Comment by boshalfoshal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boshalfoshal | Hacker News Reader

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Code in most organizations is a means to an end to produce an actual product.

The job of a SWE is to not produce the most sublime readable code with cute language bells and whistles that you can show off to your other programmer friends. Yes its fun to do and interesting, but the main value in writing code is to express your intent so you and other people that are working with you can actually build something of value.

Software has value to the people on your team reading it. The product that you create with your software has a far wider impact than just that. As such, there is for _sure_ optimization pressure on "professional software engineering" to be more productive and actually make the product better to use, faster, with more features users like. The user typically does not care that you used a new C++26 feature, as much as I enjoyed writing it for them.

If I can produce features for users faster and I can iterate on them faster, this is a boon to me. I can program by hand for fun all I want in my spare time, but if I want to produce value for someone else, it is economically infeasible for me to be a luddite, and I will simply be outcompeted. Previously you were outcompeted by smarter teams who out executed you (and who also worked more), and now you can be out executed by basically anyone using an LLM who actually understands that the end goal is making a product that is pleasant to use and actually has utility, not code that is pleasant to read.

You can be an "performative/artisanal programmer" just as you can do "performative/artisanal martial arts." Just know that there will not be a large market for it in the real world.

You're reducing programming to its utility in producing exchange value in the captitalist political economy. That's what "value" means in this context. That's exactly what I'm pointing out. Programming is more than that, if you can think beyond your current economic constraints. Your life's activity ought to be more than just a tool for producing capitalist exchange value.

Does cooking food serve any purpose beyond mass producing food for restaurants to sell?

People are used to paying for food. They delight in paying more for highly rated Michelin starred food, even. Software is the opposite. People really really hate paying for software. It should all be free! The fact that making an additional copy of a piece of software is basically free vs creating an additional plate for dinner is very much not, has a lot to do with that. For sure. But it also means that I don't see a future where the "capitalist political economy" truely "values" aka pays seriously good money for a bespoke, handcrafted, no AI slop here, version of Photoshop to be run only once, and then you poop it out later.

Absolutely correct take. People are so caught up in doing the bidding, they forget what it is all about.

It would be nice if I could live my life without concern for producing capitalist exchange value. However, I live under the regime of capital and need to pay rent. So my goal is to pay rent with the least amount of suffering on my part.

But we can agree that writing with such disdain about people doing literally anything else, is perhaps a bit of a bad look.

Especially if it comes from Carmack, a guy who doesn't need to pay rent any more and can in fact live the rest of his life without concern for producing value, etc etc. He is currently doing exactly what he wants, just because he wants it. And that happens to be VR stuff, currently, afaik. And that's his choice. So when he speaks deeply condescending about other people doing exactly what they want ("retro computing is so delightful") it definitely comes from a different place as "hey I just want to pay my rent".

You're reducing programming to its utility in producing exchange value in the captitalist political economy.

Well, yes? If you want to write code that isn't useful to anyone and just gives you warm fuzzies, go for it. I've done plenty of that. But it's exceptionally selfish to try to forbid technological improvements so that you can get paid to work exactly how you want to.

Does cooking food serve any purpose beyond mass producing food for restaurants to sell?

Should we ban industrial agriculture so that you can feel more proud of your rooftop garden?

Rapid, empty, and poorly integrated code that appears to work but no one bothers to understand is much less valuable than everyone seems to believe.

> exchange value in the captitalist political economy.

how can one exist in modern society without being an exchange value in the capitalist political economy?

linux is where it is because it is able to be a critical part of said capitalist political economy. even if you want to be a FOSS contributor all your life, you need someone to figure out the "economy" part of it.

food is a false equivalence in this case.

When programmers say "pleasant to read", they usually mean something which is of real economical value, i.e. the code is easy to understand and maintain (whether by a programmer or an AI).

Products in most organizations are an end to making profit.

The job value of an SWE is to maximize that profit. It doesn't matter if the product is better to use, faster, with more features users like - that's an early 20th century model of value production.

What matters is how much money the company can extract from its customers, and how little it can pay its employees. Use dark patterns, increase lock-in, and switch to a rental system with recurrent payments. Minimize employee benefits, require broad non-compete agreements, have long vesting periods and lay people off before its reached, or simply fire them and order the others to pick up the slack using AI.

If you want to write software meant to please the user, do that for fun in your spare time -- though remember that your employer still owns your IP, so it's not like you can create a market competitor.

Alas, the above was meant in sarcasm but is all too true.

The Luddites were not opposed to machines. They were opposed to bad labor practices, with machine-breaking as way of applying pressure on employers.

> The Luddites were not opposed to machines.

In the sense they were not opposed to all machines as a concept. They were definitely against machines they thought reduced their labor value:

"They wrecked specific types of machinery that posed a threat to the particular industrial interests in each region. In the Midlands, these were the "wide" knitting frames used to make cheap and inferior lace articles.[22] In the North West, weavers sought to eliminate the steam-powered looms threatening wages in the cotton trade. In Yorkshire, workers opposed the use of shearing frames and gig mills to finish woollen cloth.[23]"

Citations in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

Yes, that's what I wrote. "They were opposed to bad labor practices, with machine-breaking as way of applying pressure on employers."

Otherwise it would be like claiming that an industrial union is opposed to people working in factories by pointing to a strike action and concluding they members just want to stand around outside the factory instead of work.

Recall that my comment is in response to "it is economically infeasible for me to be a luddite".

If that means something like "infeasible for me to oppose bad labor practices" then collective action is the typical response to bad labor practices.

If that means something like "infeasible for me to destroy the employer's use of AI" then I think that's mistaking what Luddites did as being the Luddite goal.

You wrote "The Luddites were not opposed to machines." What you wrote makes it sound as if there was no problems with machines, only with labor practices. That's simply misleading to untrue in this chain.

You can say Luddites were not only opposed to machines they thought cost them (which was the main reason they started the trouble they did at that point), but they also (insert labor practices).

Read their writings or contemporary reports. The wiki page has ample references to good material.

Quoting the Wikipedia link you gave:

"Luddites were not opposed to the use of machines per se (many were skilled operators in the textile industry); they attacked manufacturers who were trying to circumvent standard labour practices of the time".

How is that meaningfully different than what I wrote?

It’s the difference between “he hates food” and “he hates some food”.

If you don’t see the first as a not honest, misleading restatement of the latter, then we think fundamentally differently about accurate statements.

It's the difference between "Paul McCartney is not opposed to food" and "Paul McCartney is opposed to eating meat."

Here's a paragraph from p45 of my paperback edition of "The AI Con" on the Luddites:

"But Luddites were not against technology. Some Luddites, weavers in particular, were into technologies that helped evaluate the quality of their work, for instance, being able to count the number of threads per inch, such that they could fetch a higher prices at the market. Luddites were instead against technologies of control and coercion, and concerned about the loss of jobs, health, and community."

I do not think your assessment of my statement is correct.

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