Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years.
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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.
Thank you, Rob Pike, for posting this.
I am in a different field, and of little importance in that field, so it is preposterous of me to comment here, forgive me. But I wish to express how much energy I gain from reading your post.
The wave of inauthenticity is all-encompassing. I spent some four decades as a university teacher, with immense pride, only to see the very notion of teaching and education destroyed before my eyes. My friends in other professions experience the same.
I still hope for reversal.
Your message is one of sadness and loss, but is also a sign of resistance. As one of the true pathbreakers and arbiters of good taste in your field and beyond, your voice gives strength to others who try to hold on to notions of authenticity, simplicity, elegance, humility.
We pray these professional values will survive the long winter we are currently experiencing.
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Given your experience, how does this compare for you to the dot com boom? To me it seems like a similar combination of investors not wanting to miss out and not really understanding the thing and marketing departments happy to agree to all requests resulting in a big bubble about to pop. I'm anticipating in five or ten years there will still be LLM tools helping in what manner they actually can, the same way we still use websites after the dotcom crash, but all of the shenanigans will have collapsed under the weight of their impossibility.
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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.
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@thegarbagebird @robpike Even this is more rational than reality, in many cases. These people are quite often a sort of nouveau aristocracy; people lifted up only because of personal connections, with little regard for actual competencies.
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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 hit burnout a couple of years ago. Something changed in the way I viewed my career path. I couldn't take the corporate ladder climbing, so I climbed down and started watching this trainwreck from a distance. It really does make me sad watching the industry I worked hard within just to crumble under my feet. I do miss the work though. Perhaps someday I'll put my hat back in the ring. Until then, I guess I'll just take a bucket of popcorn and watch the madness unfold.
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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 From The Practice of Programming to the Byte Order Fallacy, I have been sharing your writing with junior developers as I mentor them.
Lately I've been dealing with juniors that don't like to read, and I'm worried.
Last year, as I was getting close to retirement I was joking about being called back in to unf&$k systems that have been written or updated by AI - but now Im not sure I want to anymore.
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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 yep same
Going to retire next year and not sad about it
The enshittification of the online world is fast making it useless -
@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
Yeah, I’d second @fraggle
And for what it’s worth, experts continue to cringe at slop in their fields. It’s like an uncanny valley which only kicks in when you know a subject well enough to subconsciously feel that ‘that ain’t right’ tickle in your brain. Dilettantes (incl mgmt) love this crap.
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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 tbf the industry has been destroying itself for more than 12 years counting back from 2022
the destruction was just mostly limited to websites back then
whereas the creative side has been going downhill since 2008 or so
it's been a slow death overall
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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.
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But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?
@robpike the industry will speak again once it collapses from its own hubris. But yeah they're not too big into the listening / asking questions part right now. Apparently there's only one way for them to find out.
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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 thank for this message
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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 Same for me and Corporate Learning. It makes me very sad on the one hand … on the other the current development finally helps me to realize what kind of environment I supported (and still support) through my work.
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@robpike I hit burnout a couple of years ago. Something changed in the way I viewed my career path. I couldn't take the corporate ladder climbing, so I climbed down and started watching this trainwreck from a distance. It really does make me sad watching the industry I worked hard within just to crumble under my feet. I do miss the work though. Perhaps someday I'll put my hat back in the ring. Until then, I guess I'll just take a bucket of popcorn and watch the madness unfold.
@mrgrumpymonkey @robpike Thank you for sharing!
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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 have you ever had a sense of what a precise artist you are? You are the apotheosis of beautiful creation. The reality is much of the industry doesn't need that beauty. I don't know how to reconcile that but it is at least consistent.
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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.
Hubris is the prelude of one’s fall, so if it’s indeed it, hopefully whomever’s pushing for this scorched land is close to falling too.
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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 come with me if you want to live, my friend
https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/116559195759358488 -
If the world survived Perl, VBA, CORBA, SGML/XML, and Code Generation from UML, it can survive this.
@maxpool @dougmerritt @robpike your selection of things that survived is ... brutal
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@robpike while I deeply agree, “lose” feels far too passive for this. This is an industry actively trying to sell it to anyone and everyone.
@petrillic @robpike The recent Timothy Snyder essay on "Superpower Suicide" was posted/re-posted a lot this weekend. "Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity." I hate to be susceptible to trying to make everything-look-like-everything-else but these two rots feel related if not foundationally then at least spiritually.
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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 - You may have come across this, but in case you havn't, a message of hope.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-boring-internet/ascii
