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Comment by meowkit | Hacker News Reader

As I get older myself, this brand of cynicism seems to be a projection of death anxiety or possibly the "loss of innocence" where grand visions of how the world ought to be were not met.

1996 was 24 years ago. You are totally correct that the progress and change in this period has been incredible on the historical scale. But 24 years on the timeline of a human life is quite a significant portion, and some may feel that their expectations of futuristic utopia have been subverted, making them cynical.

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25! Happy new year!

>> some may feel that their expectations of futuristic utopia have been subverted, making them cynical.

i know i do!

lot's of stuff about the future sucks, and i can't think of a way to fix anything important with faster garbage collection or better type systems... maybe that's the difference between makers and cynics. i guess i'll try harder :p

> and i can't think of a way to fix anything important with faster garbage collection or better type systems

I can, I am very hopeful better type systems will help heal the absolutely dreadful state of software robustness.

Better types (and by extension, better type systems) help eliminate many costly tests, improves knowledge transfer from senior engineers to junior engineers, makes refactoring and adapting to changing requirements a much less error-prone process where the computer can guide you, provides a more rigid way of breaking down problems into chunks instead of a procedural approach where good boundaries are harder to intuitively determine.

While education is what enables people to write better code with them, we need better type systems and languages that make this process easier for the average programmer to learn and use. Already languages like TypeScript, Kotlin and Swift are slowly getting many people to take a gander over the brick wall by exposing them to constructs like sum types and specific patterns like optionals and either/result types, that should fuel a little bit of hope at least!

EDIT: That's some visceral reaction. Would be nice to see some disagreement stated in text, or if any particular point needs further explaining, or to see if just hope of things improving is what's angering people.

heh, well, by "important" i meant like freedom, justice, and the continued existence of humanity. but like i was saying up-thread, i think software quality is important, and in that sense, ubiquitous and accessible type safety definitely seems like a Good Thing. i guess they might even help keep us out of trouble in those "important" areas.

EDIT: actually, you kinda cheered me up :)

I see (at least) two technological trends that may strongly influence "important" problems and that may be interesting to compare:

"3d-printification" or democratisation of manufacturing capabilities. When advanced manufacturing become cheap, generic and small scale you need less capital to create and design important hardware.

"UX-ification" of advanced programming practices or democratisation of software creation capabilities. When advanced software design, composition and implementation becomes cheap, generic and scalable you need less capital to create/design/implement software and to be in control of the software you want/need.

When those things come together the importance of capital will greatly diminish for some vital parts of life. It will not solve all problems but some. And maybe create other problems. But it should at the very least greatly impact "important" problems.

The "UX-ification" of software creation is the part where software engineers can be part of.

Disclaimer: Perhaps I have a naive assumption underlying all this - the idea that increased flexibility eventually "will lead" to apparent simplicity. But isn't living organisms kind of a proof of this? The amount of complexity that an animal needs to understand to continue living and reproduce is dwarfed by the complexity of the animal itself. Well, also cars and computers.

Something like that. Maybe. Goodnight.

The problem is that, while improved development technology does raise the floor, it also raises the ceiling, so equality don’t improve.

Some of us could host 2005 YouTube out of pocket, but it’s 2020, and people with fast connections expect 1080p video now, so it remains impossible for individuals to compete with corporations.

Yeah, that's a good point. I kind of expect that the ceiling should pop off at some point though. But I can't make a good argument for that.

Like, will it always make sense to add things to YouTube or will a more decentralised approach make more sense? Will single responsibility principle make sense at that scale? Can infrastructure costs be shifted around in flexible ways? Etc.

But yeah it's telling that Facebook was initially looking for a much more decentralised approach but gave up on it when adapting to reality and economics.

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