Where did software go wrong? (2020)

https://blog.jse.li/posts/software/

by cute_boi • 4 years ago

146 165 4 years ago

blog.jse.li

Where software went wrong was in attempting to automate human processes as found, instead of as (very drastically) simplified in order to (A) take advantage of the things machines are better at and (B) be maintainable.

arminiusreturns• 4 years ago

Copyleft foss for the user, this is the future.

hulitu• 4 years ago

" We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use"

Then why is it increasingly difficult for humans to _use_ a computer.

And no, Android and iOS devices are not computers, just like the washing machine is not a computer. They are toys.

Joker_vD• 4 years ago

Washing machines are toys? Why?

jujube3• 4 years ago

I guess this is why they include all the warnings against climbing in. (Do not do this, you will die)

maximus-decimus• 4 years ago

Because computers lost the war against phone/tablets and so software is oriented towards phones/tablets.

And the computer software that did survive has to do rent seeking (SaaS) because investors love it.

subradios4• 4 years ago

Investors love SaaS because customers love SaaS. Every day they pay for o365 instead of figuring out libreoffice. The alternatives exist, but they are less fully featured, less well integrated, and harder to learn.

Why?

Because all those extra niceties cost money that Microsoft can pay programmers to work on instead of hacking on arduinos or whatever else they'd do in their free time.

SaaS is just patreon that works. You pay the organization that builds it money every month, and you get a constant stream of updates and support.

hourago• 4 years ago

Q: What does software do? A: It produces and reproduces capital. Q: Who does software benefit? A: People who own capital.

This makes a lot of sense. If we want better software (less dark patterns, less loot boxes, etc.) we need to change society rewards. If the companies that earn more profits are the ones that exploit human weaknesses then the world resources will be dedicated to them. If we want better software, or even less software and more other things, society needs to reward those activities. If it pays more to work for a crypto exchange or the next data-stalking start-up than to cure cancer then most of the knowledge people will work on them. Governments exists to regulate society and set rewards and punishments, we currently reward data gathering so it is what we get.

I can imagine a future were more resources are dedicated to extract value from people and less to produce products and services. And it is a red queen race. More resources call for more resources to be used, like an arms race it has no end unless there is a society will to end it.

TuringNYC• 4 years ago

There is an old joke that the US government cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas because it would "cost too much" primarily. Yes, a lot of cap-ex, but it would have also employed an army of Physics and other PhDs (2000+ staff.) The cost was in the single digit billions.

The joke goes that all those PhDs had to find work, and found well-paying jobs on Wall St, created exotic derivatives, and blew up the world. Then we paid hundreds of billions to solve the 2008 financial crisis.

tawaycrypto• 4 years ago

Not only that developed countries/NGOs blame developing countries for investing in science related projects. They think money is wasted.

My country gets this crap all the time.

wizardforhire• 4 years ago

Spoiler alert:

It’s funny because it’s true.

ecpottinger• 4 years ago

Well, my friend study in university for Nuclear Physics, yet ended up working for the Toronto Stock Exchange programming monitoring software of the trades.

They also paid a full year's bonus for working in December for Y2K, so yes, there is the money.

jfkfmgmvmvm• 4 years ago

$2 billion had already been spent with only a tunnel bored. Officials said it needed $12B more. It was a money pit. Many scholars were against it.

Mountain_Skies• 4 years ago

The story I've heard is that Congress was wary of the growing deficit and gave the president a choice of going forward with either TSSC or ISS. The political optics of a space station are much better than those of a super collider and there was still a desire to have aerospace projects for former Soviet scientists to be engaged in so they wouldn't end up working for a terror state. Had TSSC been picked over ISS, those Wall Street quants might have been kept busy underground in Texas but the folks who created the International Space Station would have been left to find their own opportunities, with unknown consequences.

ArnoVW• 4 years ago

On YT there's a science history documentary Channel "BobbyBrocoli". He did a trilogy on the SSC saga. Recommend it (and his other docs) :

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVzGpznw1U

pmarreck• 4 years ago

The truth is reversed. Software eliminates work; that is, it makes people more productive by making the boring parts of their jobs automated, which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders). The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary.

LesZedCB3• 4 years ago

The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary

that would be true if you had no understanding surplus value. i highly recommend you at least try and read the first few chapters of Marx's Capital, which was quoted directly in the article.

notice profits are skyrocketing while wages are dead? "rising tide raises all ships" economics is dead.

SQueeeeeL• 4 years ago

which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders)

We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people, those individuals have not magically captured any of the productivity gains of the 21st century, in fact they're probably unemployed because the low skill job that would've existed now has been automated.

Trickle down economics is such a farcical scam made by those who benefit from it, it makes me unironically proud of my country's propaganda machine that people are drinking the neoliberal gospel so hard, it'll make the next few decades a lot funnier.

galaxyLogic5• 4 years ago

I don't think software is capitalist or communist is it? Software is like steam-engines. Like you say it eliminates work, like steam-engines did.

Software is just a technology, which can be used for good and bad, like most things.

ytygg775• 4 years ago

If it pays more to work for a crypto exchange or the next data-stalking start-up than to cure cancer then most of the knowledge people will work on them.

Building stronger morals could also help.

shanebellone• 4 years ago

Moral high ground is low intelligence.

662587649495439• 4 years ago

Stronger morals, perhaps, but also redirecting the collective moral compass from favouring the individual to favouring the collective. Today, one can feasibly frame working for a megacorp for $$$ as morally just to provide one's own family with a comfortable, safe life. Morality focused on the individual.

Things like effective altruism seem to be an attempt at redirection, but they have their own problems. Until someone or something succeeds with redirection, having stronger morals will only make the problem worse.

namaria4• 4 years ago

This is just yet another "if people would be just so" brand of wishful thinking.

rightbyte3• 4 years ago

I would say both who benefits and who pays is key.

So it is better for me if it is X Corp's stockholders who benefit money wise and I who pay, than some spyware company like Google paying.

The problem is that companies now seem to want to make me pay and still take money from Google et al. Like Samsung's TVs. Or Microsoft becoming like Google in their consumer products.

There probably need to be some regulation in the IoShit space to keep it from eating away all "dumb" spyware free devices.

randomdata5• 4 years ago

If it pays more to work for a crypto exchange or the next data-stalking start-up than to cure cancer then most of the knowledge people will work on them.

Curing cancer would be infinitely more profitable than yet another crypto exchange. But humans are greedy. They won't wait for the big payday when a metaphorical marshmallow is dangling in front of them. Even holding out for the rewards of a crypto exchange is more than most people can handle. Most people will indulge in the not-so-tasty treat in front of them as soon as someone offers them a mediocre job.

Governments exists to regulate society and set rewards and punishments

That may be true of an authoritarian regime, but under democracy, as I imagine most of us here are, government does not regulate society. It regulates individuals who try go against society. Society defines expectations, government cleans up those who refuse to comply. If the general public interest turns one way government can step in to ensure that the remaining people are brought into line, but a (democratic) government will not lead the charge.

cowl4• 4 years ago

That may be true of an authoritarian regime, but under democracy, as I imagine most of us here are, government does not regulate society. It regulates individuals who try go against society. Society defines expectations, government cleans up those who refuse to comply.

That is not what most of us want in a democracy otherwise we would never go forward. Our society expects the government to Lead and not simply comply with the current mood. That is the problem we have now when every action is calculated on short term election result and not long term benefit for the whole society. If a democratic government were supposed to only enforce the majority expectations we would never change those expectation and our view of what is right/wrong.

borbulon2• 4 years ago

Curing cancer would be infinitely more profitable than yet another crypto exchange.

I'm interested to know why you think this.

7steps2much2• 4 years ago

Curing cancer would be infinitely more profitable than yet another crypto exchange.

Treating an illness is even more profitable than curing it though

DrScientist7• 4 years ago

Curing cancer would be infinitely more profitable than yet another crypto exchange. But humans are greedy. They won't wait for the big payday when a metaphorical marshmallow is dangling in front of them.

The problem is the NPV calculations - tying you money up from 15 years before you see a return in a high risk sector ( where most things fail ) - doesn't make mathematical sense.

What makes mathematical sense is to rely on optimists to try anyway and then buy them at the right time when you can get the most return on your investment.

This is what a company like Pfizer does - it goes around buying innovative companies - taking the products and sacking the people [1]. They are extremely successful - but if everybody behaved like that we'd be fcked.

( I over emphasise for effect - but broadly true )

DrScientist7• 4 years ago

Yep.

Another way to look at it is markets are very powerful local optimisers - so if you rely on them exclusively you end up trapped in a rut.

Everyone hooked on naturally produced molecules that activate opioid receptors via your dark reward patterns, or indeed on synthetically produced and injected versions is not necessarily a globally optimal solution.

The job of government is to make sure the external costs, that are not immediately felt by the markets, are applied.

So the cost of addiction is put back on the sources of it, or the costs of pollution makes it's way back to the polluters.

That's what in essence good regulation is.

Obviously centrally deciding what's best for everything is of course doomed to failure - it's a massive under utilisation of talent and too centralised control is far too easy to lead to corruption and stagnation.

The trick is to find the right balance - and the right balance is a pragmatic one - not a clean ideological one - but you have to embrace that complexity, not try to over simplify.

So "wasting" money - with multiple people working on the same thing, or things that fail - is actually essential for innovation - markets work.

But at the very same time, it is important to have the confidence to state the obvious and take centralised action.

So if you leave the dealing of climate change to short term capital markets alone - you are signing up to it being much much worse before it get's any better. Something that you can avoid with collective action.

marcosdumay• 4 years ago

markets are very powerful local optimisers

At their best days, when everything goes right.

One of the tasks of a government is to keep markets that way. Current governments seem not very interested on that task, worldwide.

indigochill• 4 years ago

unless there is a society will to end it

This is another retreat into passing the buck to a non-entity that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982377 alludes to in talking about where "software" went wrong. Society doesn't exist in a practical sense, it's just a word that refers to a collection of individuals (and the culture/etc that those individuals share).

Individuals can do things like donate to free open source projects to keep incentives aligned with their users.

Tangentially...

Governments exists to regulate society and set rewards and punishments, we currently reward data gathering so it is what we get.

I'd say governments exist to regulate specifically violence (e.g. punish citizens who use it in an unauthorized manner against each other). Other stuff like interstate highways are cool too, but they're easier to negotiate in a federated way than e.g. regulation of violence between states would be (short of just having states go to war with each other).

Towards the end of regulating violence, surveillance is super useful. And this is why we cannot leave tech decisions in the hands of government either, because they have incentives going to the very core essence of government to build a surveillance state.

Kinrany2• 4 years ago

If government regulates violence, it also necessarily authorizes violence. There's no neutral way to make the choice of which violence to authorize.

mikewarot• 4 years ago

We went wrong in the 1970s, when a stripped down clone of Multics (without capability based security -- CabSec) grew in popularity and outgrew it. That basic lack of a system that can allow the user to securely and transparently manage what resources are to be given to a program is at the root of all the evil (mediocrity?) that follows.

Imagine you have a wallet, and you aren't allowed to take coins or bills out of it, you simply must hand the whole thing to someone else, and trust they only withdraw the right amount. This is what computers are like without CabSec.

In the 1970s, the personal computer started to become popular. Because home computer users didn't share systems, or network them, and data was stored on write protectable floppy disks, the lack of CabSec wasn't an issue.

Think of each floppy disk as a separate "wallet" from the above

It really wasn't a problem in corporate settings, or even in the early years of shareware, etc. Users were technical enough to know what data was going where, and manage things appropriately. Most locations still only had separate computers, and used diskettes to move data, via sneaker-net.

It's when you got to installing software that things started deteriorating. You suddenly couldn't really have a bunch of separate areas to store your data and programs on. It all became one all-important "wallet".

Then the internet came, and internet access became the standard, instead of internet connections. This moved things further out of the control of the users.

It's all worse in each iteration, now everything is out of your hardware, and into a single "2FA" system that is based around your smartphone. If you lose it, you could lose everything. It's the worst possible single "wallet".

DerekL• 4 years ago

Title need (2020).

pfoof• 4 years ago

We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use.

No, we write code under pressure with deadlines for yesterday, multiplying technical debt and making another person who will inherit our project question their life choices.

monero-xmr2• 4 years ago

Startups love to save the world, but look at the state of the world now—is this what it’s like to be saved? Is the world even a little bit better because of startups like Instagram, Uber, and Peloton? Startups are spaces of remarkable innovation, and they are experts at channeling the multivoicedness of code—just look at the network of voices that GitLab channels (visualized below). But under capitalism, these voices are distorted and constrained, and they cry “growth, growth!” as venture capitalists and founders demand user acquisition, market share, and revenue—in a word, they demand access to capitalist accumulation.

Imagine a world where everyone starts with exactly the same resources and access to identical education. There are no parental differences. Even in this scenario, because of the variability in humans, some will be predisposed to save money while others spend it right away, some will study hard while others spend all day hanging out with friends, some will be natural leaders that organize people and others will be followers.

There is no such thing as equality - none. No two people are equal and no system, even an absolute authoritarian nightmare, can enforce equality. Inequality is natural and expected.

Capitalism is the natural order - it's an emergent phenomenon. People save money, invest it into other good ideas, they get more money, they reinvest it, and on and on. Eventually giant pools of money form to reduce risk, smooth returns, and enable professional investors to act on behalf of less-sophisticated ones. This results in pension funds, sovereign wealth, and a small number of individually rich people.

The best you can do is forcibly take money from people and businesses and redistribute it. The best and fairest way to do this IMO is a straightforwards flat tax, but the tax code always and everywhere results in a Gordian Knot of favored industries, tax breaks, arbitrary taxes to attack some perceived enemy, and on and on.

There will never be a permanent revolution against capitalism, just temporary fits like in Cuba and Russia that eventually die off. Capitalism is a reflection of human wants - the innate desire to own your own stuff. Everything else fans out from the fundamental desire for private property.

AlotOfReading2• 4 years ago

The entirety of human history until the late medieval/early medieval period, all those hundreds of thousands of years existed without capitalism despite resource inequality. It can be hard to see beyond the dominant social structures we see around us every day, but don't confuse them for inevitabilities. Things will eventually change and whatever replaces the current structures will seem just as obviously inevitable to our descendents.

goatlover4• 4 years ago

But the thousands of years of civilization prior to capitalism were quite unequal with a wealthy ruling class and slavery.

hsn9152• 4 years ago

In all these thousands of years, capitalism existed. People traded with other countries. Those who got into trade got rich. People who were allied with the ruling class were rich. The people who were rich used their wealth to accumulate more wealth. It was pretty much the same as today in terms of the pareto distribution of power and wealth.

bobkazamakis• 4 years ago

There is no such thing as equality - none. No two people are equal and no system, even an absolute authoritarian nightmare, can enforce equality. Inequality is natural and expected.

No shit sherlock. Nobody is asking for a magical world where everyone is the exact same god fearin' american as the last -- the point is to create systems that aim to create as equal OPPORTUNITIES as possible. Nobody is asking for equal outcomes. If you want to parrot talking points, you need to brush up on what you're stuffing the scarecrow with.

tored• 4 years ago

Natural order is not necessary something we want, it can be, but not always.

Capitalism would be fine with private monopolies for instance, but from a market economy perspective that would be bad.

amelius5• 4 years ago

Even in this scenario, because of the variability in humans, some will be predisposed to save money while others spend it right away

Solution: make money expire after e.g. 12 months.

automatic6131• 4 years ago

You will own nothing and be happy <:o)

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

Then people will just trade using something else which serves as a store of value.

I often wonder how people can’t understand how that is one of the most important things it takes for something to be considered “money”. Once it loses that people will immediately exchange it for something else and society will just use shells as a medium of exchange.

Also your “solution” is for the “problem” of people deferring consumption. I honestly can’t see how anyone would see that as a problem.

argentier2• 4 years ago

Ironically this is a Marxist argument, more or less.

But it lacks the historical dimension. Capitalism is a historical and technological phenomenon. One of the replies talks about it emerging in the Late Middle Ages. Of course it existed previously, in the form of a landed aristocracy, but the potential for concentration of capital didn't exist.

With the industrial revolution concentration of capital created the order we live under today. To describe it as natural is an unhappy choice of words. It is certainly engaged in the large-scale subjugation and destruction of nature.

Concentrated capital turns the machine up: it exponentially increases inputs and outputs, ramps up the engine, increases production, consumption, everything. It is a system that may be completely unsustainable.

You deal with the benefits of the system: good ideas, smooth returns, sophisticated investors. I don't see any appreciation of the costs: increasing inequality, environmental damage, immiseration of people in developing countries.

There may never be a permanent revolution against capitalism: it will simply be impossible to sustain.

monero-xmr2• 4 years ago

Several things to unpack here.

Regarding the environment, every single action a human does, from building huts to skyscrapers, affects the environment. I don’t see the earth as a living creature, I see it as a ball of rock. If humanity went extinct, in the blink of an eye all the damage and changes we did to the earth would be meaningless. I want to keep the environment amenable to humans only because I want humans to exist - the earth is not a goddess, it is unthinking and unfeeling matter.

Regarding developing countries, more people in the last 100 years were lifted out of poverty than in all time, and that was directly because of capitalism.

Marx was a good philosopher and historian. However I fundamentally disagree with the labor theory of value, because all value is subjective. There is no direct mapping between labor cost and value to the consumer, labor is simply an input cost. You can create something with enormous value with very little labor.

goatlover4• 4 years ago

I don't see any appreciation of the costs: increasing inequality, environmental damage, immiseration of people in developing countries.

How is capitalism increasing inequality over what came before? There is more environmental damage now because there are a lot more of us with a lot more powerful technologies. But humans have always altered their environments to make them more suitable. One could argue that we (and our hominid cousins) became an invasive species once we started migrating out of Africa.

And if the developing countries are developing, it sounds like the people are becoming less immeserated over time.

dsego• 4 years ago

Capitalism is the natural order - it's an emergent phenomenon.

So is war and taking things by force. The strong prevail and the weak perish.

camdenlock• 4 years ago

What a dreadful Marxist way of viewing something so dynamic and interesting, something that has and continues to delight many of us, not to mention provide us with the means of living incredibly lavish lives by the standards of our forebears.

Software deserves much better than this myopic nonsense.

LesZedCB3• 4 years ago

care to be more specific?

for example, imagine how much MORE comfortable and wealthy we would be if all productive activity was channeled straight back into public projects, instead of through the business owners and then ostensibly downward?

samarthr1• 4 years ago

Well, what will end up happening is, instead of the money going to business owners, and then ostensibly downwards, it will go to the government officials and then ostensibly downward.

Either way, there will be corruption and losses. The question then arises, which is better off on average for society, and which is better on average for _me_. If the two align, I vote for what is better for society.

Double_a_92• 4 years ago

if all productive activity was channeled straight back into public projects

How do you get people to even contribute to those projects? And who decides what good projects would be?

Why should the flawed concept of a planned economy suddenly start working for software development specifically?

jongjong4• 4 years ago

Our monetary system is designed to facilitate unlimited compounding interest and returns; this necessarily leads to centralization and monopolization which leads to a monoculture across all industries. I wouldn't be surprised if the same force which drives monoculture in agriculture is also responsible for monoculture in the software industry. The winners (first movers) tend to keep on winning - They just have to get it right the first time and after that they will keep winning most of the time regardless of what they do; whatever they push out into the markets.

I think it's wrong to say that software is capital but software and the people who use it certainly follow capital very closely.

Why do so many people use Uber? Because the investors are/were subsidizing the rides (making them cheaper). Why do people use Apple iPhones? Because it allows people to use money-saving apps like Uber. Why do people use Google search? Because its result pages are loaded with products which are subsidized by big investor funding like Uber. Why did Windows become so popular? Because all the big investor money was being spent on building games and programs for Windows (and also, big-money IBM gave them that huge contract). The infinitely compounding wealth of the richest investors decides everything. Most peoples' decisions regarding which software they use is determined by where the big money is being spent. Those who are getting all the big money can afford to lower their profit margins and the monetary surplus can facilitate an entire ecosystem to grow around them. These sometimes poorly designed but well-funded software systems and ecosystems starve funding from better alternative ecosystems and thus starves them of developers which starves them of users.

On one side you have extremely wealthy companies which can sell or lease software solutions which are very cheap and low-margin (because these companies have so much surplus capital coming in from other channels) and on the other side, you have poor consumers who need to squeeze every penny to get by. This is the recipe for a winner-takes all economy.

Just look at cryptocurrency; almost all the developers are working on Bitcoin or Ethereum. Not because they're the best (they're both horrible to develop for and integrate with) - They're simply able to attract developers because that's where the big investor money is and developers and their users are just constantly chasing the money with laser precision.

Also, underlying all this, there is a constant force of peer-pressure which subtly nudges people towards solutions which are backed by big money. Big money can buy both respect and trust.

subradios4• 4 years ago

The best criticism and praise is not that consumers are scraping by. It is that the businesses that take their money have such a strong value proposition that the consumer prefers that value to cash.

What we do not have an answer for in capitalist thought, are businesses that rely on human failure - take the five blade razor. We have spent millions and millions of dollars on single use plastic to save a month of occasionally nicking our neck. That is not a failure of a sociological system, that is a failure of humans.

Big money stays big by producing value, unfortunately humans are observed as having stupid values on a near constant basis, yes, even me - especially me!

bombolo• 4 years ago

Big money stays big by producing value

But mostly by offering no choice.

galaxyLogic5• 4 years ago

Why do people use Apple iPhones?

There are many old movies where the plot revolves around "communication breakdown". Some creepy character is following you? Hey just call 911 with your cell-phone. The movie just lost its plot. Even Paul Pelosi being attacked by a crazy Trump supporter was able to get saved by using his cell-phone.

People use cell-phones because it helps them.

epicureanideal• 4 years ago

Even Paul Pelosi being attacked by a crazy Trump supporter

This turned out not to be true. The attacker wasn’t a Trump supporter.

amelius5• 4 years ago

Why do people use Apple iPhones? Because it allows people to use money-saving apps like Uber.

Which also exist on other platforms like Android.

jongjong4• 4 years ago

Which people also use and which also controls a substantial chunk of the smartphone OS market.

maria2• 4 years ago

I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is, so it's a bit premature to say where it went wrong. The author says that "Software is not creative." This may be true, but software is a creation. And currently it is created in the most crude and rudimentary way possible.

There are a lot of creative people out there. Writing software today is too hard. It takes too much knowledge and too much work. If writing a game was as easy as creating a TikTok video, imagine how much creativity would exist within the realm of software.

mattpallissard• 4 years ago

The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now and ai/ML generated code which is young.

I wonder if there will be another approach or if those approaches will get polished to a workable state.

CRConrad3• 4 years ago

The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now

That has been around for at least thirty-five years. If it were going to lead anywhere, it would have, by now.

and ai/ML generated code which is young.

I'm expecting more of a repeat than a difference.

uejfiweun• 4 years ago

I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is...

Yes, agreed. Software is that magic dust that produces behavior. It's the technology that enables things to react to their environments. All life runs a form of software, you could say. Software will only increase in prevalence and importance as society continues to demand machines to behave in a certain way.

It strikes me that articles like this are more gripes against the development process of software rather than the end product. The end product did not "go wrong" and is in fact at the peak of complexity and usefulness, and this peak will continue to get higher and higher until we reach the singularity.

LesZedCB3• 4 years ago

i don't think the author is saying the process of software is not creative, but that software as software is not creative. software is not creative because it's static. any new data consumed by software isn't reincorporated into a new repetition of the software itself, but simply regurgitated slightly wrong.

though, i actually disagree, it's just incorporated by the desiring-machines creating the software. :) pegging "software" to a static entity i think is flawed as it is in fact always changing, even in a simple machine-producing-machine system of a CD pipeline.

RHSman2• 4 years ago

"Software is not creative." It is a hard implementation of creativity. Like a song on Spotify (or any other listening format) is creativity, all wrapped up and finished.

There are of course creative ways to do things. I am working with two software companies that have a problem to solve. One tries to fix the problem (a very hard problem) and is unsuccessful, the other knew it was very hard and hacked it in a way that the people got what they needed. Proper genius thinking and a super creative way of getting the solution that is required.

lifeisstillgood• 4 years ago

I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy and I love the concept of commits as a "conversation" between authors.

I think we probably will end up treating software as legal text (it will likely be as impactful) and the changes that will wrought are interesting ...

AlotOfReading2• 4 years ago

I like to view software as pure thought that happens to be encoded in a weird, formal structure, very much analogous to writing and poetry. It's been a very useful perspective for me in a lot of ways and the parallels are substantial.

It also implies a much vaster realm of "software thinking" filled with things like uxntal and colorforth than currently exists in the world. Instead, most people (myself included) spend the majority of our time writing corporate memos in passive voice.

RunSet• 4 years ago

I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy

The meaning of "computer literacy" is further diluted with each passing day. An equivalence: Imagine if the meaning of "literacy" was reduced to being able to use the Taco Bell menu to place an order, given the assistance of accompanying illustrations.

I recommend reading this if you have not already:

https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles...

forthorbor• 4 years ago

This is a really good read, I only wish they covered more about open source as that is in conflict with their conclusion around software being capital.

hsn9152• 4 years ago

I have no idea what this essay is tryig to say, but it seems to be sort based on leftist/marxist premises?

I mean, look at this:

- He thought the internet was going to get rid of "hateful" ideologies, to which I say, "lol what?"

- He thought Trump tweeting things is proof that software is gone wrong

- He complains about "Capital" at the end of the essay

The whole essay seems to be a typical incomprehensible leftist terminology filled mumbo jumbo. I remember reading this kind of material when I took "Communications 101" in University, where nothing ever made sense.

I guess I'm surprised this essay has so much engagement on HN.

There are many things wrong with software and the startup culture; this essay doesn't even remotely touch any actually substantial point what those things are.

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

Yeah, this was really disappointing - things have gone very, very wrong with software, but this author is either unaware or uninterested in any of the actual reasons.

nathias2• 4 years ago

Software didn't go 'wrong', people just decided monopolies are a good thing and stopped braking them up.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

Because we have better methods now. Rather than break up Apple, the EU knows they can just force Apple to do the right things when they don't naturally happen.

We don't need the free market of 100 alternative products to have user respecting software. We can just legally mandate it. Right now the software and products we have are extremely good and keep getting better. Tech companies aren't just sitting on a legacy of old stuff collecting rent, they are actively investing and keeping their status by simply being the best.

nathias2• 4 years ago

it's this kind of stupidity that the planet must now pay the price for

gorjusborg• 4 years ago

Yes, and in the U.S., corporations are legally people (with outsized influence due to their sums of money).

So said another way, 'corporations decided monopolies are a good thing'.

yshklarov• 4 years ago

We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use.

Prime example of a "deepity".

jacksonkmarley• 4 years ago

What is the point of this? To me this reads like contentless wordplay, some random software-insider negativity with a bit of anti-capitalism thrown in. I didn't really find any interesting points worth engaging with either positively or negatively.

TBH I would have just downvoted this if I could. If you're scanning comments before reading, don't bother with it.

lucidguppy• 4 years ago

When I start to see walls of text I power scroll through the article to see headings and conclusions.

I can quickly see if the article is written with me as the audience or if someone else is the intended reader.

If you find the right technologies - starting up a company to do whatever "should" be done has never been easier.

Software is capital? I don't even get this at all... why shouldn't startups be rewarded if they produce something people want?

This article is written for people way smarter than me. I don't know who he's trying to convince.

kbelder• 4 years ago

This article is written for people way smarter than me

It's really, really not.

tezza• 4 years ago

+1. The article is disappointing throughout because its purpose seems to be posturing and name checking trendy learned stuff. Circular logic abounds.

Is it angry with code or capitalism or the human condition? You get the impression all three. Solutions? never looked at

It also ends with the ultimate cop out:

  Q: What is the solution? (paraphrased)
  A: I don’t know

commandlinefan3• 4 years ago

I would have just downvoted this

I don't flag much on here, but I flagged this one.

onion-soup• 4 years ago

Micro Services

amelius5• 4 years ago

A modern Linux system works as a bunch of microservices (systemd).

Which is quite successful, so this can't be it.

strken• 4 years ago

Software in its natural state is not scarce, is freely copyable instead of transferable, and is not capital; just like the ability to start a fire or shear a sheep are not capital.

Ownership over software is scarce and transferable. The thing that lets you use software as productive capital is the exclusive right to it. That right is entirely manmade.

argentier2• 4 years ago

That's code rather than software.

Just because you copied the cookbook doesn't mean you now own a restaurant.

Especially in compute-intensive activities such as neural nets/ML, capital is very much a factor.

martincmartin• 4 years ago

(2020)

friend_and_foe• 4 years ago

I think all these types of questions and statements do a good job assuming a disconnect between software and the real world, between humans and the systems we build. If I build a bridge and it collapses, nobody asks "where did bridge building go wrong?" If I cut corners on a bridge and it doesnt collapse, and create a culture of doing this such that other builders also do it, if I normalize misaligned incentives to those that pay me rather than those that drive on my bridge, and then they all start to collapse, we don't talk about bridge building failing us all. We talk about what we did, our behavior and what it caused.

The state of software, computing, social media, information availability, human rights on the internet, these are all because we, as in you and me, built something we knew was wrong for a paycheck, or at the very least overrepresented our skillset for a paycheck and delivered crap and swindled our employers and their customers. And questions like "where did software go wrong" are our way of passing the buck to a non entity, it's cowardly, it's pathetic, and every one of us, you and me, should take responsibility for what we have done, I mean literally, specifically, not some general collective truism, if not publicly at least when we look in the mirror by ourselves, and understand our role in the current state of the world, and either decide not to do it anymore or accept what we are.

heresie-dabord• 4 years ago

The OP's complaint:

The magic disappeared and our optimism has since faded. > Our websites are slow and insecure; > our startups are creepy and unprofitable; > our president Tweets hate speech; > we don’t trust our social media apps, webcams, or voting machines. > And in the era of coronavirus quarantining, we’re realizing just how inadequate the Internet turned out to be as a home of Mind.

That's a mixed bag of laments about products and sociological phenomena. People using computers and software were supposed to solve all these problems?

this mess, this tool-assisted speedrun of accumulation and exploitation

This is all of human history. It's a hard course in the frequent application of inhumane principles and failure to understand scale and sustainability. "Software" was never going to change human nature.

Where did it all go wrong?

So, the OP's question itself is, at best, not an unworthy question but an incomplete question. The software industry was never going to "go right". You may as well ask "where human society went wrong".

Or whether human society has ever gone right, at scale.

throwaway9870• 4 years ago

The glass is half-full or half-empty. We have websites and can do things I never dreamed of as a child. When I had to do product research when I was younger it meant going to a book store and pursuing a rack of magazines. Google was a startup, Amazon was a startup. I would not call them unprofitable. Back when I was young you had companies like SUN, SGI, MIPS as startups, where are they now? Our president tweets? Direct communication to people without it being filtered by N layers? I bet every president has said hate speech behinds the scene at some point. Now the curtain is being lifted. I consider that good, actually, incredible. If you think sitting in your house alone during COVID would have been better without having the internet, then just turn it off. But I don't know anybody who came to that conclusion.

In the modern world people seem to criticize things that are not perfect. That is fine to notice those things, but to let them sway your entire outlook is unhealthy and, in many cases, wrong.

Can we do better? Yes, I think so. But I don't think we are doing nearly as bad as the picture you paint.

I think the biggest problem is that the Internet accelerated change to a speed that people are not accustomed to. It might take a couple generations to adapt.

borbulon2• 4 years ago

Software is at once a field of study, an industry, a career, a process of production, and a process of consumption—and only then a body of computer code.

This is so, so, so, so true. It's rarely how software is implemented, though.

chiefalchemist• 4 years ago

Software is for people

It is also by people. History proves we are pretty flawed bunch. We bat around .500.

Software is also a means. It is not an ends. It's misguided to expect a means to miraculously accomplish some ends.

The ends is a function of the people utilizing the means. Did I mean we are a known to be flawed bunch?

jrochkind12• 4 years ago

There's a paragraph in the middle that is hard to read because it keeps changing and overwriting itself in an animated fashion.

Is that intentional, or is something going wrong with my browser? Directly above the video preceding the "Who does software benefit" heading.

jrochkind12• 4 years ago

But we can break this pattern; we can find our own answers to those questions, and if it’s up to us, the answer does not need to be that answer we’ve been taught, capital.

Can we, without changing the environment we are embedded in, without changing capitalism?

Under capitalism, all economic activity is increasingly subsumed by quest for increasing capital -- and under neo-liberal capitalism, all activity is increasingly economic activity, to better serve the quest for increasing capital (to open up more places for investing capital).

I think we can and should resist it, that's fine. I think it's good to recognize and point out what we're losing, and to urge resistance, as OP does, I'm not critisizing OP at all.

It's just to have any chance of success, we probably have to talk about the system we are embedded within and how to change that too, not just limit ourselves to software production as an imaginary closed system.

A different tack: I suppose for software production to escape becoming nothing more than capital intended to benefit people who own capital while reproducing capital -- software production would have to try not to be an economic activity, since all economic activity in our system ends up the former. Software production that was not economic activity was the original fantasy of many involved in original open source software production, I think literally exactly that. That... is now how it's gone. Why not? Would be a starting point for extending the locus of focus from software production on it's own to the social-political-cultural system of capitalism it is embedded in.

wellanyway• 4 years ago

Quoting Soviet philosophers, Marx... Making no actual claims or actually proposing to do anything except "capitalism bad". Typical left "wisdom".

Where did software go wrong? (2020)

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