I think this article misses a potential connection in the capitalist critique of LLMs to correlate this to the equivalent "industrialization" of coding. When a craft becomes industrialized, as is talked about here, you see the divergence in hobbyists and mass production.
I think because of the uniqueness or newness of the craft of programming - this shift hadn't actually occurred and you were seeing hobbyist programmers landing jobs and being able to output professional code by crafting it thoughtfully as there wasn't a major output difference previously. Now we are seeing that difference.
Absolutely. These tools are being used to deprofessionalize our work. At some point, perhaps in our lifetime, most of us will no longer be able to bring anything to the table that commands either job security or a good wage. This is the dream of most of the employing class. There will be a glut of laid off software engineers all jockeying for positions babysitting a dozen LLM agents at a time, agents that work constantly and never run out of questions and review requests to ping us with. Perhaps we'll be measured on our response time to agent inquiries. Just like all the cottage weavers who ended up stuck in a thunderously loud power loom weaving shed for 14 hours a day, we are going to discover what a big loss in status and security feels like.
Any special knowledge, taste, or communication skills we think we are bringing to the table will be siphoned into LLMs and used to train them. The way we boss the LLM around to make it produce better work will be incorporated into the next model version, rendering our contributions less and less valuable. Companies will make deals with LLM providers to suck all their internal customer interactions and team chats into the LLM so they can tune it to replicate those interactions. Perhaps it will go off the rails now and then, but think of the savings.
Maybe I'm "vibecoding" wrong but to me at least this misses a clear step which is reviewing the code.
I think coding with an AI changes our role from code writer to code reviewer, and you have to treat it as a comprehensive review where you comment not just on code "correctness" but these other aspects the author mentions, how functions fits together, codebase patterns, architectural implications. While I feel like using AI might have made me a lazier coder, it's made me a me a significantly more active reviewer which I think at least helps to bridge the gap the author is referencing.
Better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all. Why not buy the Framework, support the business, and have a laptop that's making you happy while it's around?
There's no guarantee any company lasts forever. What's the point in not using something now because it might be gone in the future?
I want power density and off-grid capability in my truck. I want to be able to go camping and not plan for charging. I also want to be able to repair it without dealing with software. I also want to be able to tow without stopping to charge every 100 miles.
Ok, this one’s baffling, especially learning at the end that FLOSS is bad because it’s meant to de-emphasize the “libre” part.
All OSS software is inherently without cost, that seems unquestioned here. So free only ever means one thing to non-laypeople, in this context. So isn’t FOSS already the neutral middle ground between OSS and FS??
Regardless, I’m struggling to conceive of how a piece of software could be OS but not F. I guess if it’s, like, surveillance software known to be used by governments…? Maybe OSS that is paradoxically restrictively licensed, threatening any forks or unauthorized compilations with legal action? That seems like a terribly naive proposition, but I’m sure it’s been floated by at least one MBA…
In other words: you can argue all day about the justifications for OS’ing your S being more related to removing cost barriers or to sharing control, but in the end, you clearly have to do both. Making “F[L]OSS” redundant at best, confusing at worst!
Surely I’m missing something, bc I know this has been litigated for many thousands of hours both pre- and post-Eternal September. But rn it just comes across as baseless pedantry
Initially there was no Open Source or OSS. There was Free Software. This started a long time ago with things like GNU and later Linux, BSD etc. Richard Stallman codified what it meant for software to be Free. Specifically, it had nothing to do with cost. The "free" was free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Unfortunately English uses one word for both senses. Romance languages like Spanish still retain both: gratis means free as in beer and libre means free as in freedom.
Open Source was a later "rebranding" of free software by some people who fell out with Stallman and wanted to emphasise more the practical advantages over the ethical ones. Stallman wasn't happy because he felt (and still feels) the most important thing is that each person should be able to do computing freely.
Anyway, long story short, free software is nothing to do with cost. Horrible acronyms like "FLOSS" are to try to make everyone happy.
> All OSS software is inherently without cost, that seems unquestioned here.
I don't think so, you could charge money for FOSS (like charging for a built binary but having the source be FOSS) and it'll still be as much FOSS as any other FOSS out there. It isn't very common to do so, but there isn't any inherently wrong or incorrect with charging for FOSS.
How could you charge for a binary if people can just compile it on their own...? Honor system? I guess you could make it inconvenient to compile, but then is that really OSS?
It's interesting to reflect on what you're saying: you'd pay someone who forces you to, but not otherwise. So if someone built a house for you you'd only pay them if they threatened to come and burn it down, or they kept some way to remotely lock you out of it?
Hmmm. Well it’s software/IP, so as always I think we need to stay away from “would you download a car” talk.
With that in mind, the proposition is basically just the honor system. Which maybe works a little sometimes, among professionals? I paid for SublimeText to support them, for example. But WinRar is a very compelling counter example.
It feels like publishing a pdf of a book but with a big red “don’t click this until you’ve Venmo’d me $5!” above it. Regardless of what I individually would do, that’s just kinda… goofy?
> How could you charge for a binary if people can just compile it on their own...?
You don't make a binary publicly available, then you put the binary behind a paywall.
Some examples:
- Ardour - Lets you pull down the source and compile locally for free, or you pay to use their compiled binaries. Author/creator of Ardour hangs around on HN, maybe they could share their experience if they see this.
- Radium - Another DAW like Ardour, does it the same way.
- Fritzing - Designer for PCBs, same approach, pay for the binaries if you'd like, but free to compile from source if you can
I'm sure there are many more examples out there, but these are the ones I thought about when I wrote my previous comment.
It's interesting what the "Decreasing Technologies" graph implies by omission. Assuming this means that technologies not included in that graph have been consistent through the same time period. Without a corresponding data view for "Increasing Technologies" there's not really any data on current trends.
That's a fairly inappropriate comparison in level of expertise necessary to design a system: LVL beams are picked by structural engineers, not by framers who generally install them where they're needed, based on a structural design which they have no say in because load calculations aren't a framer's job.
HVAC installers are not merely system assembly specialists, they're system design specialists as well in nearly all cases. Or at the very least they outsource HVAC system design to experts who are familiar with required air flow, static pressure, air changes, condensation formation and evacuation, and yes of course whether the system is appropriate for cold climates (cold climate heat pumps are notably different from temperate or hot climate ones: coils are larger to capture more heat from the air outside temperatures are very low); they have different refrigerant systems; and way more insulation to prevent the cold affecting operation; some even incorporate resistive heating elements... or a gas furnace in cases where their efficiency would drop below an acceptable threshold.
One of the biggest and most important part of an HVAC system design is sizing for climate and dwelling. It should be extremely suspicious to any installer that their design system efficiency would be so much higher than the real world system performs.
I'd be shocked if professional HVAC installers couldn't spit out several reasons why the system might be performing so poorly just by reading this blog post. Notably the absurd assertion that the installers were professionals despite wildly overpromising and underdelivering. Some contractors acting professionally doesn't make them professionals.
As others point out in this thread, implementing a system that meets the stated design goals roughly on target is what a professional does. I've seen some absurd lambasting of PV solar installs as an example of empty promises. Again, those are tell-tale signs of deficiencies, not an indictment of the underlying technology.
Which is the most irresponsible part of this senator's post. Given your post and prominence, the least you could do before publishing something like this is check your basic assumptions: that the installer did a fine job.
As someone who recently had a heat pump installed, your expectations for minimum wage workers is rather unrealistic. We asked for one, they estimated the cost and installed it, and we paid the bill.
It was their second installation, ever. Red state with lots of gas installations and all that.
The onus of understanding that it wouldn’t work under a certain temperature, and would get lower in efficiency the lower the temperature, was on me.
I think because of the uniqueness or newness of the craft of programming - this shift hadn't actually occurred and you were seeing hobbyist programmers landing jobs and being able to output professional code by crafting it thoughtfully as there wasn't a major output difference previously. Now we are seeing that difference.
Food for thought, interesting article!