Im an 20 year veteran of application development consulting. Contributor level... not talking head. I do more estimating than anyone you likely know. Consulting is cooked. I just AI native built (not vibe coding...) an application with a buddy, another Principal level engineer and what would cost a client 500-750k and 8-12 weeks, we did for $200 and 1 sprint. Its a passion project but highly complex mapping and navigation app with host/client multi-user sync'd state. Cooked.
I realize this sounds one sided. Ive also founded companies and worked across the range of startup to faang. Everything has changed... For the better if you ask me.
Many kit builders with flashy PCs are only running 32gb. If you look at datasets like Steams, most people are still on 16 and 32. Hell 4% are still on 8!
Meanwhile I moved platform from AM4 at exactly the wrong moment, and downgraded RAM (temporarily, I hope) from 192GB to 96GB and feel like I'm missing half my workspace when I need it.
> 96bb is like 1% of population. this is not normal. optimize your stack mate.
Of course it isn't normal, that's why I made my comment, to highlight the contrast. And no, my stack is optimized, you have no idea what I'm doing, yet somehow feel confident enough to know what my stack should/shouldn't look like? Man, the hubris of some people...
Next you'd probably tell me my Threadripper 9970X and RTX PRO 6000 is overkill, based on some other unrelated metrics.
People don't think anymore, they just react... Im pretty sure Im done engaging on this platform for that reason. Nearly every comment is met by some crass remark that clearly demonstrates the person didn't actually understand the comment, just reacted to the trigger words within it.
This is best exemplified by all the comments (on varying posts) saying: 'I misread the title, and interpreted as X, haha!'. HN has unfortunately slid in the direction of Reddit (despite the HN Guidelines' denial of this).
*Mobile phones. Calling and texting your bank for account info and actions predates the iPhone... even Venmo started as a text message service before it was an app. The iPhone may have just been the nail in the coffin.
I mean people have been saying a crash is coming for years... Consumers recklessly purchased homes and cars at double their value, while relocating for remote work that was never long term in the eyes of their employer. Sounds like a receipt for disaster or a repeat of 2008- however, so much has changed since 2008... whatever happens, Black Swan! Hope "you" have your ducks in a row... As for AGI, lol. A box of matmuls isnt going to solve any real problems, so far, as you point out- is can barely write software. LLMs are basically gifted children. Smart sounding, lacking wisdom, chaotic, and likely just going to end up not that impressive. Either way- before we ever see AGI, we better get our heads out of the holes of the wealthy and enact UBI...
They do not in fact do it just fine. That's why it's utterly laughable to suggest that they can lead to AGI. They can't even do the one thing they are supposed to be good at, even after years of effort.
I didn't say anything about AGI, nor will I except to say it's an incoherent quasi-religious topic that has next to no engineering relevance, at the very least until somebody can empirically test for it. Stop coping.
There was a great AI CTF 2 years ago that Microsoft hosted. You had to exfil data through an email agent, clearly testing Outlook Copilot and several of Microsofts Azure Guardrails. Our agent took 8th place, successfully completing half of the challenges entirely autonomously.
That's really cool. Do you have any write-ups I can checkout? I'm still new to this area of offensive sec so would love to learn from folks who've been in the thick of it.
This. Hell even a company that is 100 people or more. Ive seen companies just grind to snails pace around 80-90 people and then still scale to 400-500 and then it's impossible to really do anything meaningful. I have tried to test for this in interviews over the years but ultimately I just end up disappointed. At this point I don't even look, just work in small independently organized groups or coops.
The authors logic only works for software engineers and as I have said time and time again- software engineers have been automating people out of their passions for decades and now it has come for yours... The lying here is LYING TO YOURSELVES.
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