braza

It’s not a direct relationship as far as I know. The point is that maybe the LLMs gave enablement for the people that thinks about software as a “means to an end” and I think it’s completely fine.

I like elegant code, well written and easy to maintain; but for a long time the field of programming started to develop the pristine idea that the programming _was the end_ and not as a way to achieve something.

What’s the post author made was to bring it in a more latent way saying that you could use programming to achieve the same results but you do not need.

For who does not know, his books used as textbook in South American universities for years during 90s.

> I sometimes wonder why we don't see ruby used for shell stuff more often

The best piece of code that I worked on was an ETL in pure Ruby. Everything in modules, simply to read, no crazy abstractions, strange things like __main__, abstract clssses or whatever.

Maybe others can chime in, but the main difference that is found in ruby developers is that they really have fun with the language making everything with a higher lever of software craftsmanship that other folks in the data space, e.g. Python of Julia.

> And the code is godawful

You would be surprised on how big corporations are running on not so elegant code and generating revenue all over.

I used to be more principled around code best practices and having things well written, but with the LLMs I just discovered that unless your in a very critical domain where performance or maintenability is a hard requirement, the LLMs with bad code just solve the problem and everyone can be happy.

> Optimizing the environment around the competitions, including everything up to bringing their own pillows on tour for sleeping is not uncommon at this level of performance and has been shown to make a difference.

The cycling team from UK have done more or less that in their campaign for the London/12 olympic games[1].

[1] - https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-improvements-led-t...

I share the same enthusiasm related to ETL as a code, but as a heavy user of SQL Server 2005 (SSIS) at that time, the main advantages for me were that there was a closed and concise ecosystem around the technology, less fragmentation and multiple pieces that could fail. It was way simpler to reach people to solve the issues on the platform, and less time was needed to think about the technology itself and to think more about the problem.

When I transitioned to ETL as a code 12 years ago, I felt for the first time what it looks like to be a programmer/developer, since in my case the technology was literally a means to an end. To be honest, I did not even think about tech at all.

Just to give an idea, I was responsible for 5 instances of SQL Server, and with another person we were responsible for the whole end-to-end data operation (i.e. ETL via SSIS + OLAP cube via SSAS + and reporting via SSRS), and today I struggle to have the same level of scale with less than 7 people.

Fast forward to 2024, the inverse is true: I spend way more time thinking about the tools and their specificities than about the problem that I am solving at the end of the day.

I'm not telling that ETL as a code is bad (actually there's a lot of good stuff out there) but for folks in this kind of ecosystem (e.g. azure), definitely the juice to have some homemade code and all the stuff that comes with that, does not worth the squeeze.

(Long shot) I really would like to USA a spare machine for web serving a Jupyter Notebook server, but I did not found a single resource that blocks everyone except a single IP or something like this. Supper annoying to pay some cloud providers to have a resource that I already have.

how this type of licencing affects people that are not google et. al. in big companies? e.g. I am bootstrap/indie dev doing a small SaaS? Should I be concerned?

Of course, the EU has a large user base and economically strong demographics. Still, even knowing mistral excellence it's hard to conceive that they will serve 27+ countries with different languages, demographics, and cultures.

The most interesting aspect of this debacle, in my opinion, is that with new technologies that allow you to impersonate and/or recruit artists with minor modifications, the figure of "movie star" and the artist itself will be significantly diluted.

For example, I would love to see all of the Bourne books adapted into live-action films, but I know that will be impossible. In the future, I believe it would be great to see some AI actors who are not related to any famous actors/actresses perform the same screenplay: of course, if the book is licensed to that AI movie.

[1] - https://bourne.fandom.com/wiki/The_Bourne_Directory

> I think what Germans don't understand is how good they have it compared to many places in the world.

They should care about how other transportation systems are around the world as a coping mechanism?

I mostly travel around DACH region + Nordics/Spain/Netherlands and sometimes the contrast in terms of reliability, maintenance, and integration makes me feel that Germany is 10+ years back in time.

For folks that are working on a product right now, given the incentive structures behind venture capital, are there genuine reasons to pursue that kind of money? Let me rephrase: How many folks out there are searching for for some kind of niche business with enough to cover expenses and had some profit in a small scale?

I had a short experience with the music industry and the whole enterprise + VC sounds the same dynamic between artists and record labels back in the day, where was not enough to play in local bars and have a steady presence there, but everyone wanna to be Metallica or Anthrax.

> For instance, technology allows and will allow to automate many jobs.

Japan will be the first place where we will see this playing out. I think this will be one of the biggest social experiments of our lifetimes.

I do not know how it can be done, but I do not see another way without huge productivity gains via technology to have some sort of support for an aging/dying population.

I like all suggestions of the list, but I wonder (no pun intended) how it could play out in a mission critical domain where the intent and communication precision it’s a critical requirement.

Working in a multicultural + low consequence domain, all those tips makes great sense since it equalises all communications in an candid and respectful tone. Specially in work environments that does not have a set of cultural training upfront.

In my experience in cross-continent environments, the best work cultures were the ones striving with full directness and concise communications.

> Private equity firms prey on companies that are already struggling. Yes, they take a struggling company and hasten its demise. But healthy companies don't end up getting bought by private equity in the first place.

From the finance/economics perspective, what should be the ideal replacement for Private Equity?

At least for me they seem like a part of the ecosystem responsible for extending the lifespan of some companies and eventually maximizing revenue in those that has success, and this premium is used to cover the losses in other bets.

This is common sense, not only from the ethical perspective but for the legal one also.

I can relate 100% to that with my own experience coming from a poor economic background and coming to a more affluent background right now where any misstep can make me goes back 10+ years of economic development.

Others placed something like "fear-based paralysis" and I get it, but when you're responsible for making that transition between poverty and minimum affluence, you start to develop a "defensive-based proneness to action" instead.

For instance, since I was quite bit ambitious to get out of my past situation, at least for me most of my decisions were made thinking in some factors like: - Do not get involved in situations where I can get murdered (doing something stupid myself or getting into other people's path that can lead me to be murdered) - Avoid any situations in which I could end up in jail - Avoid having children without any financial and societal conditions - Avoid any drugs - Avoid any error that could impact my net worth more than 5%

Living in a world of avoidance is not pleasant, most of the time, it sucks, and the feedback loop is sometimes so subtle that you need to exercise your mind to think in the future most of the time.

I have a happy life today, because I saw some of those things happen to some close friends, and there's no comeback from those. Sometimes you can find contentment in some other areas of your life, but if you have a certain level of ambition, you will never recover.

Seeing from a distant place and not having a horse in this race, I see several lessons to unpack: 1. The borderless and ambiguous relationships in technical communities is officially over, and everyone trying to do the opposite is just risking him/herself in terms of reputation.

2. Do the “I condemn X, let put my name in a public letter” nowadays in that kind of dispute without have access to all information it’s just a dangerous way to gain clout. You do not condemn anything, your 7K followers in twitter and 250 followers does not transform you in a public celebrity that put you in a position to condemn someone.

3. The side that settled with the person that committed the allegedly behaviour should celebrate the outcome because it was way light in comparison with other jurisdictions where it could converge to criminal charges.

4. More or less like aviation, you will not train to fly in the clouds in visual flight, but you will train to not enter in that situation in the first place. What I mean by that is everyone needs to operate defensively and cautiously when the social borders are not totally explicitly displayed. Questions like “Should I engage in that behaviour that can be misinterpreted?”, “is something goes south can I suffer reputational damage?”, “do I have the disposition and resources to defend myself and my position in court?” needs to be answered before engage in open letters and in interpersonal relationships in communities.

We do not necessarily disagree here.

One thing that we need to take into consideration is back in 2005/2012 the ecosystem around the tooling/frameworks and RDBMS was quite fragmented and whether we like it or not, the non-tech industries had their procurements based on corporate vendors.

I was not a decision-maker at that time, but from what I saw, selling Open Source technologies with the addition of FTEs(OPEX) instead of relying on corporate vendors certified by the auditors and having those costs as CAPEX was a very tough sell. On top of that: several folks making hiring decisions back in time, found that it was way simpler to recruit people to work on SQLServer in a less plug&play stack integrated instead of doing a Jenga stack with several technologies that did not talk to each other and inject FTEs on.

Today the Open Source technologies are way more mature (I dare to say largely better) than those of corporate vendors.

Regardless of the publication intentions, I like to see contemporary folks who have made an impact on the world through technology being recognized and elevated.

In economics, where I come from, people are not afraid to give accolades to relevant people, whether treasury secretaries, banking economists, or professors.

I feel that in tech, due to the lack of publications that have technical capabilities to understand that impact plus the lack of goodwill from the media in general, there are a lot of folks doing relevant work out there that is ostracised due to this "cult of tech CEO/entrepreneur" or intentionally under the radar to not bring any negative light in their lives.

Sorry if I am nitting here, but cost it’s just a single dimension in a great scheme of things in technology adoption.

I worked with MSSQLServer 05/08/12 in some projects and the whole suite for the time being was one of the best related in terms of easiness to deploy plus due to the integrations with Integration/Analysis services you could deploy cubes and serving that directly on Excel and if you had some people creative in VBA you could reach a very sophisticated and effective way to provide reports.

I am huge fan of PostgreSQL, but back in 2005/2012 in all organisations that I worked would be very hard to justify 3+ extra FTE because someone was idealistically about Open Source a land costs.

Hey Chip, thanks for your contributions along the years and the amazing book.

2 questions: From what you researched, how many of those solutions are ready for production? and Regarding this mortality, what are the let's say top 5 things someone needs to think even before to do a PoC over those tools?

The main differences between the two threads:

This current thread has a bit more insights into German politics, and the other thread has insights from the perspective of US folks about how unacceptable it is to think from their cultural framework.

> I struggle to even describe the Wagenknecht party as left-wing despite her personal ideological origins.

I am in the middle of her book [1] and I have the same issue as well.

From what I understood: Her views are more weighted to what we call in English as "Labor Party" +_Entwicklungspolitik_ + _Gewerkschaft_ where she saw that the left went too far on the identity politics and ideological battles and lost ground to a big chunk of demographics in Germany (median white person, with the income between 22-42K EUR/year, working for industry or adjacencies).

For the internal politics me makes sense what she is doing - and I think why she will be over the 5% hurdle next election as well - but the issue that I see is on the external policy where she doubles down on the duality/dubious Germany foreign policy to make friends with everyone and not having a clear path in terms of partnerships and alliances.

Compared with 2010-12 where FDP and AfD has clear paths and ideological and political directions, the issue that I see with the BSW is that for now, it's a blank check that the voters are giving to her and once they are on the Parlament no one knows how the BSW will swings.

[1] - https://www.amazon.de/Die-Selbstgerechten-Gegenprogramm-Geme...

> With all that said, I wouldn't put too much trust on the German authorities' ability to correctly assess a terrorist group's ideological positions.

Yes.

Technically, the left as a political representation via vote is shrinking (fast)and theoretically Die Linke wouldn't be able to pass the 5% hurdle clause [1] plus with Sarah Wagenknecht et. al. leaving the space [2] it makes it harder to the government to classify something that they do not know for a while.

[1] - https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/

[2] - https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/sahra-wagenknecht...

Small context for those who are not familiar with why Tesla setup the gigafactory in the most hostile place in Germany: Tesla had the idea to place a production plant in Germany to have access to some of the subsidies for electric cars since Germany has a plan to not have cars with fossil fuels in 2035.

The German government was a good deal because it would kill 2 birds with a single store: it would attract investments in a (debatable) lower cost via subsidies plus the site would be placed in East Germany in the 13th/16 poorest state is Brandenburg that converges to the big plan of the federal government to develop east Germany [2].

The whole process from the announcement until the end of gigafactory construction was "controversial" at least [3] but they made it.

I do not want to go to the avenue of the ideological antagonism of those groups with Elon Musk, using a bit of hindsight bias I think that Tesla right now should regret not opening this factory in Poland [4], the Czech Republic or Hungary are places where the production costs are lower from the working force perspective and energy perspective.

Considering energy prices, in Poland has 0.1769 EUR/kWh and Germany has 0.4125 EUR/kWh [5].

Even inside Germany they could have a way better pick in other states in the East as Thüringen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen. Those folks would have a way better reception than the population between the border between Brandenburg/Berlin (where the Gigafactory is located).

I would be surprised if the situation continues to deteriorate, Tesla will move to Poland in some point in future.

[1] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-and-poorest-...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/taiwan-chipmaker-tsmc-app...

[3] - https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23372783/tesla-gigafactor...

[4] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/09/poland-vying...

[5] - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

For whom was in tech during 90s and now in 2020s, what are the differences between Microsoft back then and Apple now in terms of why the regulators are so "soft" against an actor that is overplaying it's hand for consumers?

I was not in tech in that time, but I was cognizant about the fact that entire segments of media and policy makers just dunked on Microsoft due to anti-competitive practices back then, and I recall congressmen and congresswomen, members of DoJ and so on openly talking about break Microsoft in pieces and I wonder why we do not have those conversations today in the biggest markets (China, US and EU)?

For those who want to listen to a long-form conversation with the main author of the book that the article review in a more articulated way [1].

[1] - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5dyeoq59cAIlP1FpOcEW2F?si=4...

2 small pieces of anecdotes

1) I used to work in a very large IT group in Latin America, and I worked with some EngManagers who hired and managed some folks in Argentina. One interesting dynamic was due to the inflation, we used to give to folks 'monthly' salary increases to offset. Since the company captured the inflation also in the prices, for a long time offer that offset with a small plus was a very huge retention factor for us;

2) After 2015/6, our IT director started to give 1 Bitcoin or USD 500 equivalent in Bitcoin for our argentine colleagues as part of their monthly salary, and eventually those guys ended up holding or selling it with more than 10x over it.

tbh, I have worked with AWS for at least 10 years, and recently their field support are quite prone to help avoid those scenarios (e.g. helped to save hundreds of thousands in a single-digit million account).

This was one of the main selling points for all portfolio companies of the group to adopt AWS in their digital transformation projects.