We will get there when ppl move past capitalism and socialism.
Like an ant colony pushing into one direction.
It will happen, but we need few more global dying events / resets.
I believe human race can get there but not in current form and state of mind.
The only viable option here is to make yourself non-replaceable. Stuff as much knowledge in your head as possible, share bare minimum, use non-standard tech stack, write no documentation, ground as much project on yourself.
And in the interim, before you're non-replaceable (which very, very few people actually are even if they follow your suggestions), you'll definitely be fired for being an asshole to your coworkers, barely doing half your job, and as jensens said having horrific technical judgment. And rightfully so, and now there's a company of people who know you and what kind of coworker you are.
Several times in my career I've had my boss or one of my boss's peers send someone's resume to me because our tenures at another company lined up. Sometimes I knew them, and sometimes someone otherwise very well qualified for a job on the technical merits didn't get an initial interview because they were horrible to work with.
> Stuff as much knowledge in your head as possible, share bare minimum, use non-standard tech stack, write no documentation, ground as much project on yourself
this will be countered by denied code reviews and security reviews because of the nonstandard tech, forced to write documentation and finally knowledge sharing.
Sorry, your response was so generic, unrelated to the conversation, and unhelpful -- especially given the context of the reply -- I mistook you for a machine with no ability to reason.
I forgive your mid sarcasm as I actually find most of your commentary on HN good. My point remains, so I'll explain it to you to help you out. All those "problems" you listed are symptoms of greater problems, as a sibling suggested, although "late stage capitalism" is now seen as a lazy phrase. The greater problem is that increases in complexity require greater increases in energy to maintain, and as a result, corners are being cut everywhere. In your specific case, UI/UX and subsequent QOL. Hence, these are signs of a predicament, rather than a problem, because removing complexity that has been ossified into a system requires even more effort than maintaining the complexity, with no guarantee of success. I believe it was either Joseph Tainter (Collapse of Complex Societies) or Peter Turchin (End Times) that mentioned the only example he could give of a civilization successfully simplifying itself, at least for a time, was the Byzantine Empire, which of course did not make the resurgence that those simplifying measures were undertaken to facilitate.
I appreciate this reply much more and so I'll refrain from further sarcasm.
But to explain the point of frustration, I found the comment indistinguishable from a public intellectual masterbation. I chastised pojzon for this because I believe my op demonstrates that I'm quite aware of the issue and I think a reasonably intelligent person can infer that my understanding is deeper than what can be conveyed in a simple HN comment. I found your responses similar, being short quips.
But if you closely pay attention to my op, you'll find that I'm making a call to other developers to join me in pushing back. To not create the problems in the first place.
The reason I do not take kindly to responses like those is they are defeatist attitudes. Identifying problems is the easy part -- although not always easy themselves. But there's little value in that if that information is not used to pursue a means to resolve them. I appreciate this a bit more -- though I still find it lacking -- as at least you're suggesting references that one may wish to read to understand the issues deeper (though I feel similarly about many of these class of sources).
I don't mind adding comments to help refine understanding, but short quips don't. We can do better than a mic drop. And clearly I'm not shying away from verbosity. In today's age we're too terse to be meaningful. And you truly be terse and effective requires high still and time to refine. It is not the nature of a typical conversation.
And wholeheartedly I actually disagree with baby of these sources (despite agreeing with some points, I find the solutions either non-existent or severely lacking). The problem isn't that we need to remove complexity. That's a false notion. One of the many issues is that we need to recognize that complexity is unavailable. Yes, make things as simple as possible, but no more. It's important to remember that truth and accuracy is bounded by complexity, while lies are not. Shying away from complexity is turning away from growth. Late stage capitalism and socialism have a similar fatal flaw: bureaucrats who believe everything can be understood from numbers on a spreadsheet.
We're people, not machines. The environment evolves with time. Our understanding becomes more nuanced and complex as we grow. But the fuzziness never goes away because we can never measure anything directly, even if it stayed the same. The most important thing stressed in experimental science is understanding your error and limitations of your model (at least that's what I was taught and what I teach my students). Because you only have models, and all models are wrong (though some are better).
There's so much I can say on this topic, and there's so much that has been said before. But no one wants to talk about the (Von Neumann's) elephant in the room.
No, we're still going to talk past each other. The root of all your UI problems was an increase in complexity, but your experience was degraded, and now you're up a creek. Progress, growth, and complexity do not need to be intertwined, you just believe so the same way "capitalism realism" makes it hard to imagine a future without capitalism.
Before your laundry app, your AC app, and your TV being smart, it may not have been "seamless" to do those chores or work with those appliances, but you can't say your experience is seamless now, based on your anecdotes. A hammer is not made better by putting a computer chip in it. Simpler. Is. Better.
I wouldn't even say it's bureaucrats who think everything can be understood from spreadsheets. It's Pichai, it's Nadella, it's Altman, saying software will eat the world and data will lead us to a singularity but they're the same crowd trying to tell us Juicero is the future.
Your problem is a systems problem. The only way you will solve this systems problem is by changing the purpose of the system when you don't have any control over the inputs, interactions, or motivations of the system, because the tech brahmins that license the software and demand more money for minimal effort hold all the levers, and the AI craze is their final gambit to accrue all the power, irreversibly, forever. That's why it's a predicament.
It’s much lower than what we have in Nigeria and Africa at large.
The worst EU leader is far better than the average African leader. Then it gets worse with civil service agencies over here…they’re corrupt to the point of being almost irredeemable.
I am from India, and I often see again and again, how good the Western people have it in terms of corruption.
Countries like India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan are corrupt to the very skeleton, for the lack of a better expression.
But, I also think people have lesser appreciation of their situation.
You might see corruption everywhere there in Nigeria. But maybe it’s much better than Sierra Leone or Somalia.
Indians see India as fully corrupt. But we have to pay bribes for making passports and recording our lands after a purchase or inheritance. Bangladeshis have to pay bribes to police for all of the above, as well as minor things like- if someone needs to drive a car at night. Police stops you, and asks you your purpose for driving at night and demands bribes. Just like that. No violation needed. That's in Bangladesh. But you won't see it in Mumbai or Delhi.
Western people have no darned idea about total ubiquitous corruption and incompetence in third world. They just self sensor and argue for the fear and risk of sounding racist and prejudiced.
Seconded! Pakistani living in the States. Have been pulled over by cops many times at night because they're bored and/or want a bribe. Bribed a guy to get my passport made. Corrupt ranger tried to squeeze cash out of my dad's startup office space.
It's very difficult to explain to Westerners how deeply corrupt our societies are relative to the rule of law we/they enjoy in the West.
Corruption has traditionally been difficult to quantify. There is the Corruption Perceptions Index, which uses perception as a (clever but tricky) proxy for actual corruption.
Kent Beck (of "Extreme Programming" aka "XP" fame) is a joy to read. He thinks really deeply about software, and takes things to interesting extremes. But he's very pragmatic about it.
Then XP becomes the Agile Manifesto. At this point, we're getting a bit silly but it's still an interesting idea.
Then we start talking about paid "agile" consultants teaching big companies. Maybe it's still better than the alternative. And some of the best ideas, like unit testing, seep into the culture. (80s and 90s project planning and testing could be terrible in ways any undergrad could fix today.)
And then, eventually, we have so-called "Scrum" being run by someone who learned about it third hand through a game of telephone. Every truly successful revolution lives long enough to become a gross and broken status quo. And so the cycle repeats.
That said, Kent Beck is still writing, and he's still delightful to read. I knew his favorite themes 20 years ago, but sometimes I pick up his stuff and find a clever new insight.
Disagree on point 2. It goes straight from successful for one team, to lost in translation. It's not managers' fault that it gets lost- it's just what happens when teams try to adopt something that worked well for one team, without the implicit context.
