This person got so so close to the real answer as to why most software today sucks.
Money.
Capitalism.
Line go up - Forever.
It’s the systems we choose to live in, not the leaders who take advantage of them.
Really cool software has been coming out all the time for the last decade or so, and then the second it goes public and starts trading stocks, it immediately starts going south. A company, making cool stuff I love, goes public, and I know to immediately start grieving for its death. Money makes all creative endeavors so so much worse. And I truly believe software is a creative pursuit. It’s been hijacked by capitalists to automate every living being on this planet out of work. Right now the list of people truly put out on their ass for good by automation isn’t very big. But we’re accelerating very quickly to a future where nothing fun ever happens again. Useful, functional, problem solving software, from now until forever, will be made and used to kick your ass, stomp you into the dirt, and sell your stupid crying face to anybody who wants to purchase it. Then while we’re at it, it’ll take the things you love to do and do them for you. And then make you pay money just to see it.
If you want to see and participate in some of the most unique and amazing uses of software engineering in our time, there are so many open source projects that achieve incredible and fun things for absolutely $0
- Video Game Randomizers
- And their decomp partners
- Mod Communities
- Free Digital Art Programs
- Open up Github, sort by most Starred projects, and just fuckin scroll until you can’t scroll anymore
- And even this has been captured. Code made freely for everyone to use, instead being fed to machine learning bullshit. To what end? To fully replace the need for any human to ever write software ever again.
It’s endless. There are truly too many projects for me to list in one post. I’d spend weeks editing this comment, adding all the coolest things software has done for us and can do for us. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I am 100% confident society and its leaders will abuse the good will, passion, and creativity of many a programmer from now until the end of my life. It’ll do that to every profession. As long as we cling to the idea that we only do work to make profits, as long as the only way we can survive is by making money, this will be our fate.
- Video Game Randomizers
It’s distressing how often the track of inventors has been overtaken by the plans of hyper-capitalists.
- Tesla cars were invented by
Elon MuskMartin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who were then cut out by their investor to enshittify the interface. - Keurig coffee pods were invented by a pair of roommates that wanted them to become recyclable so they wouldn’t cause so much waste.
- Blizzard used to make fun games, and is now bought out by people that don’t.
I still need to put out my big, long-form video promoting the Accountable Capitalism Act - something that could lead a large body of software devs at a big company to be present for the big-shift plans to, say, “Remove error messages from Windows!” and tell their bosses: Hell no. The same style of issue exists in many industries.
- Tesla cars were invented by
This person’s website got me motivated to start programming in Zig a few weeks ago. Love his website’s design, too.
I’m also a software engineer and I can’t stand most other people in this field. I got into this field because I love computers and was tweaking garry’s mod scripts when I was 12. I read scifi books and enjoy reading about the lore of the tech industry.
I would estimate that AT LEAST 75% of people in this industry are ladder climbing yuppies who got into it for the money. The gym rat, tesla-driving podcaster types who have invented their own language about syncing up, achieving alignment, creating action items and eating dog food. And for some reason they’re all into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Lex Fridman/Joe Rogan
I do not socialize with my coworkers because they are the most obnoxious fucking money-obsessed pieces of shit I’ve ever met
I work at a soulless megacorp these days, but I have to say I’m lucky and the vast majority of developers I work with arr not like this.
Bit of an unhinged and unreasonable nerd rant but here it goes:
The second dot com boom in the 2010s ruined us. Like holy shit. As someone younger looking down the line, living in tech bro culture, but exposed to the likes of the jargon file, y combinator and their venture capitalists literally ruined hacker culture.
We used to have a thriving culture that cherished freedom, real freedom, not freedom for the rich. What happened to the culture that spawned Windows buyback day? What of the dream that networked freedom would one day break the chains of economic heirarchy?
Like holy fucking shit. If you’re not here for the love of the machine stop touching a compiler or better yet go loose your fucking hands.
Preach.
Information wants to be free.
Can’t stop the signal.
Techbros killed me, Mal.
They killed me with an IPO. How weird is that?
Minor note: Jargon file is much older than any of that (and most of us).
I know that was part of my point. Thing was mostly finalized by my birth year lmao.
Also, little off-topic but, as important as it is to computing culture, some of the gatekeepy shit put in there aged like milk. But I kind of expect that from nerd culture, especially 20th century nerd culture.
A total crash would scare the money away but leave all the hardware and software behind
Marching orders if I ever saw some. Drop a neutron bomb on the investors class. I think a good anti-AI FUD campaign might get off the hook. Something good enough to crash every silicon valley bank!
Bring back little websites ran by furries
I just wanna build cool shit and solve puzzles using the smallest amount of code possible that still makes sense to read. That’s fun to me. I’ve honestly gotten incredibly sick of renting by brain out to people for the majority of my waking hours mostly just to put a roof over my head.
This is me. We had a public holiday the other day and, since the weather wasn’t great, I decided to start a new project to write code because I enjoy it. Also, Twitch’s event/API documentation does not spark joy (weird grammar like “one of the following” what looks like a partially deleted line; response/requests that are in tables aligned by a number (only two, so good luck people like me) spaces to indicate level, and just plain wrong and missing info (“this API responds 202” – LIAR!).
Where are you? My experience has been that most developers are obsessed with programming and politically liberal. I’m in the midwest, though, so maybe things are not so rosy on the west coast. It could also just be one person’s experience, but I have worked at a lot of different places in the last 35 years.
As another east-coaster, I feel comfortable saying there’s a huge cultural difference in the industry between here and the west coast (and Silicon Valley specifically). It’s a gap that’s been growing wider for over a decade now.
It used to be that everyone followed the Microsoft/Apple culture nationwide (and before them — IBM’s). Then Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Silicon Valley startup culture took over the West.
FAANGlikes are the typical breeding ground. “Move fast and break stuff” industry disrupters whose plan is to corner a market and squeeze it. VC gooners. Crypto perverts. Technofeudalism pedos.
Yep. They basically never recovered from that 3rd bong hit they took in their freshman year of college and think because they’ve read the likes of Bastiat, Friedman, von Mises, Rand, and Rothbard they know everything.
Also from midwest. Same experience, with the exception of a few people who get really cranky when politics comes up and they realize they are working with a bunch of liberals.
South east here and yeah same. The overwhelming majority of my coworkers couldn’t be farther from the techbro stereotypes and most of them tend towards the progressive side of the spectrum.
Seems like most “tech bros” aren’t really developers. They’re moving up the ladder or founding a startup and talking to VCs. Or possibly devs in the gaming industry. Most regular developers I know aren’t “tech bros”
Yeah, they trade on their family’s money and connections, and don’t really know how to do anything but what to kiss and when. Scum of the earth.
Count yourself lucky. I’ve been in the business a shockingly long time and I’d say most of my peers leen towards the right, though more are libertarians than are MAGAts.
Yes, there are things even worse than libertarianism.
And some of the most radical lefties I’ve met in the business are very senior, some C-level. I’m not sure what to make of that.
I have a similar experience, but even with people in southern Ohio and Kentucky (where a lot of my current co-workers are), there is the opposite of a conservative tech-bro trend.
It’s the Kroger kids isn’t it?
No but you got the city right. 🙂
It’s not hard, Ohio is a diagonal line. Nobody says they’re from Southern Ohio and means they day tripped to Huntington as a kid.
Who also have absolutely ZERO moral compass. Like literally don’t give two shits if they’re coding a piece of software going into a baby killing machines.
I’m with you. I used to build maps, models, and textures for Battlefront 2 and share the files for free on Filefront. I got into programming for the joy of creating things that make people happy, or solve some little problems they have. I still make mods, the communities are out there and I’m glad I found them.
But tech evangelists and bro culture ruined the idea of programming as a career for me. The greed of late stage capitalism infected our industry the moment Facebook hit the scene, crypto accelerated it, and AI may as well be the final nail in the coffin. It’s no longer a worthy or noble profession.
I have a couple friends that are software devs, and they echo the exact same sentiment. We’ve bonded over computers over the years, and they all wish they’d chosen a different career path at times because there are so many morons, and typically the morons are the worst devs out there.
What career is better?
All well paid professions have this culture of striver bootlicker trying to get ahead by any means necesst expect doing the real work
Everyone knows being a work horse is a stupid proposition now… Working hard to get somebody else promoted haha
At this point I have no clue. I’m an electrician with my own shop, and we do well, but damn is it tough on the body. I’ve been beginning to think of what to do next, but nothing’s really grabbing me, especially to keep my income where it’s at. And yeah, that’s a good reason to avoid those hyper corporate environments, no thanks haha.
If you’re interested in educational advancement, electrical or civil engineering programs might be good for you. Yes you’re going to deal with 22 year old TAs talking about ayn rand, but your experience could be really valuable. Especially if you want to get into electrical infrastructure work. It’s vital and unglamorous and it’s probably better if some of the people designing our infrastructure understand building and maintaining it.
I’ve actually been eyeing EE programs and probably will pursue one at some point as I’m fascinated with larger infrastructure and larger power systems. A few years ago I was actually chasing a position with our local POCO for an engineering spot but was shot down due to lack of degree (even though the person they hired came from water and has a civil degree, and apparently is a complete moron). The issue I have now is finding a reputable online program as I live in the mountains and the closest school that has such a program is two hours away, and the last thing I want to do is move into a denser populated area. So I dunno, I’m alright for now but definitely am keeping eyes open.
Yeah one of the things about an engineering degree is that the base knowledge of an engineering degree often means you’re eligible as a low choice for any engineering field. I know mechanicals working in aerospace for example (and personally I regret going industrial instead of mechanical but it’s just not worth getting a second bs in engineering for that reason).
And yeah, the location thing is hard. I’ve seen some people stack courses like crazy to get in and out fast, but it’s generally understood that that’s unwise with engineering courses. If you don’t mind doing a few semesters in person you could reduce that time by finding a college thats credits transfer there with good online courses and doing all the non-engineering classes. At my university it was extremely common for engis to take math at the local community college because our university math department was notoriously bad for anyone that wasn’t a math major.
And yeah large power systems are cool as hell.
It’s really fun when you become senior enough to be able to weed out the no-talent greasy-pole climbers.
Also, it’s not even their own language. It’s a degraded pidgin derived from MBA buzzwords and shitty management books sold in airports. You can get most of it here: https://www.bullshitgenerator.com/
Studying software engineer, the amount of weird looks I got from windows users for having a terminal open on my linux pc is scary
I read scifi books and enjoy reading about the lore of the tech industry.
If it’s any consolation, we’re kinda heading into the futuristic dystopian tech hellscape portrayed by so much sci fi. So that’s fun.
One hell of a consolation prize
i wish there was a place where normies didn’t want to work so we could all go there
Hey, I’m only money-obsessed because I’m trying to retire.
I saw my retirement fund .
I’ll probably be in the ground and STILL working.
who have invented their own language about syncing up, achieving alignment, creating action items
My soul contracted in upon itself a little as I read that.
I’m the same way. I thought websites were cool and wanted to make one. So I did and taught myself. Then I took a class at my high school, then again at the local community college once I could do concurrent enrollment. In college, I worked on software projects to relax from my CS classes, and I still do that today.
Even if AI takes my job, I’ll probably still hack on stuff. I’m in it because I love software dev. I probably could’ve climbed the ladder long ago, but that would’ve required sacrificing what I want to do.
So yeah, hopefully I can keep making money with my hobby, but I’m not interested in becoming a corporate hack just to make a buck.
Actually, my distaste for Big Tech is nothing new. It’s been building for decades.
First, little stuff like the inkjet printer that you invited into your house that claims to need, “Just a little more cyan, bro. I’ll print your black and white page after I get my cyan. Come on, bro.”
That’s because it needs to print the tracking dots on every page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
Developed by Xerox and Canon in the mid-1980s, the existence of these tracking codes became public only in 2004.
No fucking way
In 2005, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sought a decoding method and made available a Python script for analysis.
In 2018, scientists from TU Dresden developed and published a tool to extract and analyze the steganographic codes of a given color printer and subsequently to anonymize prints from that printer.
The scientists made the software available to support whistleblowers in their efforts to publicize grievances.
This article gave me the creeps, is awesome and terrifying
We need to homebrew our own printers
I am sure the end user really needs these dots bro…
Can’t live without them !
jokes on them, I print all my ransom notes using a Gutenberg press.
good luck tracking that shit down!
God dammit! I’m going back to sending my ransom notes using cut up words from magazines!
You’re seeing the end result of “boycott” problems right now though
They will simply take your money. They will pay you increasingly less, tax the little bit they pay you increasingly more, and use the money from the taxes they forcibly take from you to launder your money right back to the oligarchs. Why do you think musk is destroying shit? Why do you think they are pushing to privatize everything? That last little bit of power you have, to vote with your wallet, will become increasingly meaningless
