Also, not just followers. There’s a kinda “merchant” behaviour too I think … signalling and trading in hype perspectives.
But to be fair, I’m not sure what the average dev/eng is supposed to do against a climate of regular change, many disparate opinionated groups with disparate tech stacks, and, IMO a pretty ~~pure~~ poor engineering culture of actually weighing the value of tech/methods against relevant constraints and trade offs.
Indeed, likely a useful lens on the current moment I’d say.
For better/worse, and whether completely so or not, the time of the professional keyboard-driven mechanical logic problem solver may simply have just come and gone in ~4 generations (70 years?).
By 2050 it may be more or less as niche as it was in 1950??
Personally, I find the relative lack of awareness and attention on the human aspect of it all a bit disappointing. Being caught in the tides of history is a thing, and can be a tough experience, worthy of discourse. And causing and even forcing these tides isn’t necessarily a desirable thing, maybe?
Beyond that, mapping out the different spaces that are brought to light with such movements (eg, the various sets of values that may drive one and the various ways that may be applied to different realities) would also certainly be valuable.
For me I’m vaguely but persistently thinking about a career change, wondering if I can find something of more tangible “real world” value. An essential basis of which being the question of whether any given tech job just doesn’t hold much apparent “real world value”.
Agreed. And I feel it fair to argue that this is the intended interface between proprietary software and its users, categorically.
And more so with AI software/tools, and IMO frighteningly so.
I don’t know where the open models people are up to, but as a response to this I’d wager they’ll end up playing the Linux desktop game all over again.
All of which strikes at one of the essential AI questions for me: do you want humans to understand the world we live in or not?
Doesn’t have to be individually, as groups of people can be good at understanding something beyond an individual. But a productivity gain isn’t on it’s a sufficient response to this question.
Interestingly, it really wasn’t long ago that “understanding the full computing stack” was a topic around here (IIRC).
It’d be interesting to see if some “based” “vinyl player programming” movement evolved in response to AI in which using and developing tech stacks designed to be comprehensively comprehensible is the core motivation. I’d be down.
Having intentionally stayed away from going down the PDF rabbit hole, but now confronting it again recently … what’s the deal with how sparsely populated the space is with solid and (relatively) light weight rendering solutions/back-ends?
Am I missing something or am I right in thinking that there’s a kinda pandoc/FFmpeg shaped hole in the document tooling space that no one wants to (or can’t) fill? Where tex and chrome based solutions are arguably just too heavy for a number of needs but all we really have?
> But choosing the right team is part of being a successful business man.
Sure, but it becomes hard to distinguish luck from talent. How would you know that an up and coming but talented PR person didn’t pick him? Or that was random?
It’s the major flaw with idolisation. Ends and means aren’t that tightly coupled. Against the utility of idolising someone, is the noise worth it? Ever?
> I am a big Musk critic, but I think his rise demonstrates a genius for hype and PR. The amount of free media and cheap capital that Tesla got was extraordinary, and I think that was down to Musk.
A big falsifying hypothesis from this would be to predict that there are NOT any high-up PR staff of notable quality that have been around him for a long time.
If the PR people around him evince no particular talent for it and have been in constant flux for the duration of Musk's career such that he is the only constant, then yea, there'd probably be something to this.
Otherwise, if there is at least one person that was in his inner circle for a critical period of time that can also be said to have strong PR talent, then it's questionable ... sometimes success is having, on top of other things, the right team.
> If I had to make a prediction, it's that this will make experienced developers more productive, but it won't turn juniors into seniors.
This is my take away too in the short term. Thing is, this isn’t harmless.
Seems like a new ceiling is about to be cast and if you happen to find yourself above it, or young enough to have time to adapt, you may be fine. But if you’re too junior to use AI well or to be valuable in your own right, you’re in trouble.
While you’re still trying to work out the components of a tech stack, a senior dev will be learning whole new languages and tech stacks faster than before.
But to be fair, I’m not sure what the average dev/eng is supposed to do against a climate of regular change, many disparate opinionated groups with disparate tech stacks, and, IMO a pretty ~~pure~~ poor engineering culture of actually weighing the value of tech/methods against relevant constraints and trade offs.