology.

spongebobstoes 3mo ago

I really enjoyed this. This talk contains a powerful message of optimism, possibility, agency and power that resonates strongly with me. Computers and technology are force multipliers for humanity. As coders, we are lucky to be gifted with such high agency and global reach, all at a fairly affordable price tag. I love computers.

austy69 3mo ago
I loved the talk as well. The recommended music video by Ninajirachi was really cool as well! Have a good day fellow computer enjoyer :)
- qwm 3mo ago
  I found that music video last year, and it blew my mind. So good

flossly 3mo ago

I hope this guy gets an option to inherit the FSF. But in a way that does not diminish his work on Zig.

sporadicism 3mo ago

I didn't find any of the arguments for optimism compelling, even if I wanted to agree with the talk's message. Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession.

skinfaxi 3mo ago
> Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession. Can you elaborate on this?
nvme0n1p1 3mo ago
What does your alternate timeline look like? Because I'm just imagining if Linux never took off, all internet servers would run Windows or a commercial Unix. That sure sounds like concentrated corporate power to me.
- senderista 3mo ago
  Nah, if it hadn't been for the SCO lawsuit, BSD would have taken Linux's place. The main difference would have been that copyleft licenses probably wouldn't have gotten much traction.
voakbasda 3mo ago
Open source did that. Free software would have helped prevent it.
abetusk 3mo ago
[0]: > If you refrain from participating in the software of the commons, the only thing that you're doing is surrendering more of our collective agency to abusive centralized powers. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4&t=1622s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4&t=1622s
- sporadicism 3mo ago

staticshock 3mo ago

The comments here indicate a surprisingly, in my view, mixed reception, for such an unambiguously good talk? The main thrust is simple: - Technology is not good or bad, it is an amplifier of human values and our collective ambitions. - Those of us who are terrified of where technology is going are actually terrified that humans are, on the net, bad, and technology will amplify that, bringing about dystopia. - Believing this this is self-fulfilling. By embracing such beliefs you surrender your agency, which is what actually brings about dystopia. If you, instead, have a positive vision of humanity, then you are one of the people that drives society forwards rather than backwards. We are currently at a moment in history where this message bears repeating. A lot of things feel unstable, and as a result we have an opportunity to redefine the world in good ways and bad ones. Those who choose to redefine it in ways that are intractably bad will often do so from the point of view of a system observer, not a system participant. This is cope, because in reality everyone, whether they choose to accept it or not, is a system participant.

vouaobrasil 3mo ago
I don't really think the main thrust is correct, though, if that's what it really is. Because humans don't have to be bad for tech to bring about a dystopia even under your first premise. They just have to have enough instincts that are even potentially adaptive in times of scarcity that become maladaptive in a high-tech environment for tech to bring about a dystopia. And I don't think that dystopia will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, even if your second premise is correct, because if humans have a sufficient number of instincts to interact with technology to bring about a dystopia, it's very likely to happen whether we believe it or not. Finally, even the majority can be optimistic about humanity or even everyone, and it could still lead to a tech dystopia because of the additive effects of good intentions sometimes adding to bad (see fossil fuel use for example). I don't think we have many opportunities to redefine the world. We're already in a state where people just trying to get by is contributing to the destruction.
jdub 3mo ago
A positive vision of humanity alone doesn't bestow personal agency. Personal agency alone doesn't solve structural dystopia.

jasonmp85 3mo ago

[dead]

jwsteigerwalt 3mo ago

After 3 years in a US public company’s IT department between 2013 and 2016, I had been working in private closely help companies with revenue between $100 and $500 million the last few years. Cashflow to invest in good systems and software, but conscious about investments. I recently took a consulting engagement with another US public (pink sheets) company and remembered how dysfunctional some software development structures/cultures are.

aljgz 3mo ago

This is exactly what I needed, ending my work week for the company, and transitioning to working on my own project over the weekend. Good to know I'm not alone, still dreaming of making things that serve people the way they (the people, not the things) want. I hope I can get this out soon

mdgld 3mo ago

Wow. I have been really put off by seeing some of the vitriol he’s spewed lately, but this is a shockingly engaging and simultaneously thought-provoking talk. I’m totally going to riff on this in the future, for something completely unconnected to computer science and with credit, of course.

staticshock 3mo ago
What are some examples of his vitriol? I'm not familiar.
- king_geedorah 3mo ago
  They’re likely referring to his post / thoughts on the bun rust rewrite and specifically those he shared about the lead developer of the bun project and the bun project at large. I would not characterize what he shared as vitriolic, but from the comments when the post was submitted one would get the impression that is not a majority opinion here. https://andrewkelley.me/post/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.html https://andrewkelley.me/post/my-thoughts-bun-rust-rewrite.ht...

jdw64 3mo ago

I think Andrew Kelly is just a rockstar. Honestly, I find a lot of his overall perspective hard to understand. I get that he's an idealist. He talks about developers not standing up to management's unreasonable demands, but doesn't he himself receive donations from wealthy people at his foundation? Everything seems contradictory. The concept of 'pure will' is also really hard for me to grasp. It feels like trying to bring Plato's Forms into reality. I always feel like the purity advocates on HN are contradictory. They just try to package their own superiority as purity. Honestly, in what sense are they pure? I don't really get it. Is not using AI somehow superior? Is using a hand drill instead of an electric drill more admirable? I also know that dark patterns undermine user autonomy. But that has clear limits. It's like Prohibition. I understand the criticism of A/B testing in context, but shouldn't we be criticizing Goodhart's law, trying to hit metrics without understanding user behavior, rather than demonizing the tool itself? The younger generation never experienced the open web or software sovereignty. How can they give up system convenience and choose free software? I understand that there are problems arising from the nature of capitalism. And I agree that the world needs ethical brakes. But honestly, what I find hard to understand about this person's argument reminds me of a line from Russian literary criticism: 'Those who praise the land are those who do not farm it. I acknowledge Andrew Kelly's technical achievements are impressive. But honestly, I find it hard to understand the people on HN who keep echoing his words. The Zig foundation runs on sponsorships from big tech companies. The development cost of 'free software' paradoxically comes from the 'excessive profits of monopolistic big tech' that they despise. Kelly's uncompromising will is not actually built on pure individual will alone—it rests on the autonomy provided by a very unique sponsorship structure. Can that really be presented as a universal developer ethic? Ordinary developers don't get $300,000 in sponsorship from anyone. If they refuse a Jira ticket, they could be kicked out of their room next month. I wish he wouldn't speak while erasing his own economic conditions. It's not that developers are evil—they're just working within the system as a condition of survival. Honestly, the fact that he achieved that life through his abilities is admirable. But whether it's right to generalize his own minority experience and insist that everyone should follow it is a different matter. How is that any different from a high-class courtesan telling a cheap one, 'I'm different'? Andrew Kelly's words are just a symbol of vicarious satisfaction for cogs in the machine. Not just me, but the vast majority of programmers live as cogs—solving Jira tickets, chasing deadlines and KPIs. To them, Kelly appears as an icon of rebellion, refusing to compromise with reality and preserving his purity. But the irony of rockstars is always that they are the most devoted to capitalism. When I strip away the halo effect around Andrew Kelly, I can't make sense of the contradictions inside.

adamdb 3mo ago

I once had an argument with a close friend of mine while earning her PHD in a non-computer engineering field. It was about the semantics of "Computer Engineering" and "Software Engineering", or any variant involving computers. Her argument was that every (virtually, I think?) other engineering discipline requires a certificate after graduation to ensure their competency. Every since then I've also argued for similar industry standard certifications for Computer and Software Engineers. I was a hiring manager for over a decade at a well known MNC, so I can attest that this doesn't, or didn't exist (since the global mass-layoff). I tried to improve interview standards in the past and help establish some forward momentum, but pulling-the-ladder-up and biased-hiring-practices have made this even more elusive. Edit: I know there are some certifications that may be required by some software engineers, computer engineers, etc. But this is limited to critical/near-failure-proof systems. Which I willing to wager is less than 1% of those employed in these fields.

rererereferred 3mo ago
There was one teacher/dean who was adamant at getting the career out of the "engineering" area at my country's universities and that "Software Engineering" should not exist as a career. One funny interaction I remember, MariaDB's Monty came to give a talk and he asked "If one wants to help with MariaDB should they be a software engineer or a computer scientist?" Monty's answer was "you just need to know C."

newsomix9xl 3mo ago

Why isn't software better is a complex question and can be a matter of market forces. For example, who remembers a company that sold buggy software and made you a beta tester, then sold the fixes to their customers as updates? Clearly they had discovered or created an incentive to write "bad software", push testing onto users, and sell the fixes. Bad software or smart business? Look at Rock stars GTA V Online a money printing machine: still has bugs. Are we to assume they are incapable of fixing them? Or that there is no market for doing so. People play anyway. The "developers are no good" is a red herring that blames individuals who are doing what they are told to do, or not do.

mindwok 3mo ago

Props to Andrew for a refreshing and optimistic message in what is an increasingly uncertain and scary industry to be in. Appreciate you Andrew!

scott01 3mo ago

This is an amazing and inspiring talk. Humanising and empathetic, especially when compared to the vast majority of other related content.

Borborygymus 3mo ago

As an old school Free Software kinda guy, I was a little shocked at the lack of enthusiastic support for "if you do not own the source code, you are not in control". From where does this apathy come?

dzonga 3mo ago

people like Andrew give me hope - that they're smart people out there with a moral compass.