Many have mentioned woodworking as an analogy from a personal perspective, but for me the important perspective is that of consumers.
Sure, if you have the money, get a carpenter to build your kitchen from solid oak. Most people buy MDF, or even worse, chipboard. IKEA, etc. In fact, not too long ago, I had a carpenter install prefabricated cabinets in a new utility room. The cabinets were pre-assembled, and he installed them on the wall in the right order and did the detailed fittings. He didn’t do a great job, and I could have done better, albeit much slower. I use handsaws simply because I’m afraid of circular saws, but I digress.
A lot of us here are like carpenters before IKEA and prefabricated cabinets, and we are just now facing a new reality. We scream “it is not the same”. It indeed isn’t for us. But the consumers will get better value for money. Not quality, necessarily, but better value.
How about us? We will eventually be kitchen designers (aka engineers, architects), or kitchen installers (aka programmers). And yes, compared to the golden years, those jobs will suck.
But someone, somewhere, will be making bespoke, luxury furniture that only a few can afford. Or maybe we will keep doing it anyway because our daily jobs suck, until we decide to stop. And that is when the craft will die.
The world will just become less technical, as is the case with other industrial goods. Who here even knows how a combustion engine works? Who knows how fabric is made, or even how a sawing machine works? We are very much like the mechanics of yesteryear before cars became iPads on wheels.
As much as we hate it, we need to accept that coding has peaked. Juniors will be replaced by AI, experts will retire. Innovation will be replaced by processes. And we must accept our place in history.
Sure you do, you see a crime where no crime happened. Read my post carefully. I imposed nothing. A standard was imposed onto me. I didn't in turn impose anything on anyone else.
People may agree with you but don't imply something was done when nothing of the sort was even attempted. I did not impose my sloppiness onto others, what happened was someone tried to impose their pedantic-ness onto me and then you falsely accused me of imposing onto others. Please don't make up shit.
Excellent points. I don’t think anyone has a problem with app removal per se, but with the fact that Apple is bending the knee to a corrupt government to buy favours. When that happens, people lose trust that apps were removed for safeguarding and start wondering “what are they hiding from me”.
Well written, but its starting point seems to be “Apple used to be force for good”. — It is a corporation. It wants your money. This is not new. This is not any different from Lilly (Mounjaro), or Google, or any other, er… corporation.
The idea that a CEO will stand up to his democratically elected dictator is absurd. Why should he, when the dictator is merely implementing the policies he said he would during the campaign and still got elected? Why should he make himself and his company and his shareholders martyrs?
Because many people hold Apple to higher standards, that is why.
> The idea that a CEO will stand up to his democratically elected dictator is absurd. Why should he, when the dictator is merely implementing the policies he said he would during the campaign and still got elected? Why should he make himself and his company and his shareholders martyrs?
This is exactly what Apple did when they stood their ground against the FBI in the case of the San Bernardino shooter though. Of course, Obama could hardly be called a dictator, and wasn't a petty, vindictive man like our current president. But it'd still be good to see Cook rediscover that "fuck you, make me" attitude from the old Apple.
From a spectators perspective I'd say they called the presidents bluff back then - but it's not bluffing right now... So if they try that attitude with Trump, there is going to be catastrophic fallout. Hence their compliance.
It was made clear to the public in that dinner with tech CEOs, how they bent the knee, spoke sweet flattering words, and gave gifts to the naked king. That was some medieval theater, and they all knew if they upset the king, he will crush their wealth like a tower made of Lego bricks.
Not sure what you mean by “responsibilities are a function of scale”. “With great power comes great responsibility”?
Like I said, it is a good article, about an important topic, but you already knew that. I mostly agree with you - not that my opinion is particularly important. It prompted me to comment for only the second time.
A lot of the discourse around AI, and LLMs specifically, suffer terribly from FOMO and cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and anthropomorphism. The fact that AI/LLMs are commercial concerns makes it even more difficult to distinguish reality from bullshit.
I’m not a LLM user myself, but I’m slowly incorporating (forcing myself, really) AI into my workflow. I can see how AI as a tool might add value; not very different from, say, learning to touch-type or becoming proficient in Vim.
What is clear to me is that powerful tools lower entry barriers. Think Python vs C++. How many more people can be productive in the former vs the latter? It is also true that powerful tools lend themselves to potentially shitty products. C++ that is really shitty tends to break early, if it compiles at all, whereas Python is very forgiving. Intellisense is another such technology that lowers barriers.
Python itself is a good example of what LLMs can become. Python went from a super powerful tool in a jack-of-trades-master-of-none sort of way, to a rich data DSL driven by Numpy, Scipy, Pandas, Scikit, Jupyter, Torch, Matplotlib and many others; then it experienced another growth spurt with the advent of Rust tooling, and it is still improving with type checkers, free threading and even more stuff written in Rust - but towards correctness, not more power.
I really do hope that we can move past the current fomo/marketing/bullshit stage at some point, and focus on real and reproducible productivity gains.
Sure, if you have the money, get a carpenter to build your kitchen from solid oak. Most people buy MDF, or even worse, chipboard. IKEA, etc. In fact, not too long ago, I had a carpenter install prefabricated cabinets in a new utility room. The cabinets were pre-assembled, and he installed them on the wall in the right order and did the detailed fittings. He didn’t do a great job, and I could have done better, albeit much slower. I use handsaws simply because I’m afraid of circular saws, but I digress.
A lot of us here are like carpenters before IKEA and prefabricated cabinets, and we are just now facing a new reality. We scream “it is not the same”. It indeed isn’t for us. But the consumers will get better value for money. Not quality, necessarily, but better value.
How about us? We will eventually be kitchen designers (aka engineers, architects), or kitchen installers (aka programmers). And yes, compared to the golden years, those jobs will suck.
But someone, somewhere, will be making bespoke, luxury furniture that only a few can afford. Or maybe we will keep doing it anyway because our daily jobs suck, until we decide to stop. And that is when the craft will die.
The world will just become less technical, as is the case with other industrial goods. Who here even knows how a combustion engine works? Who knows how fabric is made, or even how a sawing machine works? We are very much like the mechanics of yesteryear before cars became iPads on wheels.
As much as we hate it, we need to accept that coding has peaked. Juniors will be replaced by AI, experts will retire. Innovation will be replaced by processes. And we must accept our place in history.
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