Be a Loser

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10 points·larsfaye··4 comments

As much as I cannot stand DHH, this article felt like so much wishful thinking. DHH being a terrible person does not make him wrong about the future direction of software.

Will artisanal, handcrafted software continue to exist? Yes. Will someone be willing to pay me a comfortable salary to write it? Doubtful.

One of the problems with highly judgemental writing is it does become a bit challenging to pick out what the argument is. I think there are probably some good points in here but I'm too distracted by the style to focus on them.

> "I'm not here to remind you that DHH is a shameless fascist"

While fascist is a vague word I don't think he's using it properly; and it means that all the other times he asserts something it needs extra interpretation to figure out what situation he's describing. As far as I can see [0] facism to him might even include things like free speech absolutism.

[0] https://davidcel.is/articles/the-dhh-problem

As far as I can tell, the actual argument is "DHH likes racecars and ergo is a hypocrite for reducing software engineering to economics." Points for originality but maybe not for soundness.

In fact it might even reinforce the point. How many people get paid to drive racecars? Not a lot. It is a hobby for the rich.

Get ready for the future. In a post-scarcity economy, the core human drive of competition reduces to declaring allegiance to a 'team' and publicly denouncing 'out-groups' (using high-stakes labels). It becomes the primary way to compete for social status, prestige, and influence within a community. Allegiance is the new capital.

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