[HN Gopher] Outgrowing Software
___________________________________________________________________
Outgrowing Software
Author : nreece
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-03-19 10:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ben-evans.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ben-evans.com)
| jeremydeanlakey wrote:
| > tech will change everything, but once the dust has settled the
| questions that matter will mostly be retail questions, not tech
| questions
|
| I'm not disagreeing but how will we know the dust has settled?
|
| I might have thought the dust had settled with music when you
| could download mp3s. But now streaming services are the thing.
| michael-ax wrote:
| Software ate the world and "the important questions are somewhere
| else."
|
| what do you think those are, and were they not always?
| Joeri wrote:
| We always seem to look at tech as if it is a thing unto itself,
| instead of a catalyst and enabler. Every industry is transformed
| by technology, but it remains fundamentally about the same thing.
| There was still a transportation industry after the move from
| horses to cars, and there is still a music industry after the
| move from physical media to digital downloads. If you don't
| understand the industry you are in, it doesn't matter how good
| your technology is. That doesn't mean things need to be done in
| the same way. What is transformative about software eating the
| world is the ability to bring distribution costs to zero,
| enabling radically different models. Only a deep understanding of
| an industry allows for a successful technology transition.
|
| For example, for me what is interesting about autonomous vehicles
| is not the convenience, but the transportation models enabled by
| a radically lower cost per travelled kilometer. Those who make
| the software for the autonomous vehicles will surely succeed, but
| so will those who understand what transportation models become
| possible using that software. I'm not sure whether being a car
| maker is an advantage or disadvantage, it depends on how well the
| car maker understands the transportation industry. For this
| reason I'm also not clear whether Tesla is relevant to the future
| of autonomous vehicles. It seems unlikely we're going to drive
| around in similar ways as today, just with a computer at the
| wheel. Tesla seems to be working towards improving today's model
| of car ownership and usage by making nicer cars. That's an old
| world model. Whatever the future of personal transportation is,
| it is not that.
| sudhirj wrote:
| This is why I think SpaceX and Starlink are bigger businesses
| than Tesla. I already have an electric car, and it's made by
| Hyundai, and they've been better at making cars since Elon was
| is diapers. Tesla is a catalyst, not the final state of the
| system.
|
| Those who can charge a toll on the network, though, are in a
| more interesting position. It's not clear that anyone other
| than SpaceX is going to be able to build rockets cheap enough
| to maintain an Internet constellation any time soon. It's
| certainly likely that others will try, but it's possible that
| SpaceX will have the final word on cheap space flight, at least
| for a generation.
|
| To the point of the article, the real beneficiaries will be
| those who understand the consequences of humanity now having
| the option to spread out at low density, and due to autonomous
| driving and global connectivity, not seeing a drop in the
| quality of physical and intellectual life.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Once you have the AI experience and expertise, and have the
| battery technology and the experience building factories at
| gigascale, you can easily pivot away from the sedan/suv form
| factor and build delivery vehicles or whatever makes sense in
| the future.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| This piece has an odd conception of technology as a thing that
| transforms an industry once and then screeches to a halt.
|
| Technology is _continuing_ to transform each industry it
| mentioned. Retail is rapidly becoming automated to a degree that
| would have looked like science fiction a decade ago, Tesla 's
| battery technology continues to improve, video games continue to
| eclipse the movie industry.
|
| Speaking of the movie industry, it's very likely that if that day
| ever does come when Tom Cruise actually looks his age, the on-
| film Tom Cruise will not. Young actors of future generations will
| face competition from AI-generated likenesses of the stars of the
| past generation.
|
| Tech isn't close to done with _any_ industry.
| amelius wrote:
| Software ate the world. And now Apple is eating software.
| grey-area wrote:
| Software is eating the world meant software will permeate and
| govern everything, every thing and every industry will be
| programmable, the world will be full of objects which are linked
| at a distance and change behaviour regularly, perhaps even with
| intents of their own. The combination of ML and robotics will
| spread software even farther into our physical world.
|
| The author compares software to consultants, disruptive but not
| producing meaningful change, I don't agree with this - industries
| are being changed forever or replaced, but the transformation
| isn't done yet. The old intermediaries who used to decide what we
| consume are not dead yet but I think that power will be diffused
| across society as the cost of production falls and new mediums
| emerge.
|
| Retail - we're only partway through a transformation but big
| retailers simply have no reason to exist in a world where you can
| have a package delivered same day to your door from a warehouse.
|
| TV - this will be replaced by other screens which encourage
| participation (live chat etc), and self-production (youtube),
| that's not yet complete.
|
| Publishing - the entire knowledge of humanity is available online
| for the first time, most of it free, and people can publish their
| thoughts at zero cost. This is a remarkable revolution with
| profound impacts still reverberating. Gatekeepers like academic
| publishers are increasingly untenable and out of touch but are
| not gone yet.
|
| Music - democratised as the means of production are cheaper but
| the incumbents are not dead yet, however their position is
| becoming untenable.
|
| IMO we're not even halfway through this revolution which is
| comparable in scope and time to the industrial revolution.
| gpanders wrote:
| One downside to lowering the barrier of entry in all of these
| areas is the lack of any kind of quality control or content
| curation. Sure, anyone can publish their thoughts online for
| free, which I agree is a good thing for openness and freedom,
| but not everyone is equally qualified or competent. It becomes
| increasingly difficult to sift through the mountains of sub-
| standard garbage to find things worth consuming (NB I dislike
| the word "consuming" in this context, but I don't know of a
| better catch-all term).
|
| Now sure, the old gatekeepers weren't perfect at this either
| and they published a lot of garbage too. But I think this is
| something that needs to be discussed as content creation
| becomes increasingly democratized.
| grey-area wrote:
| Completely agree as popularity != quality and curation
| without cornering the market does have a lot of value. When I
| said gatekeepers I was thinking of academic publishers vs sci
| hub for example, or non-fiction publishers who operate on
| selling big names rather than quality.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> but I think that power will be diffused across society as
| the cost of production falls
|
| I feel like this is the kind of optimistic sentiment, expressed
| over the years, that this essay is countering.
|
| Empirically, we've seen the opposite. Yes, "software ate the
| world." But no, it hasn't diffused anything. Once upon a time,
| it was expensive to press records or print books. Someone had
| to bankroll it, and so record labels and book publishers
| became. What actually happened when music and print digitized?
| Did they go to a flat, federated, diffused or disintermediated
| structure. No. They got _more_ centralized.
|
| Unaffiliated musicians and TV/film makers work for the youtube
| or spotify. They have no control or influence over those
| companies, and have no power. In fact, they have less power
| than before because _they_ , unlike the platforms, _are_
| decentralised.
|
| >> Music - democratised as the means of production are cheaper
| but the incumbents are not dead yet, however their position is
| becoming untenable.
|
| Untenable in _theory._ Sure, there is no need for someone to
| bankroll record pressing or book printing anymore. Hello zero
| marginal cost abundance. Yet, labels and publishers still
| exist. The industry structure is more centralised and more
| intermediated. Above labels /publishers are amazon, netflix,
| spotify, apple or google.... the new top of the pyramid.
|
| OOH, we can believe our own 2004 speculative reasoning about
| digital economics... and what is or isn't tenable. OTOH, we can
| look at reality in 2021 and accept the prevailing trends.
| Youtube, spotify, itunes, amazon, netflix and future monopolies
| _are_ what abundance looks like, not Wikimedia, Linux or the
| www.
|
| We were wrong. Abundance has not impacted economic structures
| the way we expected. We have what we had before, but now with a
| tech monopoly at the top.
| grey-area wrote:
| I disagree that music and publishing have become more
| centralised.
|
| I have seen the death of the book publishing industry first
| hand - from the outside it might appear relatively unscathed,
| from the inside it has been hollowed out and is untenable.
| Publishers are clinging on but increasingly irrelevant and
| their margins are non-existent, which pushes their quality
| down, which undermines their business model further. They
| will survive another generation though on nostalgia and with
| steadily declining sales. They simply don't have a viable
| business model any more.
|
| Sure we're not living in the utopian future some imagined but
| that does not mean the transformation was not profound and
| ongoing.
|
| The transformation is far from over in those that were
| vulnerable to the internet and many industries have only just
| started being consumed.
| bregma wrote:
| It's true that content publishers (music, books, video,
| academic papers, news, software, etc) are all being
| eliminated by the current disruption. The problem is that
| they added real value to the chain, and that value is also
| being eliminated.
|
| The current trend towards heaping massive quantities of
| low-value undifferentiated product in a heap at the feet of
| the consuming masses is wonderful if your metric is
| quantity. By eliminating discoverability, accessibility,
| quality, and curation you can massively increase the
| quantitative choice of consumers. In theory the cost
| difference is either saved by the consumer or passed on to
| the creator.
|
| In addition, eliminating the idea of capitalizing
| investment in content creation means far less investment in
| content creation. The marginal cost of copying is virtually
| free, but the cost of creating the first instance to be
| copied has not decreased.
|
| I suspect what we're seeing is the first wave of
| restructuring: tearing down the old to create a vast swamp
| of crap. I expect a second wave to come in which the vacuum
| created by tearing down the old will be filled by new
| publishers and their ilk to provide the services of
| discoverability, acessibility, quality, and curation and
| the capitalization of content creation.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I agree broadly, and I think we both agree with the
| author's main point... life goes on.
|
| But, I think we need to be careful with our expectations.
| Currently, the biggest factor determining what content
| gets created is the preferences or MO of a handful of big
| guys.
|
| Netflix is like the old world. Executives. Deals. Do
| Netflix insiders still like sexposition or do they think
| it's corny now? It's a lot like selling a show to a cable
| channel. On Youtube, a minute of news equals a minute of
| fart jokes and subscribers are important. That's _their_
| ethic.
|
| The future isn't really about what "content" will do..
| it's about what youtube or amazon will do. These
| companies are not neutral conduits of consumer
| preferences, whether or not they make decisions
| algorithmically.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I see the author is here, so I feel kind of weird defending
| the position for him. What the heck though (sorry
| benedict)...
|
| The point isn't that technology hasn't had an impact, or
| that software didn't really "eat the world." Old businesses
| and industries do have to adjust, and sometimes fail.
| That's not the point either. The point is "what comes
| after?" or rather, "how do these industries look now?" The
| answer to that is closer to "same as it was in 2005" than
| it is to "what we expected would happen in 2005."
|
| IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book
| publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and the
| wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits around
| wondering who they need to shag to get a publishing deal.
| If they're lucky, they get a publishing deal, like in 1988.
| Then Amazon sells it.
|
| Maybe publishing is going through a technology induced lean
| years. Maybe a lot of them will go out of business. News
| publishing has gone through crisis moments, where they beg
| politicians to make Google and FB share some ad revenue
| back with them. What has not happened is diffusion,
| disintermediation or somesuch. Creators or consumers aren't
| more empowered. From the outside, it's business as usual
| and the outside view is what counts.
|
| I remember Seth Godin's take on the kindle. At first he was
| excited. New medium, new message. Then he was disappointed.
| Digital books would cost the same. That meant the goal was
| to keep everything the same. There would be no penny-per
| page business model. No nonfiction equivalent of a short
| story. Amazon would be chasing deals with publishers, not
| opening up to new people. Jeff was right. Seth was wrong.
|
| I share a lot of your sensibilities. But when reality
| contradicts theory, we need to adapt the theory.
|
| The same is true of most large industries touched by
| digitization. Some (like publishing) had tumultuous
| transitions. Some (like banking) had pretty cushy
| transitions. In almost no cases has "economic untenable"
| logic proved out. Banks have not evolved into lean, mostly
| software, organisations. They've gotten bigger and hairier.
| Is this "tenable?" Maybe not, but it is the norm.
| grey-area wrote:
| OK I see where we disagree I think.
|
| You (and the author) think this transformation is over, I
| think it's just starting.
|
| _IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book
| publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and
| the wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits
| around wondering who they need to shag to get a
| publishing deal. If they 're lucky, they get a publishing
| deal, like in 1988. Then Amazon sells it._
|
| This is not an accurate summary no. Today an author
| doesn't _need_ a publishing deal to get in front of
| millions of readers in a way they most definitely did in
| 1988. They can set up a web page and sell their book
| themselves (and many are doing so). Just to pick one
| example, this book is self-published[1] and has its own
| website, on Amazon - Publisher : CreateSpace Independent
| Publishing Platform. There are certainly problems, Amazon
| is a predatory monopoly which will suck the margins out
| of any successful seller on its platform, but the entire
| industry is being shaken and self-publishing is growing
| in importance. Many of the old publishers see this coming
| but have no idea what to do about it, they 're either
| watching their business slowly die or moving online
| selling curated content and leaving books behind.
|
| To pick another example, video, channels like youtube and
| twitch have lead to the rise of internet celebrities not
| chosen by any producer or channel, but who set up their
| own stall and sell themselves. Gaming channels like steam
| or mobile have led to a boom in indie game studios and
| small games. There are certainly excesses and mistakes
| involved in that, but it is an entirely new mode of
| production enabled by the internet, and again I think
| it's in its infancy. It's not a fad which is going away -
| broadcast TV itself is going away and being replaced by a
| more interactive mode, it just doesn't know it yet.
|
| So I don't agree the information revolution is over, it's
| only just beginning and will probably take about 50 more
| years at least to play out fully. We only just started
| carrying powerful internet connected computers in our
| pockets about a decade ago; the implications of that
| alone are far-reaching.
|
| [0] http://momtestbook.com
| dalbasal wrote:
| Maybe we're getting closer but I don't think "You (and
| the author) think this transformation is over" is
| accurate. There is no pre/post. Change is continuous.
| Business is tumultuous.
|
| Speaking for myself, I think _over /not-over_ is part
| illusion to shake. It is part of the theory, which has
| failed. A pre-digital world and a digital world... where
| our first principles economics will finally play out.
| That day is not coming, marginal cost economics is not
| going to play to the "logical" conclusion.
|
| There is a real reality out there. In it, digitisation of
| content has _consistently_ led to monopoly. Google
| produce the world 's most popular operating system _and_
| web browser just to support their search monopoly. They
| have no intention of being a neutral pipe.
|
| To get grandiose... I feel like we are/were misguided by
| deterministic thinking. We see the possibilities of
| digitization, and assume they're inevitable. They aren't.
| They were opportunities, but they were never just going
| to manifest themselves.
|
| The WWW was/is free because TBL made it that way. We
| believed that openness was an inevitability. Reality has
| schooled us.
| TehMrSkinner wrote:
| Typically the encouraged participation of Twitch and YouTube is
| a mechanism to strengthen para-social relationships people make
| with "content creators" which I don't think is a good thing, if
| more and more people aren't making friends and building
| communities around them in favour of their "friends" and
| "communities" online then they're going to continue being at
| the mercy of the established order (whether that be Governments
| or Corporations) as there's no real unity in an online
| collective and there's no meaningful action a disparate group
| of people can do to effect change in a single place.
|
| On your publishing point it seems to me we're just abandoning
| quality control and rigour under the guise of begrudging
| gatekeeping (sometimes the gate does need to guarded) and
| whilst I agree that the subjectivity of art means more people
| being able to make and share music is probably a good thing
| (you can't definitively say there's "bad music") the same can't
| be said for information.
|
| Perhaps I'm too cynical but a large aspect of the past 20 years
| in software proliferation I don't like is the idea that we
| should just build things consequences be damned (Mark
| Zuckerburg especially has this belief) as we're never then
| taking the time to properly reflect on if there's a way to
| prevent harm up front _or_ if the harm produced can 't be
| mitigated maybe we _shouldn 't_ build these things in the first
| place. A rhetorical but interesting question is how many
| relationships do we think were ruined by Facebook? How much
| dysmorphia and self-loathing caused by Instagram?* How much
| hate spread by YouTube and Twitter?
|
| *(These two I find particularly interesting as we weren't even
| part way through uncovering the ill effects of unrealistic
| beauty standards set by Hollywood and the advertising industry
| over the last 50 years before along came these websites/apps
| whose solution was to allow you to airbrush and manipulate your
| own life and set your own unrealistic standards. There's now a
| generation and more to come who have just grown up with this
| being the way the world is).
| grey-area wrote:
| There are certainly a lot of bad aspects to the popularity
| contest which is the current internet. Sorry if I sounded too
| panglossian about recent changes, but I think people overlook
| just how profoundly our lives have been and are being
| transformed.
| benedictevans wrote:
| Thanks for reading. However, that's not what Marc meant by
| 'software eating the world' and it's not how I described
| consultants.
| grey-area wrote:
| Thanks for the article, it was an interesting read.
|
| Genuinely interested, what do you think he meant? What do you
| feel the phrase means today? I read it as software will
| transform and replace many industries and physical things but
| will go back and find that essay again now - perhaps it's the
| bit about software permeating the physical world you object
| to? It was a really interesting phrase that I think resonated
| with a lot of people, so perhaps I read into it lots that
| wasn't there.
|
| Re consultants, I was referring to this bit:
|
| _There's an old joke that consultants are like seagulls -
| they fly in, make lots of noise, mess everything up and then
| fly out. That's pretty much what tech has done to media
| industries..._
|
| It seemed to me your thesis was that software is done
| transforming these industries and the only interesting
| problems are industry specific and not related to software? I
| think there is still a lot of change left to go.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am going to bang on about this again, but imo software is a new
| form of literacy. Literacy of employees and customers
| transform(s/ed) all industries but we don't talk about the
| literacy department or literacy investments in corporations.
|
| (It's what annoys me about low-code solutions - it's like trying
| to write your novel by linking pre-drawn cartoon squares together
| in innovative ways.)
|
| You cannot compensate for lack of literacy in a company or
| society. Same for software.
|
| In short some companies and some societies will be software
| literate and have time to focus on the next problems as ben talks
| about here - while others are stuck in the transition period. But
| they must go through the transition period - having good answers
| to "publisher questions" won't help if you don't have good
| answers to API questions
|
| Software skills will remain a wage distinction for some time
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Extra ranting: It's worth noting that there are a _lot_ of
| _businesses_ that also "do not fit in one persons head".
| Anyone who has spent time in a large organisation will be
| constantly coming across processes that seem designed solely to
| prevent anything happening and knowing how to get around it is
| a hidden mystery. I am sure there are billion dollar
| departments in my company I have no idea exist. And it's
| dubious that at any sufficiently large organisation it is truly
| understood by upper management - almost every corporate failure
| can be attributed to something like "Yes of course I know how
| engines work, we can move the forwards quite easily"
| fukmbas wrote:
| Coders are becoming dime a dozen. I would tell future
| generations to steer clear and specialize. There's a lot more
| to it than programming
| klelatti wrote:
| Successful "tech" companies need to have a (relatively) small
| number of people who understand the possibilities that software
| open up for their business model.
|
| They have a number of people who are skilled at managing the
| software and product development process and a (potentially
| large) number of people who are skilled at software
| development.
|
| Seems to me to be very different to the notion of literacy
| which is a set of skills that essentially every employee needs
| to have.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >I am going to bang on about this again, but imo software is a
| new form of literacy.
|
| The four Rs: Reading, writing, 'rithmetic, R.
|
| ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language) )
| enobrev wrote:
| RAWR.
|
| Reading
|
| Arithmetic
|
| Writing
|
| R
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Did you make that up? I love it.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Yes, I made it up just now.
| hypermachine wrote:
| Low code isn't inherently that bad as long as it offers a way
| to integrate with traditional code. Microsoft Excel is
| tremendously succesful in this area.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Low code isn't bad until you try to use a lot of it just like
| OOP isn't bad until you use too much of it. There is always a
| temptation that leads one to use too much of these. We have
| had low-code visual software design for decades. SQL Server
| Integration Services comes to mind. It does not solve the
| core problem. Maintainability. The last thing software needs
| is an invitation to more people that aren't yet aware of the
| problems of maintenance.
|
| There is not an extremely high barrier to coding. That is not
| a problem. There is a huge barrier to learning how to produce
| maintainable and adaptive systems and that barrier is only
| made worse with low-code tools and services.
| jgalentine007 wrote:
| I worked with adding some functionality to a Microsoft
| PowerApp Covid office tracker template. Having to navigate
| the GUI for everything was quite cumbersome.
|
| Although it was only two function calls in two places, it
| seems that every time the template is updated, the calls
| will have to be added back. Instead of doing a merge in
| Git, you will now have to remember all the navigation steps
| to add the changes each time. I don't want to think about
| what happens if you have more than one person working on an
| app.
| hypermachine wrote:
| We have automatic version control for our platform, give
| us a try when we launch.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| There's a corollary with illiteracy but for mathematics, called
| innumeracy. Perhaps there's another for software, which is
| essentially a language of logic. It could be called illogicity.
| You could make up your own term if you don't like that one.
|
| Literature is not just spelling and grammar, and mathematics is
| not just numbers and equations. Likewise, software is not just
| code and computers. Each of these are ways of thinking, methods
| of communicating, realms to explore, and systems for organizing
| the world.
|
| I would not be surprised if there are other systems like these
| which we have not yet discovered or invented. At least, I hope
| that there are.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I think it is easy to see programming as the language of
| logic. But this is what I've observed as my wife has learned
| to use python, javascript, and R for her work.
|
| The _huge_ majority of errors have nothing to do with
| inability to think logically. Instead it is "I'm getting
| some incomprehensible fucking error message from conda" and
| it turns out the root cause is that her machine has multiple
| python installations and the places where dependencies end up
| installed are all fucked up and the solution has nothing to
| do with programming.
|
| The second most common source of errors are "weird language
| things". Something can be expressed perfectly reasonably if
| you were to read it as pseudo-code but weird edge cases cause
| problems. Consider "==" vs "===" in JS. All sorts of fun
| issues there and it isn't really failing to understand "the
| language of logic" that causes people to bash their heads
| into a wall until somebody says "oh, JS has multiple ways of
| doing equality and you just need to know that".
|
| The existing software ecosystems are nowhere near ready to
| support people who just want to think logically about
| problems and algorithms. It is just too filled with "wtf does
| PC_LOAD_LETTER mean".
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - I think there's lots of bad tooling, but a lot of it
| does come down to logic.
|
| Once people realize they're not doing something 'wrong'
| really and that it's just the tooling that's bad - they can
| start to understand that troubleshooting and debugging is
| _most_ of what we 're doing. Being good at troubleshooting
| and debugging is largely logic (isolating variables,
| testing, thinking about what it could be, knowing what to
| ask/search). It's why the dev joke of 'it works on my
| laptop' is funny.
|
| The narrow scope of solving some explicit programmatic
| problem is one area where logic is needed, but debugging
| things is the more common use. Lots of historical things
| people had to debug are past that tooling stage and now
| mostly 'just work' (like compilers). Lots of newer
| technology is not close to that yet.
|
| The analogy to literacy I think is a good one.
|
| I wrote a little about this here:
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/04/19/how-to-become-a-
| hacke...
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| I can see what you're getting at here, and perhaps
| "language of logic" is not the most accurate way to
| describe what software is. Maybe "language of complexity"
| or "language of systems" or something else. Someone could
| come up with better terms or metaphors here.
|
| The difficulties you describe, however, assuming they
| aren't being caused by flaws or bugs, are part of the
| "language" we're talking about. I think one of your
| assumptions here is that logic is simple. That's true to
| begin with, but the software systems we build are usually
| towering arcologies of logic, with all manner of intricate,
| sometimes counter-intuitive details. A single detail, when
| examined by itself, is relatively easy to understand, but
| when taken together, they form a serious challenge for any
| human mind to grapple with. I think you could make
| comparisons to sprawling works of literature or advanced
| forms of mathematics, where the bits and pieces can be
| grasped, but the number of pieces, and the connections
| between them are often too difficult to see all at once.
| notriddle wrote:
| It's not like English and algebraic notation exist in the
| Platonic perfect state for their respective domains.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure, but I've never seen somebody try to read a book
| just to find that the book is written upside down and
| only reveals itself during the full moon.
|
| How would somebody teach my wife to deal with a weird
| dependency error message? It took me several hours to
| figure out. Googling error messages accomplished nothing.
| There was no reasoning really behind it. Just unique
| problems with python dependency management. There aren't
| really transferrable skills here that would empower
| somebody to rapidly figure this sort of thing out if they
| just rearranged how their thought process worked. You
| either know the incantations or you don't.
| megous wrote:
| Actually there are general techniques to troubleshooting.
| Like increasing observability of the system by increasing
| logging levels or via a debugger, figuring out expected
| behavior and looking for unexpected things, etc.
|
| Here you'd just enable some way to see the dependency
| resolution process in more detail. What files are
| touched, etc. It can be as simple as running strace with
| an 'open' syscall filter, and you'd see some unexpected
| paths being touched, perhaps. But there are many ways to
| achieve the same.
|
| How would she know about strace? It's just one of the
| tools you get to learn if you approach problems from the
| a generic "how'd I make what this program is doing
| visible to me?" when it's not doing what I expect. There
| are a ton of tools you learn if you approach problems
| this way over time, instead of searching online for error
| messages first.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| There's also workarounds as an alternative to
| troubleshooting.
|
| Just change the CLI command that's failing to a function
| which `docker run`s the right thing with the rest of the
| params passed and be done.
|
| But this assumes you know enough of your shell language
| to do that, and there will likely be things to
| troubleshoot there.
|
| I've managed to avoid learning enough about OS internals
| to get a good handle on 'deeper' ways to troubleshoot
| like what you talk about with strace. Know any good
| resources to learn?
| [deleted]
| alcaide-mor wrote:
| Could that word be computacy?
| bob1029 wrote:
| I like this perspective.
|
| It also hints at a potential resolution - Pull the team away
| from the technology for a little while so they can focus on
| the abstract problem domain.
|
| Most developers probably don't have the capacity to think
| about shiny new technology while simultaneously running traps
| on the fundamental business domain abstractions. Taking time
| away from the computer to think about the problem you are
| _actually_ trying to solve is a big deal. Many just get
| caught up fighting their own tools and lose sight.
|
| One simple trick - If you are not yet at a point where you
| can cleanly model your problem domain in terms of SQL tables
| & relations (even if you don't intend to use this
| technology), you have absolutely no business touching the
| rest of the effort. There are notions that you can actually
| have a provably-correct model of your domain at a certain
| level. 3NF/BCNF schemas have fundamental mathematical
| implications that are very powerful. Entire classes of
| accidental complexity can be obviated with a clean domain
| model.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Yes. I think it is a Brooks quote that is something like
| "don't show me your code - I won't understand it, show me
| your database and I will understand your application."
|
| Simple robust Data structures with complicated code acting
| on it.
| amelius wrote:
| Every business person with the money can hire a bunch of coders
| to do the actual work. So I don't think "software literacy" is
| or will be a thing.
| junon wrote:
| Typical HN crowd upset that people don't agree with their
| technomancer future and down voting anyone who says software
| engineering is hard.
|
| You're right, in the same way why math literacy still isn't a
| thing.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > It's what annoys me about low-code solutions - it's like
| trying to write your novel by linking pre-drawn cartoon squares
| together in innovative ways.
|
| There's a reason societies which switched from hieroglyphics to
| alphabets have higher literacy rates--the best way to promote
| widespread literacy is to make it easy and accessible.
|
| Before the pandemic shut us down, I was a volunteer teacher at
| Girls Who Code. We used Scratch, which I was a bit skeptical of
| at first, but then I watched the ten-year-old students struggle
| to type a sentence at three words per minute. In Scratch that
| didn't matter--they could create all sorts of programs.
|
| In a different context, while I'm not personally a fan of
| complex spreadsheets, they seem to be effective for a lot of
| people, who I suspect would otherwise struggle with Python.
|
| To be sure, Scratch and Excel are still much slower and
| clunkier than "real", text-based languages. But I'm not
| convinced that typing words into a text editor is the ultimate
| way to create software. And even if it is, we've got to find a
| way to make this stuff easier, because I don't want to live in
| a society where a handful of elites are able to make computers
| do their bidding, and everyone else is left to consume the
| scraps offered from on high.
| fossuser wrote:
| Agreed - many tasks can be done with more accessible tools.
|
| It's why Excel is so popular.
|
| It's why modal editors suck for the majority of humanity. For
| most people and most applications, WYSIWYG is fine and allows
| people to use the computer to do their work.
|
| We'll still need the more sophisticated tooling for a long
| time, but even that becomes more niche once it gets really
| good. Most developers are not writing assembly or machine
| code. Layers of abstraction can and do work, but every time a
| new one comes it's often viewed skeptically.
|
| Nocode is a little different in the way that excel is
| limiting too, but that doesn't mean it can still solve a lot
| of the problem space for a lot of people if done well.
| Introducing young kids to programming seems like a reasonable
| place for it.
|
| I think AI assisted programming will be interesting, both in
| the form of Karpathy's blog post:
| https://karpathy.medium.com/software-2-0-a64152b37c35 and
| also just to assist alongisde the dev. GPT-3 style, "center
| this on the page" -> correct CSS. Fast feedback via NLP here
| will be really interesting and helpful. We used to have to
| look up stuff in books, then there was google and stack
| overflow, it'd be nice to be able to ask random questions and
| get the answer instantly in code in front of you.
|
| This is a great related blog post if you haven't read it:
| http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| No.
|
| Excel is a local optimum - a hill on the way up the
| mountain.
|
| Yes, scratch and excel are good solutions for the issue of
| "it takes years to become software literate and I have six
| week evening classes to fit it in, what shall i teach"
|
| but that's the answer to the wrong question.
| fossuser wrote:
| Not everyone who drives a car needs to be able to rebuild
| the engine.
|
| Not everyone who writes a video game needs to write the
| physics engine.
|
| Not everyone who needs to analyze a dataset needs to
| write SQL.
|
| Abstractions and tools exist at levels that provide value
| to people solving problems. The more accessible the tools
| are, the wider the net of people that can leverage them.
|
| A minority of voices can loudly yell in a corner about
| how everyone needs to use modal editors and write their
| own assembly while the rest of the world moves on and
| ignores them.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I think saying Excel & co are just shortcuts to do the
| same thing worse, is a bit uncharitable. I have very
| little experience with spreadsheets and a fair bit of
| experience with imperative programming (I guess
| declarative too from SQL, which is actually quite
| transferable to gSheets formulas).
|
| I was sorting out a spreadsheet which I could use to keep
| track of income events and display information on taxes
| at different brackets, running totals for income & tax,
| capital gains events, and spent about 3-4 hours working
| on it, even though the formulas were all new to me.
|
| The same thing would have taken me far longer as a python
| program.
|
| Spreadsheets are really just the perfect way to operate
| on tabular data and display tabular data that has been
| transformed through a cascading series of transformation
| functions. I don't think it's possible to do this as
| efficiently through imperative programming.
| sombremesa wrote:
| > There's a reason societies which switched from
| hieroglyphics to alphabets have higher literacy rates--the
| best way to promote widespread literacy is to make it easy
| and accessible.
|
| Source? This seems to have a lot more to do with socio-
| economics and politics than linguistics.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I see them as all tied together. Rising literacy rates
| increase standards of living. Rising standards of living
| leave time to learn to read. More people reading creates
| pressure to make reading easier. And so the cycle
| continues.
| mgummelt wrote:
| The novel analogy is the right one, but it works against your
| point. Everyone needs to write. Few need to write novels. Just
| like increasingly everyone needs to write software, but few
| need to be engineers.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Everyone can write a novel. A lot of HNers have a word count
| in the (short) novel length without worrying.
|
| I think the issue is most software developers are paid full
| time to write. Pay me full time to write novels and you can
| have an endless supply of low quality Dan Brown.
|
| I think the novel analogy is useful - there are an awful lot
| of novels being published (even more self published). Most
| are drivel ... unfortunately similar to the quality
| distribution of software.
|
| Very few people and less organisations are capable of
| consistently great writing.
|
| In my view we should be aiming for seeing what makes
| something like the Washington Post _work_. This is a
| agglomeration of skilled people who manage to write a
| coherent trilogy of novels every day.
|
| Being literate is only the first challenge - building
| literate organisations is a much harder one.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > software is a new form of literacy
|
| Do you mean basic skills in using a desktop computer, or do you
| mean software engineering skills?
|
| > we don't talk about the literacy department
|
| Software development is a skilled craft, and will remain so.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I use the motor vehicle metaphor:
|
| Software literacy is equivalent to: being able to drive a
| car, fuel it, decode the various dashboard lights when they
| blink, maybe change a tire and check the oil.
|
| Software engineering is: Being a car mechanic.
|
| So is it very useful to society if the vast majority of
| adults are able to drive. It is not important or worth the
| effort to have a majority of adults as fully trained car
| mechanics. Although it is good to have "on ramps" for those
| with the aptitude and inclination to pick it up, as a useful
| and paying job.
|
| It is _now_ useful to society if the vast majority of adults
| are able to use a maps app, a messaging app, a word
| processor, maybe a formula in spreadsheet, calendar a zoom
| call and unmute themselves, have email and can distinguish a
| phishing email from real bank communications, ignore fake
| news on social media, etc.
|
| The difference between a formula in a spreadsheet and full-
| time coding is one of degree, not kind; but you could say the
| same about changing a tire vs. a full vehicle overhaul.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I used this analogy myself the other day, and it's how I
| often explain software development to people who have been
| led to believe that computers are some deep mystery that
| could never be understood by the common man.
|
| However there is one important difference between software
| developers and car mechanics, and that is that our work is
| in cyberspace so it can be effortlessly duplicated and sold
| a million times over. Car mechanics operate in meatspace,
| so in order to get paid they need to keep on fixing cars. A
| software developer could fix just one virtual car and then
| keep earning money forever thanks to intellectual property
| laws. It doesn't seem like equal pay for equal work.
|
| Thinking about it this way has led me to become more
| skeptical of intellectual property laws. Software
| development isn't especially more difficult than any other
| skill, but we are disproportionately rewarded for it due
| arbitrary legal constructs. It seems like the industry has
| a vested interest in giving the impression that what we do
| is impossibly complicated. If more people realized the
| truth, there might be a stronger call to abolish or at
| least reduce the terms of copyright, patents and so on.
| mgummelt wrote:
| "We need to decide if software is a car to be driven or an
| essay to be written." - Alan Kay
|
| He goes on, of course, to argue that the car analogy is the
| wrong one.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Oh wow - do you have a reference to the original?
| datavirtue wrote:
| I used to be a mechanic and the analogy fits. Rich people
| drive into the shop and bark at you to "just fix it." They
| don't care about any of the minutia but it had better work
| they way they envision it working. Then they throw you a
| few pennies and drive off.
| gpanders wrote:
| Where were you a mechanic that it only cost "a few
| pennies"? I feel like I get bled dry every time I take my
| car in...
| datavirtue wrote:
| Mechanics work ungodly hours and deal with very painful
| situations and barely make a living wage that can support
| a family. You feel like you are getting bled dry because
| the service does not scale. A highly trained professional
| has to focus on your problem until it is fixed and the
| solution is often very time consuming. Insurance costs
| are high and so are labor and material costs. It doesn't
| mean the mechanics are making a killing. The owners are
| often well off though. Hiring more mechanics scales for
| them.
| gpanders wrote:
| That makes sense. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I don't know myself, but if the big expense is parts not
| salary, both can be true. The vehicle manufacturer would
| be the one capturing the profits of the overpriced band-
| name parts.
| moonbug wrote:
| your periodic reminder that Excel is programming.
| nullserver wrote:
| It's also extremely productive.
|
| Management always thinks a new web report / dashboard will
| solve all the problems.
|
| Team then spends a week or month building said report into
| system.
|
| Only to find that it doesn't help anything. Six months of
| iterations later it's correct and useful.
|
| Or have someone build a one off report in excel. Iterate a
| few times that afternoon until it's correct. Then it's
| handed off to developers. Avoiding months of rework.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Respectfully, I don't think it's insightful to point out
| that Excel is Turing complete. That's a technical
| curiosity, it doesn't inform our discussion here.
|
| The boundaries of what we call 'software development' are
| fuzzy, but that's true for all sorts of things. Assembling
| a computer doesn't make you an electronic engineer, despite
| that you're building a complex electronic system. If a high
| school teacher comes up with a basic arithmetic question
| that, by coincidence, has never been asked before, the
| teacher still doesn't count as a research mathematician for
| solving it.
| moonbug wrote:
| "Excel as technical curiosity".
|
| Peak SV.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the point (or they edited the
| comment). Excel is user programmed _automation_ , and
| it's incredibly wide spread.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Software development is a skilled craft, and will remain so.
|
| Yes, you're right, but i would take the meaning that
| understanding Software development and deployment and how
| that can be leveraged is a literacy. There's tons of IT
| transformation disasters because the companies upping their
| literacy get stuck with knowing the words (SOA and Agile) but
| don't know how to make coherent use of them.
|
| Most projects these days are IT projects.
|
| Think about it like a dev, Software on a computer is useful.
| Networked software is more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really
| useful, SaaS is a really really useful and knowing when to
| use each to actually get stuff done is the most useful of
| all.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Software on a computer is useful. Networked software is
| more useful. Cloud and IaaS is really useful, SaaS is a
| really really useful"
|
| I actually prefer the reverse progression as the closer it
| is to _my computer / my server_ the less I spend on feeding
| somebody else's insatiable appetites. Being connected is
| one thing. Giving somebody else more and more control over
| your business is totally different.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Writing is a skilled craft, and will remain so, especially at
| professional levels. But we still teach everyone the basics.
| junon wrote:
| Man it really sucks this is being down voted. Software
| engineering is not like reading. Reading conveys information
| about reality. Software code conveys solutions to problems.
|
| The latter requires understanding of computers, problem
| solving, domains, etc. Just like I can't pick up a book about
| organic chemistry and understand it, people are not going to
| some day care to know about how distributed systems
| algorithms work.
|
| It is indeed a skilled craft and this weird, cyberpunk-ian
| idea that everyone will just converge on technical literacy
| is very hand wavey and ignores simple facts like some people
| just not having ANY interest in computers or tech.
| jfim wrote:
| Literacy is actually a good analogy. People have different
| reading abilities, but they're all under the umbrella of
| literacy.
|
| Some people are illiterate, some people can read simple
| documents but struggle with higher complexity texts and
| contracts, and some people can breeze through high
| complexity texts. In the same way, some people struggle
| with computers, some are able to understand Excel
| spreadsheets, some are able to understand business logic
| expressed in a domain specific language, and some are able
| to read complex programs.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Reading itself used to be considered a skilled craft.
|
| Only 4% of people knew how to read during the middle ages.
|
| Mostly clergy and civil servants.
|
| The grandparent poster is right imo. If programming becomes
| just another thing everyone knows, and takes a software class
| every year like they take an English class, the world will be
| way better off.
| colinb wrote:
| Interesting idea. Will everyone spend the next twenty years
| complaining about how much they hated Mrs Jones the
| programming teacher and how Stroustrup ruined programming
| for them?
|
| Put it another way. The reason we interview people the way
| that we do, is because it isn't realistic (unfortunately)
| to expect that a CS grad can fizz-buzz, or delete from a
| linked list, or whatever. Anyone who has spent a little
| time interviewing can confirm this. Why should we expect
| that secondary education would do a better job?
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| If they were taught this kind of thing from an extremely
| young age in school every year these interviews would be
| trivial, Just like speaking your native language is
| trivial.
| dasudasu wrote:
| We don't quite reach a very high degree of practical math
| literacy even though everyone is taught from a young age.
| Calculus considered as "incredibly difficult" being an
| example.
| fakedang wrote:
| I know a lot of students who would not understand the
| idea behind calculus concepts, even though they knew the
| formulae. They simply could not grasp a very simple thing
| like "area under the curve" or "Slope of a curve". This
| was at a large private school with a selective admissions
| process. I know for a fact that my college educated
| parents (50+) would not know how to solve a calculus
| problem. So yeah, Calculus is a pretty bad example
| because it IS incredibly difficult for the general
| population.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I don't know if this is like a smarts thing or just a
| poor math education thing.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| As someone who does math for a living, I'm always
| frustrated because I truly believe it's a poor math
| education thing. But then people just respond, "oh
| MYNAME, you just think that because you're good at
| it/you're a math person." As if that made the point less
| valid rather than more valid.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I completely agree with you.
|
| I think it's a failure of the school system from a very
| early age because math is heavily dependent on
| foundations of previous classes.
|
| And I think it's more than just sharing the information
| we have to also make rational thinking fields as fun and
| cool as the emotional expression fields of study like
| English or Music and not the domain of 'nerds'.
|
| I think our whole culture would be way better off if
| people had better critical thinking logic and math
| skills.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > because math is heavily dependent on foundations of
| previous classes.
|
| This is a point I hadn't thought enough about before.
| Great insight.
|
| It makes me think that maybe we just suck at education in
| general, and it only shows up in the subjects where
| continuation is dependent on previous courses.
|
| If you completely fail to understand american history,
| you can lie to yourself about being good at it, and
| continue to believe that when you get to european
| history. If you completely fail to understand the lessons
| from Fahrenheit 451, you can believe you're good at
| English (the subject, not the language) while you move on
| to Shakespeare.
|
| The only (pre-college) subjects I can think of that
| really require you to actually understand the prereq's
| material are math and language. And they share that
| people say "I'm just not a math person" or "I'm just no
| good at languages."
|
| I'd never thought about it with that lens before, but now
| I'm feeling kinda pessimistic. Like, if this hypothesis
| is true, it's not about bringing math education up to the
| bar of other subjects, it's about overhauling the entire
| system.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Leonardo da Vinci was likely one of the most intelligent
| humans ever to have lived, and didn't understand
| calculus. It wasn't for lack of interest, either! He was
| fascinated with parachutes, timing falling objects and
| trying to understand the rates of change. But despite
| nibbling at the edges of calculus, he never got there.
|
| In contrast, it's now completely ordinary for a teenager
| to not only get to the core ideas but solve complex
| calculations with them in timed tests!
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| This is an odd comparison.
|
| I think DaVinci was way before Newton.
|
| High school students aren't asked to invent calculus just
| to understand it.
|
| I didn't invent djikstras graph traversal algorithm but I
| can read and understand it.
|
| I think there's a difference between original invention
| and understanding 'n usage.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| We all stand on the shoulders of giants and have
| increasingly powerful complimentary cognitive artifacts
| that let us easily do things that used to be very
| difficult.
|
| In a more extreme version, consider that ancient Greek
| and Roman mathematicians struggled with long division
| problems that many of us can do in our heads now!
|
| Why? Arabic numerals are far more effective than Roman
| numerals for the task and after having learned them, we
| have a permanently increased ability to do certain kinds
| of calculation.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| You use your native language all the day, all the time.
| It's nowhere near the same.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| The important difference between programming and
| reading/writing is that written language is just another
| representation of natural language. All the complexity is
| in understanding and using natural language. Reading itself
| is trivial once you have some practice.
|
| Programming on the other hand is creating new abstractions
| (i.e modelling). It never becomes trivial, because it's not
| just a new encoding of existing abstractions.
|
| I think programming is no different than maths. Yes,
| everyone will have to know a little bit of it, but very few
| will be capable of modelling complex problems or
| implementing large software systems.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Language is just a tool to express a collection of ideas.
|
| The reason programming is not an extension of our natural
| language is because we haven't included those concepts in
| our natural language yet.
|
| The world would be way better off if everyone had better
| logic and analytical thinking ability
| jart wrote:
| Well lots of people can read and write, but few people
| are able to write a good novel. Everyone I know who isn't
| necessarily a software engineer but has basic programming
| skills has benefited from that knowledge. For example
| with everyday office work there's a big difference
| between someone who's able to use Word and someone who's
| able to use Access. The latter requires programming know-
| how. Also shell scripts and automation. It has a huge
| productivity amplifying impact.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> Well lots of people can read and write, but few people
| are able to write a good novel._
|
| That's exactly my point. Coming up with a great story is
| very difficult. Writing it down is trivial in comparison.
|
| _> Everyone I know who isn't necessarily a software
| engineer but has basic programming skills has benefited
| from that knowledge._
|
| I completely agree. It's very useful and should be taught
| in school just like maths is taught in school. Maybe it
| should be taught as part of maths.
|
| My point is that the cognitive difficulty of formal
| modelling is on a completely different level than that of
| transcribing words. We should adjust our expectations
| accordingly.
| jart wrote:
| I agree but consider that Homer, one of the greatest
| storytellers of all time, was most likely illiterate.
| I've also met people who are outstanding at computer
| science but struggle with coding. I just think they're
| different skills and the people who can do both know how
| smart and important they are. It's sometimes a source of
| discouragement when the aim is to teach coding as a form
| of literacy. I read a story once where this company a few
| decades ago tricked a group of secretaries into learning
| to code LISP because they didn't tell these women that
| what they were doing was programming. Similar to the
| airline ticket salespeople who used to do things like
| edit raw memory in their sabre terminals, which is
| something most programmers today would believe they're
| not smart enough to do. It's amazing how clever people
| are at figuring things out if we avoid thinking about
| technology labor with the classic division of labor
| assembly line model.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I seem to remember a similar using LISP story - not
| tricking people but they gave sales team / admin lisp
| _tools_ because they did not have time to code the
| "proper ones" - and the employees (women) rebelled when
| people tried to take them away. I want to say it was ...
| wrote much of netscape then ran a nightclub ... memory
| like a sieve I have.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| Rather than JWZ, you may be thinking of the Mailman
| system for customer service at Amazon in the early days,
| as recounted by Steve Yegge [1]
|
| [1] https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-
| babel
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| By saying " ed few can do the hard stuff", is that not
| redefining use of maths to an arbitrary cutoff line.
|
| Think of all the instances of maths used globally. Do the
| millions of people who more or less get the idea of an
| average - this is used across politics, and common
| discourse. Does that count as maths? I would say yes,
| just as a for loop is programming. No we are not
| expecting a compiler but just "arranging the world so it
| can be easily iterated over" is a fine common objective.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> Does that count as maths?_
|
| Yes, that's exactly what I meant when I said "a little
| bit of it".
| maxwell wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Widespread ability to read and write natural language seems
| to've, eventually, made written constitutions not so-much
| "viable" but "necessary".
|
| It's easy to forget how innovative the U.S. Constitution
| was for being _written_ , content aside.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitution
| s
|
| Definitely excited about the social implications of
| widespread ability to read and write executable language in
| the long run, note when France crossed 50% literacy though:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy#/media/File:Illitera
| c...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think I am the grandparent - and yes I agree, software is
| going to be table stakes for the next generation of
| corporate players (and by implication, those corporates who
| cannot will mean a huge gap opening up).
|
| It's not just "can my employees write a for loop" but it's
| "do we store data sensibly, when upper management wants a
| report is there a data history stretching back to the raw
| (ie no manual involvement). Do we all publish APIs and work
| through those defined interfaces - and many more.
| b3kart wrote:
| > Literacy of employees and customers transform(s/ed) all
| industries but we don't talk about the literacy department or
| literacy investments in corporations.
|
| Well, we do, it's just called the "copywriting department". :-)
| Literacy is important for modern business, some people are
| better at it than others, corporations pay such people to focus
| on literacy. Same goes for software development: yes, it's
| rapidly getting commoditised, but I don't think software
| development as a profession is going anywhere any time soon.
| simiano wrote:
| I rarely reply to a comment here on HN. But yours resonated
| with me. Software as a new form of literacy is a good mental
| model. Also "You cannot compensate for lack of literacy in a
| company or society" is spot on. Thank you.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Thank you :-) I am actually writing a book about this and a
| few other ideas - watch out for "the software mind".
| youerbt wrote:
| It's not clear to me what you mean by software. Software is
| just a tool and writing software is also just a tool, more
| often than not, not that interesting in itself. Solving
| problems using software is the goal and can be realized with
| various ways, like those low-code solutions you mention.
|
| This is why I'm becoming more and more unhappy about calling
| myself a programmer. It just doesn't have that "problem-solving
| using computer technology" ring to it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Agreed. Programmers code. Developers build software. Most
| software engineers work under a developer (business subject
| matter expert, slash, product owner) as programmers.
|
| The person who envisions and specifies the features is the
| developer. The person who translates those into code is a
| software engineer or programmer. Sometimes they are the same
| person. In the corporate world, rarely ever.
|
| In the corporate world if the software engineer can capture
| and document a business domain's processes then they are
| effectively taking the job role of developer from the product
| owner. Most people are comfortable leaving that in the hands
| of someone else and making it "their job." Engineers have the
| chance to take power but rarely do because they get caught up
| in the weeds of trying to covert a trickle of requirements
| into code because...agile. Developer Hegemony, when are we
| going to wake up?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Sounds to me like Ben agrees that we're now in the Deployment Age
| (http://reactionwheel.net/2015/10/the-deployment-age.html).
|
| I wonder if he also thinks that the VC model is a less good fit
| here.
| [deleted]
| didibus wrote:
| > More fundamentally, though, for both music and books, most of
| the arguments and questions are music industry questions and book
| industry questions, not tech or software questions
|
| I agree with this so much, but in practice people actually don't
| realize this enough.
|
| When I work with business teams, they have a hard time
| distinguishing business rules from tech problems. So they'll say
| something like... Oh the payouts aren't deposited in time, we
| need to detect in advance that a payout is required and start the
| deposit process earlier. And then they'll say, that's a tech
| problem for the tech team to solve.
|
| Except not really, yes it takes a software engineer to program a
| computer to enact these rules and this process, if you've chosen
| to have the process managed by a computer. That said, all the
| difficulties are in defining the business rules. When exactly
| should you start the depositing process? Based on what will you
| define when it has to start, what if it's started and the
| customer removes their bank details, or what if etc. This all
| becomes hard business problems for the business to solve.
|
| So what happens in practice is, business domain experts overtime
| start to abstract more and more things to the computer, leaving
| the software to actually answer for these business problems and
| define the rules for them. In turn it is often to the developer
| to figure out the solution to the business problem and a strategy
| to solve it, and then implement it in the computer. Those things
| often end up happening together.
|
| That's why I think in effect software companies slowly move to
| owning the business itself. And this is a part of software is
| eating the world.
|
| As computers take over control, enforcement and execution of more
| and more business processes, the management and administration
| authority is slowly reversed, software becomes at the root, and
| software engineers at the helm. It becomes increasingly difficult
| for business people without that software background to realize
| that most things are not a software problem, but a business
| problem which they could be focusing on themselves, but are
| delegating more and more over to software companies and software
| engineers.
|
| It's pretty common to ask a business domain expert about how
| should this be handled, and for them to ask back, well how does
| the computer currently handles it?
| [deleted]
| wrnr wrote:
| It's also getting easier to make software and harder to make
| physical goods. Still software is probably the place to get
| started on a problem. I wanted to make something out of carbon
| fiber but I think I write my own cad software that can simulate
| braided structures before I'll buy an autoclave and scale a
| production line.
| beforeolives wrote:
| This was interesting but it reads like it's only an introduction.
| What does the title mean? How are we outgrowing software if every
| company is a software company? Where are the important questions
| if not in software?
| krishan711 wrote:
| Wheenver reading articles like this i love to replace words like
| software with electricity or something similar. All these
| industries are and will continue to be disrupted by whatever the
| latest innovation is. It's just that software is the latest big
| one to change things so dramatically. People say similar things
| about crypto and finance or ai and writing. It seems silly to
| think this has ever not been the case and will ever not be the
| case.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Reminds me of Joe from _Halt and Catch Fire_ observing:
| "Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that _gets us_ to
| the thing. "
| datavirtue wrote:
| A variation of "the network is the computer" perhaps.
| derriz wrote:
| The story displays a lack of historical perspective which I find
| common among technologists particularly those focussing on IT.
|
| The entire article seems to be based on the following premise:
| "In the past, IBM, Oracle or Microsoft sold technology to other
| companies, as a tool - they sold computers and software to GE,
| P&G and Citibank. Now there's a generation of companies that both
| create software and use it themselves to enter another industry,
| and often to change it."
|
| This claim of an unprecedented economic change currently
| occurring seems obviously indefensible to me or at the very least
| historically ignorant?
|
| New companies exploiting (rather than selling) new technology
| (not just software) to displace incumbents is the oldest story in
| the world.
|
| And IBM, Microsoft and Oracle still sell technology as far as I
| can see.
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