There is (many times) no thinking of “hey why are we trying to build this”.

We have decades of devices that are released yearly just to drive consumption and that all do the same thing since 2011. And now they same will happen with software.

I just want this to stop

2/2

Say 4 years ago when a “normal” company wanted to have a new business functionality they would have a budget, a MVP target and they would plan their work. 1/2

4) ethical objections, especially environmental, but also intellectual property, deskilling, having to rent the right to program from far-right billionaires who are gutting democracy

Every AI think piece that doesn't at least acknowledge these issues is complicit.

There's a depressing amount of people that did it for the money.

(developer tools showed the POST request returned JSON with a key "success" that always had value true, and an errors array that contained an error string that validation failed, but didn't provide any specifics)

eventually I tried removing & (ampersand) and " (double quote) from the message I wrote and it finally worked

The problem is that any idiot can type "Create a program that registers kids in sportsball leagues."

The human solution was a professional development team who would ask questions like "how do you want to validate the phone number?", and "Which fields are required?" They would sometimes write rational default behavior for error handling or other unspecified conditions.

A clanker kind of knows but often doesn't care. And the idiot doesn't know the difference.

I work with a bunch of mechanical and electrical engineers who work their asses off to make sure a vending machine won't become a projectile in an 8G acceleration. Yet we have no end of problems getting the software on the HVAC to not go into Maxxximum Extreme HyperCooling mode to bring the cabin temperature to a 74F setpoint when the passenger doors open and bring in a wave of 75F outside air.

I think part of it is maintainer burnout. Expectations of the world put on their shoulders, but they don't want to let users down, but they don't feel they can keep going, so they end up using LLMs. The problem is, if they're already burnt out, they go on autopilot. Rather than take much-needed R&R, there's a (real or imagined) perception that "if I don't do this, who will?" and "will my reputation suffer if I do this?" and also "what will happen to end users?"

Then there's another angle.

I believe that most developers care about their users. This is broadly true.

I think it must be said though, that plenty hold users in contempt as beneath them, and the project is about getting themselves recognised, or another line on their CV, something to add to the "open source projects" part of it, etc.

And you know, that also explains why many developers use LLMs, too.

- concerns from people about their own thinking/development skills atrophying through vibe coding (or I guess for new folk never being developed)

- the amount of time spent working out what the hell the AI actually did so they can debug it.

With I guess the corollary that the first one makes the second harder.

️

#GenAI

I do not wish this time away, but let's just say that when I am finally done with the umpteen systems I have accounts for to manage my kids' journey through school, I will be quite glad.

I believe the answer to that very good question is: The terminally dysfunctional Villionaires of Silicon Valley.

One need only look at the people who have succeeded over the years in technology monopolization to see the symptoms of a mental health disorder that causes one to become a Tech Villionaire: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Ross Perot, Steve Jobs, John McAfee, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel...

The list goes on with a parade of obsessive unethical perverse anti-social sociopath narcissistic behaviors beyond the pale.

These truly weird involuted obsessive creatures of the night are like vampires sucking the life out of the global economy while creating legions of dysfunctional thralls hanging on their every malign word as they promise, like Annie, that tomorrow is just a day away if we would but turn a blind eye and empty our wallets today to buy Snake Oil 0.x fresh from the pump-and-dump before we miss out on the next new thing like rubes.

That's who. And nobody else, but.

#AI #LLM #Tech

It's not about our purpose. If our non-programming selves and everyone else would be fine without us having to make software, this "loss of purpose" would not be a big deal.

The problem is that the things we care about are bound to software working right. Not exposing our privacy. Not breaking and losing our data. Not exploiting wetware bugs in our brains to serve evil people's political and economic goals. Not policing who we can communicte with and what we see. Not erasing our history and rewriting it out from under us. Etc.

Software will not work right when it's vomited by machines owned by and serving the interests of our enemies.

I mean, there are some absolutely absurd egos in the tech world, so. But big picture yes.