I somewhat agree here, but not entirely. I think that in technical conversations it's much better to say llm, diffusion model, transformer, etc. But overall it's all Latin to the layman anyway. The use of AI as a marketing term is what I think is causing OP frustration, it's being marked as a panacea when it's far from it, but when is it ever? Social media was marketed as a life changing good for society too.
Any conversation about AGI, does make me cringe. What an absolutely silly and moonshot thing to be having discussions about.
Yeah it's fairly disheartening that it often comes down to leetcode. We're really failing our entire profession with that trash. There are crafts that have been around for hundreds of years that don't have to put up with the nonsense we do. We build things, not solve logic puzzles. I stare at that crap for 10 seconds and go back to working on projects. I wonder how many capable developers just throw in the towel for this very reason?
Personally if I get meds and it helps I'll spend my time finishing and releasing projects, that'll be what will make me stand out. For now I will keep following my therapist's advice and working on being a stable and happy person.
I wonder what your perspective would have been if you were living in the time of AT&T's monopolistic dominance. Would have that dominance have seemed inevitable and unchangeable?
I think it's better to not give into the hindsight bias and imagine an internet worth rebuilding. The giants who wrap their tendrils around our time and attention should be ripped to shreds. They don't deserve their power seeing as they use it to pedal division and addiction.
I think what I define as the "trash" in this is all the stuff the attention economy wants to boost. It's never stuff that makes you think or teach you something meaningful. All you need to do is spend 5 minutes on TikTok to get what I mean. That is certainly much different from the 90s internet. Engagement is the internet's biggest, heaviest ball and chain.
Existing inside a media hype bubble does wonders for traction, but it's not the only way a platform gains users. It also happens when your friends keeps linking you to the posts they read on it.
Twitter is looking more and more like a dead mall with the most insane possible management. Diehard shoppers huddled the last couple active sections.
This is not good the internet. But the further consolidation is on Elon's hands, not metas. If want a healthy internet back it's gonna take bell labs levels of antitrust enforcement, which won't be happening. Twitter will likely be flattened under the weight of their clear technical superiority in the sector.
I think that threads is gonna be more successful than people realize. bluesky and mastodon are both still just novelties because it's neigh impossible to migrate social media audiences. Even if Oprah has a mastodon that's not really gonna do much of the platform is fragmented and empty.
Personally, I am enjoying using threads. Insta has been my only real social media presence for a while now and there are people in my feed already posting entertaining stuff. It means threads gets a huge headstart.
In addition to this, Meta dwarfs Twitter as an organization both in numbers and technical talent, especially after Musk's immature firing spree. I don't think any emergency service accounts will be getting rate limited on their threads account.
Meta smells blood in the water and is doing what any good mega corporation does and capitalizing on it.
It makes sense to me that good web developers would be multifunctual enough to implement a solution based on the complexity of the required design. React is conversely way too complicated for a lot of the stuff that's easy to do in HTMX, so you should be able to do both in my opinion.
Yeah I think this ties into not only the fact that we are highly paid, but also how unions generally form. When everyone works at a factory and have similar positions, you can stand outside and hand out flyers and have face to face conversations. With programmers, you might have a few others on your team that match your job description, then PMs, managers, designers, etc. Imagine trying to get a portion of the engineers at a midsize company together and you won't even have enough power to do anything but get yourselves fired.
To me, this is why if you want a more ethically bound software industry, you need regulation, not unionization.
Any conversation about AGI, does make me cringe. What an absolutely silly and moonshot thing to be having discussions about.