I've been slowly transitioning from using an ORM to just plain SQL. It's so much simpler. Less magic, more explicitness, and more control. Also, much better performance. I think the thing is to construct your model around the different queries you need to perform. In many cases, especially a CRUD-type situation, you'll end up with 10-20 different SQL queries, and that's it.
> make developers 2x, 5x, 10x as productive on stuff that matters
What does this even mean? Is this about speed of development? Is this about headcount? LoC? How are coding agents contributing to productivity in places like GitHub, Shopify or Meta? I mean companies that already have an established product. I really wanna understand this because I'm not seeing that GitHub's product suddenly became so much better than it was 2 years ago, so where's all that productivity going?
> society is just going to stay stable and they're going to be safe?
I think this ties in with the rise of racism over the last two decades. Historically, antisemitism has been instrumentalized by the elites in order to deflect animosity from the lower classes: "look, it's not us that are robbing you blind, it's the Jews!"
I see the same thing happening today in the Western world. The elites are squeezing more and more of our countries' wealth, turning governments them into hollow sources of rent, while at the same time backing corrupt politicians who tell us our misery is all because of (illegal) immigrants.
> the people that are cheering for it need to really consider what they're cheering for.
Indeed. To me if there's one reason to oppose the use of AI technology, it is political. Sadly, the SWE class (if it can be called that), being better off than the majority of humans on earth, seems to care very little for class issues and inequality in general, maybe out of self-interest. But as you said, the machine will be coming for them too, it's just a question of when, not if.
To me the blocker with using coding agents is having to rely on a paid external service. Are there any local models that are good enough to be used for coding?
I think it is hard for citizens to understand how precarious it feels to be an immigrant in the present political climate in the US and Europe. I'm a permanent resident in France, I'm white, I have a EU passport, I have a job, I'm OK. But, my naturalization request has already been denied twice, because I couldn't provide some arbitrary document the government demands, and they keep changing the rules, just for the fun of it or so it seems, it's quite insulting.
I really feel for immigrants that are less fortunate than me. we all just want to have dignity, find a job (anyway the low-paying jobs are done by immigrants) and provide for our kids. What's wrong with that? How is this taking advantage of our host country?
Frankly, the present discourse around African/Arab immigration seems to me to resemble a lot the kind of rhetoric around the millions of Jewish Russian immigrants who fled pogroms to Poland and western Europe a 120 years ago. I find the similarities quite striking. The blatant racism, the conspiracy theories, the fascist propaganda, all in order to whitewash (pun intended) a corrupt regime of thieves and sycophants. Absolutely disgusting!
I'm recently seeing more and more Ruby projects that are at least partly vibe-coded, and I'm kind of torn. On the one hand I appreciate that this allows people to create stuff that they maybe wouldn't have the time to do otherwise. On the other, the code itself makes it harder for people to contribute, especially those, like me, who don't use coding agents.
Where are the interface boundaries? Why are there methods that are 200 lines long? This is not a dis at the author, and it's not really about "code quality" per se, whatever that means. It's just that if someone would like to study the code and be able to improve it or add features, how would one go about it? Does this mean you have to use a coding agent in order to contribute? I felt the same about the recent Ruby compiler from matz [1]. The code looks impenetrable. What does this bode for the future of OSS?
I think the title is appropriate and is probably meant as a double entendre. The US does seem to be declining in many ways. Personally, visiting the US under the present government just feels too risky, they seem really hostile to foreigners.
> continues to be such a consistent source of bugs - many with serious security implications... just feel that io_uring is a questionable example.
Are you saying this as someone with experience, or is it just a feeling? Please give examples of recent bugs in io_uring that have security implications.
I find the whole premise of writing some vague instructions, feeding them to a stochastic parrot and expecting a solid engineering process to materialize out of the blue quite ridiculous.
Any sufficiently advanced "AI" technology is indistinguishable from bullshit.
> The liquidity that flooded the tech sector didn’t just inflate valuations; it inflated teams, egos, and expectations.
Yes it's kind of obvious to anyone who's looking at the actual work being done: the constant churn of OS updates, the JS-framework-du-jour, apps being updated constantly...
It seems to me like a lot of this is just busy work, as if engineers need to justify having a job by being releasing inconsequential updates all the time. Bullshit jobs anyone?
I for one would really like things to slow down, we all deserve it!