CodeMage

> Software works because someone is accountable for it.

When software works, it's because there were layers of measures to ensure quality. In order to set up and maintain those measures, you need to establish accountability for quality, not for individual changes.

In fact, given that making mistakes is perfectly human, I would argue that insisting on accountability for individual changes is counterproductive. Since I'm a grumpy old fart, I'll illustrate what I mean with a story ;)

At one of the places I've worked, there was this workplace survey they would do twice a year, one of those anonymous surveys where they give you a bunch of statements and have you select options ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". One of the questions that has stuck with me was "on my team, it feels safe to make mistakes".

For the first couple of years or so, I didn't really grok the deeper meaning of that question. I simply interpreted it as "my team is forgiving of minor fuck-ups" and didn't think more about it. I'm not sure what made it click, but one day I realized that it's not just about not working under a martinet. It's about minimizing the chances of a mistake causing problems and maximizing the ease of recovery from such problems if they do occur.

Being able to point a finger at me or one of my teammates and say "this is the person that screwed up" is not what makes software work.

You haven't isolated any context. You have either accidentally misinterpreted or deliberately misrepresented the expression "using AI to fake posting activity" to mean "AI posts do not count as posting activity", rather than "AI posts masquerading as human posts are dishonest".

Then you kept doubling down on there being nothing wrong with passing off AI activity as human activity. At every point, you either ignored or failed to understand any attempt to explain that, no matter what words were used.

To top it all off, you are now claiming that the point about taking over human accounts to deepen the deception is somehow "unrelated to the discussion" and brought up in bad faith.

I can't think of a way to respond to that while conforming to the HN guidelines of "being kind" and "conversing curiously", so I'll stop here.

> That reads more like the second half of the original comment, while this discussion, as quoted, has clearly always about the first bit: "Using AI to fake posting activity is bad." Let's not change the subject. A discussion cannot be had if you start inventing new context out of the blue.

If you were right about the change of context, I would tell you to take that up with @nyeah, because my reply to you was about how you misrepresented their comment.

That said, there was no change of context. Your assertion that the discussion "has clearly always been about the first bit" is factually incorrect. Both @xp84 and @nyeah made it clear that the issue they've raised is not limited to the "fakeness" of the posts, but that it also includes the "realness" of the users who were being impersonated.

> In an effort to try to desperately salvage your salon analogy [...]

No, I don't think I will continue to engage with your attempts to misrepresent this discussion. If you had done that once or twice, it could have been an honest mistake, but the pattern you've established indicates that you're arguing in bad faith.

Brings to mind something I read recently and can't stop thinking about: "The Internet is a store, but it used to be a library."

> Your new hairdo comes into question because we trusted you to look good, which is why we wanted to be around you, and you violated that trust.

No, you're not describing the problem @nyeah explained in their comment.

If you really want to torture your hairdo analogy into describing the problem, here's what it would look like:

You cut hair for people, take photographs of their hairdos, and put them up in the newspaper ads for your salon. Now your ads are suddenly showing photos of people who used to go to your salon, with Photoshopped hairdos and forged haircut dates. Your ex-customers are upset.

Although "lies" might be too strong a word, I agree with you that the the AI-is-the-future people haven't done nearly enough to prove their claims. But that's nothing new in our industry, really.

I would recommend "The Leprechauns of Software Engineering" by Laurent Bossavit for an insightful and entertaining overview of just how much of software "engineering" is based on "truths" that we don't question.

You're not insane. And if you are insane, you're not alone, because I used to get a similar feeling when I was first exposed to this kind of discourse. It creates cognitive dissonance in people like you and me, because you can clearly see that it was well-intentioned and grounded in the idea of empathy, but it ends up lacking empathy in ways that people like us consider important.

The comment you're referring to aims to be helpful and empathetic, but the fundamental problem with it is that it essentially dismisses the very real problems people are raising. It tells you that the change is inevitable and that you shouldn't and/or can't fight it. It tells you that what you're dealing with are your own feelings and, although they're "valid" (in the sense that it's understandable and human to have them), you need to work on overcoming them or finding a way around them. And if you can't, then you should either move out of the way of the progress or you'll remain unhappy.

It's an incredibly frustrating way of being talked to, one that I've seen managers employ quite a lot. I call it the "management aikido", because it takes your own impetus and turns it back on you, by reframing whatever issue you brought up to put the onus on you. Most of the managers I've seen use this technique believe they're doing a good thing by "empowering" you to deal with problems. What it does, in fact, is discourage you from raising issues in the first place.

On top of having the same "management aikido" vibe, @jvanderbot's comment ends up being "socially insensitive", for lack of a better way of describing it.

Over the course of history, we've seen great shifts -- typically tied to technological evolution -- that caused significant suffering to a group of people but (arguably) ended up being a net positive for our society. And when we look back, we inevitably feel a sense of empathy for those people and we recognize that what happened to them sucked and we express the hope that maybe next time we could do better as a society.

And then it happens again, like it's happening now, and we not only fail to do better as a society, but we talk like trying to do better is unreasonable.

That, in essence, is what makes @jvanderbolt's comment sound "religious" to you: the unquestioned assumption that what is happening is supposed to be happening and that it's you who has a problem that you have to work on.

Neither did the hackers who were locked up.

> "with no compromise on your data"

And yet it says there's an AI reviewer on every merge request and I don't see any documentation on whether that can be disabled.

The rule of law means that everyone, including the administration, has to follow the laws. When an administration repeatedly ignores or defies court orders, they have abandoned the rule of law.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/hSGAC-Minori...

> The problem is that, as we are currently seeing, that any administration can reverse any policy previously set. So any regulation is not a permanent solution.

Depends on what you mean by "can". You're right in that any administration that successfully abandons the rule of law can do anything they want, but that's not a problem inherent to regulation as a concept. Regulation is a good solution, but it won't work when a corrupt, lawless regime is in power. It's kinda like saying we shouldn't vaccinate because being forced to drink toilet water can kill us.

As for not being a permanent solution, that's okay. No regulation is meant to be permanent. Regulations are supposed to change, but there's supposed to be a process to follow and that process is supposed to ensure that the change happens for the good of the society and is governed by the will of the people.

The fact that none of those prerequisites are currently satisfied does not imply that regulation doesn't work.

Others have already talked to you about the significance of your anecdata and your faintly dismissive tone, but there's something else in your comment that tickled me and that no one's addressed yet:

> 2010-2020 felt like tech dystopia to me. Cellphone incrementalism, walled gardens, adtech, crypto, locked down devices. It was a pale shadow of the excitement of the early web. Personal websites, kids making Flash games, the indie web, p2p, people building stuff being 70% of the internet. For the first time in a long time, I feel extremely hopeful about the future and excited to work with tech again.

Who do you think was responsible for that dystopia? It wasn't those people you mentioned, who built the 70% of the old internet. The enshittification started when the people whose passion in life is to make money caught the scent of money-making potential the internet had.

But then, how did those people actually accomplish the enshittification we're dealing with now? The answer is: with the enthusiastic help of the True Believers. Crypto is the best example. Just recall how many devs were convinced that the blockchain was going to revolutionize everything. And I mean devs. Not snake-oil peddlers in suits, not LinkedIn influencers, none of the usual posse of posers, but people who actually wrote code and were reasonably good at that.

And that's not the only example, just the best one. I've been there myself. Back when OOP, UML, capital-A Agile, CMMi, and MDA (Model Driven Architecture) were the Hot New Thing, I was one of the True Believers, following the trends and proselytizing my colleagues.

Every bit of the dystopia you lament was pushed by the combination of ambitious MBAs and True Believer devs.

And the reason I bring this up is because you're one of those True Believers now. It's easy to fall into that trap. All you need is to have enough good experiences with the Hot New Thing to suppress your critical thinking and believe that this will Make Everything Great Again.

The same kind of people who profited off the tech dystopia you saw are now ushering a new, worse tech dystopia that you're turning a blind eye to. Your belief that this new tech will somehow balance and even counteract what those people did to the internet you loved is not based in facts. It's faith.

> Yes, using original paint in 16 colors saved to PCX in 640x480 should be enough for anybody.

There's a wide, wide gap between adding features that your users need and adding features that you want to cram down their throats to promote other products that you want them to use.

> Or we could let owners of properties add features as they see fit.

Or we could let paying users offer legitimate criticism of the products they use, without essentially telling them to shut up.

> Well the government was illegitimate. Is that what you're contending happening here?

When the jury of your peers decides that you should not be punished for something despite the law stating otherwise, it is a powerful statement. There's a reason why the judicial system is set up to allow this.

> Are you trying to overthrow the police department or municipal government?

The people in the US are not there yet. But you might want to recall JFK's words: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Take a look at what's happening in the US, think about it for a while, and then come back and tell everyone whether you think the people are being properly represented by their government and served by their public servants.

> How do you feel about Jan 6?

I feel that Jan 6 is one of the watershed moments that led us to where we are now. The fact that those responsible weren't punished was a clear signal that the rule of law was being abandoned.

You're behaving like the relationship between the government and the people is symmetrical. It's not. When the government stops obeying its own laws, people take notice.

Don't forget hijacking Ctrl+K or Ctrl+F to display their own search modal.

> Tired of these absolutes.

Now, that is a letter to new developer that I wish I had read when I was a new developer:

Dear new developer,

Be careful when reading blogs. A lot of stuff you'll read online is insightful, informative, innovative, or inspiring. By all means, enrich your life with what you read, but be sure to also re-read "Wind in the Willows" from time to time and reflect on the character of Mr. Toad.

Regards,

Someone Who Made The Mistake of Putting Certain Bloggers on a Pedestal

> just like people have autonomy over their bodies, they deserve autonomy over their software, without having to rely on a corrupt and incompetent industry

The technical means you mention won't give you that. The same people that make the industry "corrupt and incompetent" are leveraging those technical means to make it even more corrupt and less competent. Meanwhile, the rest of us who work in that industry are rapidly losing power to push back.

You can't rely solely on technology to solve problems rooted in human nature. I mean, we have better technology than at any point in human history, and somehow we're regressing on the issue of bodily autonomy.

This is why I'm so frustrated with people who are fanatical about AI adoption. It's not a panacea, it won't usher in some shiny utopia, it's just another technology that can be used both to improve lives and to oppress. If you take a careful look at our society, you can see which of those two uses is currently dominant.

You should have stopped at 90 degrees ;)

Without salespeople you can't sell software. Without developers, you can't make software. Since we all have to pay bills, selling software is of crucial importance, but that doesn't make the developers less important. It just means that the society we live in makes those who sell as important as those who make. Just like we strive to evolve software development, we should also strive to evolve the society.

I've made software that people happily used without anyone selling it to them or me earning a single cent off of it. At my age, if I had the luxury of not having to worry about money, that's the kind of thing I would be doing all the time.

Your anecdote talks about taking breaks and doing dishes, but fails to talk about measures of productivity.

I sometimes wonder whether that's a better idea for these micro-optimizations, rather than looking at the assembly code and trying to coax the compiler into generating what you want.

That said, I'm not keen on "argue and you're off the project" work environment.

The original joke deliberately says "two hard problems" and then lists three. The "off by one errors" being the 3rd problem is the punchline of the joke.

Mr. Roboto

> Which goes on to prove that bottleneck isn't in writing the code. It is in reading and understanding the code.

The people AI evangelists often say "typing" instead of "writing code", because they don't really understand -- or it's not lucrative for them to acknowledge -- what makes writing code hard.

We don't just write code to be executed by machines, we also write it to be read by humans. Code reviews, debugging, future changes -- all of these things involve reading and understanding the code someone wrote. And until we have an AI that we can actually hold responsible for its actions, we can't delegate the understanding to it.

That's very true, which is why I find it insulting that so many AI proponents use the word "typing" to refer to writing code. It carries an implication that if you enjoy writing code by hand, you enjoy a mindless activity.

> I think a lot of HN truly believes that Software Developer is the only important role at their company.

I doubt that. A lot of HN might have believed that some 10 years ago, perhaps, but most of those people have either matured or been driven away by the shift in the discourse.

I was one of the people who used to believe that, but the years of experience have taught me several important lessons that changed my mind. That change in attitude came both from my own failures and from having the rare privilege to work with people who were actually good at those other roles you listed.

> This is an exaggeration, but you see these themes all over the comment section.

And you'll keep seeing those comments, just like you'll keep seeing the comments about how developers are hypocritical divas. Those comments come from people's bad experiences.

Workplace political games are a thing. Unnecessary meetings and documents are a thing. Problematic, unprofessional developers are a thing.

I liked it immediately, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I saw your comment.

To me, "vegetarianism" is a much better label than "organic" or "GenAI-free". People who buy "organic" and "free range" do so because they believe it's better: higher quality, healthier, etc. (Whether they're right depends a lot on the requirements placed on that label and how those requirements are enforced, but that's tangential here.)

On the other hand, vegetarianism used to be this weird, niche thing that people made fun of. Vegetarians had to fight for acceptance. This is exactly how I feel about this new world that I find myself in, where AI is being shoved down everyone's throat and where developers (like me) who resist it are treated like a weird, niche group of outcasts.

What I find ironic is that "this reads like an AI" is a phrase that is rapidly losing its meaning, partly due to advances in AI, but also because it's being worn out, just like every other generic phrase used to dismiss someone's work out of hand without providing any additional context.

> It's like saying "we shouldn't worry about enforcing traffic laws because we need to use our resources to bring war criminals to justice"

It most definitely isn't. At no point did anyone in this discussion say "we shouldn't worry about small time corruption". In fact, I explicitly said the opposite. And then I highlighted it after you essentially accused me of doing so, as you're doing again.

> Creating an "urgency chain" is effectively the same thing as justifying behavior.

No, it's not. No one is "creating" an "urgency chain". Justice isn't binary. Things can be more or less just, they're not either perfectly just or completely unjust with nothing in between. Similarly, different people have different levels of impact. That's the definition of power in this context: the level of impact your actions have. No one is "creating" these concepts out of thin air.

What is happening here is that people are complaining about injustice and other people -- like you and the person I initially replied to -- are trying to delegitimize those complaints by stating that "all corruption is bad".

Let me repeat this, in case it got lost despite earlier repetitions: yes, we all know that "all corruption is bad". Just like we all know that "all lives matter", but pointing out that banality only got popular after the "black lives matter" slogan surfaced in response to a systemic injustice against African Americans.

You're doing the same kind of thing here.

> Caring about prioritizing things where we do not have coercive power is pointless.

On the contrary. If you always give up on caring because you don't have coercive power, you will never rectify injustices caused by imbalance of coercive power.

I have to ask: did you read what I wrote before you replied to me? I know the question might come across as an attack, but it's not. I'm genuinely curious about what process lead to your comment being a reply to mine, when mine explicitly states the following:

> Those people you are replying to are not saying that this soldier should get away with his corruption because more powerful people are getting away with theirs. They are saying that those who abuse greater power are doing greater harm, and that their corruption should be punished with greater urgency.

> All corruption is bad.

This is true, just like "all lives matter" is true, and it misses the point in the exact same way.

Those people you are replying to are not saying that this soldier should get away with his corruption because more powerful people are getting away with theirs. They are saying that those who abuse greater power are doing greater harm, and that their corruption should be punished with greater urgency.

On top of the harm the powerful people inflict directly through their corrupt actions, there's a secondary effect on the society at large. Unlike trickle-down economics, trickle-down corruption is a real thing. People see those in power get away with corruption and say "Why should I do the right thing?"

Of course, the usual answer from those in power ends up being "because we have the power to punish you and you don't have the power to punish us". And that's how you end up with the arrest and prosecution of a US soldier on the same 5 counts that the top politicians and their cronies are getting away with on a daily basis, aided by the president himself.