> I was careful to say "Good code still has a cost" and "delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than [free]" rather than the more aesthetically pleasing "Good code is expensive.
Which is nuance that will get overlooked or waved away by upper management who see the cost of hiring developers, know that developers "write code", and can compare the developer salary with a Claude/Codex/whatever subscription. If the correction comes, it will be late and at the expense of rank and file, as usual. (And don't be naive: if an LLM subscription can let you employ fewer developers, that subscription plus offshore developers will enable even more cost saving. The name of the game is cost saving, and has been for a long time.)
Sure, but clueless leadership is not a new thing. While big companies with structural moats can shamble along with a surprising amount of dysfunction (which is why they tolerate so many muppets in middle management), even they rely on some baseline of system integrity that will erode pretty quickly if they let go of the people who know how things work.
Don’t get me wrong, I think SWE headcounts will reduce over time, but the mechanism will be teams that know how to leverage AI effectively will dominate ones who don’t. This takes more market cycles though, and it’s even hard to nail down the specifics of these skills with the speed agentic coding tools are currently evolving. My advice is make yourself part of the second group, and worry less about bad management decisions that are inevitable.
> we invented this new thing called fire [...] So the tribe leader (who, by the way, gropes your children) proposed a solution: centralize control of all the fire
Of all the things, a "save-the-children prolegomena to the Prometheus myth" certainly wasn't on my bingo card today. So thank you for that, but I'm not aware of any reports of fire-keeping in the way you've described. Societies and religions do have sacred traditions related to fire (like Zoroastrians) but that doesn't come with restrictions on practical use AFAIK.
I'll spell it out for you since you can't read between the lines. It's not actually about fire-keeping in tribes to protect children. It's about certain people (governments, corporations, organizations) wanting control over the Internet and everyone's digital communications. They don't want a free marketplace of ideas and uncensored channels of communication because their propaganda narratives would not survive.
The tribe leader refers to certain rich and powerful folks that have infiltrated governments and are running some of the largest businesses.
The fire refers to instant communication over the Internet. This relatively new technology has the potential to paralyze old power structures and reshape civilization. It's understandable why governments et al are panicking. They know their authority will wane under global free speech unless they do something.
It's in the library you're using, and you're not using all of it. I've had that exact situation: a dependency was vulnerable in a very specific set of circumstances which never occurred in my usage, but it got flagged by Dependabot and I received a couple of unnecessary issues.
> Yes, you configured an LDAP server using it's own protocol. It was not good.
It's still possible to configure OpenLDAP via the slapd.conf file. The old roadmap called for ditching configuration file support in 2.5 IIRC, but it proved hugely unpopular so the file works to this day. The new configuration style is mainly useful for live updating of access rules and indexing.
> I would expect WD-40 to work fairly well because it cleans the chain and gets the filth out of the links
That it does, but it doesn't leave much lubricant behind, which you need for a properly functioning chain. As you know, you want something that will get between the pins and rollers and stay there, minus the grime that would turn it into grinding paste. Which is probably why some people swear by wax, but that sounds like a giant hassle.
Just like Twitter is now X, full stop? With the difference that the "Office" brand is much older and has much more staying power. Besides, the desktop application suite is still named the same AFAIK.
Why? There were other talented people who produced masterful works at an early age. From the same time as this there's a Dürer self-portrait, also aged 12-13:
I came here to agree with you but then I had the good sense to read the original page which is at the Met (https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2009/michelan...), and has a lot of background on this painting, including that it WAS actually painted from an existing image (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temptation_of_St_Anthony_(... - worth a look to compare), so my primary skepticism "how could a kid even come up with that" makes a lot more sense that he had an existing image he was copying.
> But why not have the developer that wrote the code guide the AI to generate the content? They know the code best.
Knowing the code and knowing how to make the code, or the interface to the code, comprehensible to another user, are different things. Just like with UIs, and the fact that an expert is not necessarily the best teacher.
Anyhow, the age of monumental feats of technical writing is past. Too expensive, and the subject is too volatile for the most part. Economics dictate that we'll have to deal with the cheapest possible docs. We already do.
> Privacy concerns notwithstanding, one could argue having LLMs with us every step of the way - coding agents, debugging, devops tools etc.
That might work until an LLM encounters a question it's programmed to regard as suspicious for whatever reason. I recently wanted to exercise an SMTP server I've been configuring, and wanted to do it by an expect script, which I don't do regularly. Instead of digging through the docs, I asked Google's Gemini (whatever's the current free version) to write a bare bones script for an SMTP conversation.
It flatly refused.
The explanation was along the lines "it could be used for spamming, so I can't do that, Dave." I understand the motivation, and can even sympathize a bit, but what are the options for someone who has a legitimate need for an answer? I know how to get one by other means; what's the end game when it's LLMs all the way down? I certainly don't wish to live in such a world.
Which is nuance that will get overlooked or waved away by upper management who see the cost of hiring developers, know that developers "write code", and can compare the developer salary with a Claude/Codex/whatever subscription. If the correction comes, it will be late and at the expense of rank and file, as usual. (And don't be naive: if an LLM subscription can let you employ fewer developers, that subscription plus offshore developers will enable even more cost saving. The name of the game is cost saving, and has been for a long time.)
reply