A Roman name for software
2 points by schonfinkel
2 points by schonfinkel
I'm going to disregard one of my policies of participation on this site by commenting here. (This topic does not have a specific tag, but I believe it is about a topic I do not engage with.)
I think Cato's sentence would be perfect to introduce an article about how buzzwords lose their meaning in computing. Most people use the term continuous integration to describe something that barely has a resemblance to what its original author meant. Let's not talk about "agile".
Understanding each other is essential for smooth life, and when we can't even agree on what words mean, we're not in a good situation. But we even common language does not stay still, so I don't know. I'd really like to see what happened if terms didn't drift due to (as I understand) misunderstandings.
(I understand Cato was being much more rhetoric and not really talking about semantics, but still...)
I don’t recognize this supposed golden age when software was rigorous, easy to read, and clearly modeled the business domain.
Just like children have always been getting more disrespectful, software has always been going to hell because people are taking new shortcuts.
If anything I think agents are a huge leap forward in what we can do for software quality - it can grind on review and it can grind out multiple types of tests that previously might have been too laborious to write.
Yes, there's massive potential but it coexists with massive societal liability.
Agents are still the biggest shortcut of all, and it seems that people who were already knowledgeable about programming tend to have a blind spot when considering how it works out for someone who's entering the workforce. All the person-to-person knowledge-sharing that was a basic necessity for professional growth... that's basically gone, right? You don't need to do that in order to be LLM middleware.
It is wrong to assume that everyone who has access to the tech will use it to make better things. Most people are probably using it to make better use of their time. And there's a value judgment built into that - what's worth spending my time on?
Outside STEM, how many people would choose "working through and thinking about challenging problems" if there wasn't otherwise some incentive to one's career/life? If people are exercising critical thinking less often, reading less often, what then?
I think we're in a "devaluation spiral" of cognitive ability, because the workplace has made it entirely optional to challenge yourself mentally.
All the person-to-person knowledge-sharing that was a basic necessity for professional growth... that's basically gone, right? You don't need to do that in order to be LLM middleware
Hate to say it but that’s been on a decline for at least a decade, maybe more and not just in software but across a lot of engineering disciplines. Lots of retired mechanical engineers being brought back as consultants (at 2-3x what their salary was) because the business refused to allocate enough mentoring time and budget. And of course they’re being rehired to solve problems, not to mentor…