Exactly as the sibling said, you would have nothing to program for because nobody would no you exist. You don't randomly search for Reggy, the product I made. But now you know about it because I just told you. All advertising is, is telling people you exist. You can do that by posting your spec manuals, making memes, making a landing page or a website, whatever you want.
> All advertising is, is telling people you exist.
If that is all advertising was, I don't believe this conversation would be happening. People (ITT) dislike advertising because of the other parts (tracking, subtle manipulation, etc). There's a side to it that has obvious benefit: Knowing you reach your target market with truthful and engaging content is something ad targeting, seo, etc, enable. The problem is they also enable deceit, manipulation, spam, etc. When I see the impact that has on people I know, I start to wonder if maybe it is worth throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Programming also enables hackers, viruses, etc. Advertising enables good things like knowing there is a cure for your rare cancer (even if you search, there has to be information, which is advertising). It also enables the bad stuff you mentioned.
It is literally impossible to do anything without ads. You go to the store and it says peaches on a can of peaches. That’s an ad.
FYI I know about "reggy" and would never visit it because it was "advertised" by a random guy wanting to use a place for technical discussions to sell their product which is lame.
I would be very surprised if you, or anyone on this message board, had a use case for it. It was a niche example that I knew you wouldn’t know. But you made my point that advertising is about awareness first.
Maybe we wouldn’t even exist, nobody would use this mostly-for-webdevs website, because we’d all be busy programming machines in factories that make things.
