Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years.
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I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
@robpike not a complete repudiation. It might seem that way at the moment because the dumbest voices are the loudest ones
There are those of us who listened to what you said and understood it, who have taken it to heart and still try to put that philosophy into practice. I hope you know that and know that your work made a difference and is appreciated
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P pelle@veganism.social shared this topic
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike This is the feeling I had in the 90s dropping out of journalism school because everything had been so debased by 24 hour news channels managing to devote 20 of those hours to OJ Simpson's trial for months on end, and nearly every other news source including NPR joining the frenzy.
So then I went to become a full time computer geek and, well, you know.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike We should all be questioning it. At the end of the day we either have to do what the biz-dev ghouls demand of us or find a new line of work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't raise issues we see just like any other engineering problem.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike Voices in the industry, as in capitalism in general, are weighted by how much wealth they command, and the acquisition of wealth is largely not a merit-based process.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike A profound grief I feel.
I retired this year, creating considerable financial stress, but I just don't want to be associated with this trade these days.
And yes, it's been coming for some time, and the LLM craze isn't really the root cause. For me, at least, it's the tipping point.
Anyway. Just a note to say that I feel your pain. About the only bright side I can offer: we lived through the golden age of computing, created amazing things, found many friends, and felt great joy.
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@robpike Voices in the industry, as in capitalism in general, are weighted by how much wealth they command, and the acquisition of wealth is largely not a merit-based process.
@robpike Ergo, capitalism tends to become ever-more detached from reality, and, if let alone, will destroy itself eventually. That which better comports with reality will remain, and will serve as foundations for whatever comes after. (Hopefully this includes us as a species, let alone high technology, but I suppose nothing is guaranteed.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike (from a DE perspective - and we're always 10 years behind) I'm only 27 years into the industry (give a few years as a teen stumbling around ... well, maybe I STILL am) and just sat in a political/economical conservative AI booyaa-whatever-it-was last Friday due to impact on my state in the near future and the opportunity for some embodied experience.
I feel we're screwed in so many ways it's unfathomable. The anti-intellectualism, the pure not-even-thinly-veiled greed in the "SQUIGGLY LINE MUST GO UP" sense gave me an impressive physical reaction. My wearable told me a 65 pulse, so it must have been adrenaline I guess sitting in the middle of old greedy men.
I'm not even against ML technology - but why 'o why do we have to pervert EVERYTHING.
If you like, take my comisery.
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike I love you, and all your work, Rob. I hope this is just a transition to new tools, and that methods will catch up. A rough patch. But best practices have not been universally found and adopted (obviously). Risks abound.
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I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
@robpike There are a lot of people who listened and were inspired by your work. It is not futile and will not be lost. Thank you a lot for that, I hope that the bright future will come.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
You wrote:"But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?"
In fact, the industry has NOT spoken. Instead it's done a Wylie Coyote, and overuses the first thing it thought of. It's just now looked down...
IMHO, it's an excellent editor for my books and articles already, and is starting to be a good lint. With all lint's problems (;-))
Think of ways to make code "simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible".
One of my experiments is at https://leaflessca.wordpress.com/2026/04/30/a-prompt-for-hunting-bugs-in-claude-haiku/
One that I've debugged for writing is in my repo at https://codeberg.org/davecb/Prompts/src/branch/main/developmental_edit.txt
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I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
@robpike yes, this
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@robpike A profound grief I feel.
I retired this year, creating considerable financial stress, but I just don't want to be associated with this trade these days.
And yes, it's been coming for some time, and the LLM craze isn't really the root cause. For me, at least, it's the tipping point.
Anyway. Just a note to say that I feel your pain. About the only bright side I can offer: we lived through the golden age of computing, created amazing things, found many friends, and felt great joy.
@GeePawHill @robpike one of the best, most succinct ways I’ve seen it put is “Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco”.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike I'm just happy to be at the end of my career. I can't imagine having to job-hunt in a time where installing software on your phone and being interviewed by an LLM is a requirement.
No one seems to recognize that LLMs create technical debt *at scale*.
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike Hubris and greed, methinks.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike there has been a-lot of optimistic AI in the experiment / spend cycle; The total dollar cost to Industry is not so rosy.
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Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
@robpike Its more than just technology. Its also media (television) that is going to collapse soon.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike It's far from the only problem with capitalism, but certainly one of 'em is that any longterm for-profit endeavour will, at some point or another, self-cannibalize for some wishful thinking of short-term profits.
But I'm personally heartened by how the actual people involved skew far *more* against the malpractice the industry has abruptly standardized on. The big corps have *always* had fundamental pathologies stemming from the nature of such organizations in our socio-economic system, and that becoming painfully clear for more people may have positive affects that reverberate for a long time, even as the costs of the LLM mania inevitably do too. -
I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
@robpike I write a lot of Go, with my own hands and brain. I refuse to use "AI". I still appreciate the work you and the team did, and the care you put into making Go simple and clean.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike Your work has inspired so many of us, and I trust it will continue to do so long into the dark night that's fallen upon the computing world. Godspeed.
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I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
@robpike thank you for your work!
It is truly inspiring and it makes happy to use the Go language. Even if many people are doing handsoff coding. Not sure if it's sustainable in the long run, I would question it.
