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- Hacker News
- The computer is awesome, and so helpful. However, what some people, companies, governments, organizations have done with the computer are NOT so awesome.by NoSalt
- > Nearly two decades after that first introduction, a therapist would speculate that my interest in computers could stem from how it was a rare point of stability in a life where I ended up leaving my home and my friends every few years.
This line hits really close to home. :-/
by munificent - I think we all sympathize and feel this way.
But it's also because we are getting older, and we are romanizing those sleepless nights getting 3D acceleration to work in Slackware with Dropline Gnome. Our first chat experiences, first emails, IRC, making your first website, getting your first server online...
It's easy to think that the weary giants of steel messed up our beloved internet, and they certainly took a large share of it (and indeed messed it up). But our internet is still there, faster and better than ever, and there are still social spaces naturally independent of the tyrannies they seek to impose on us. When I go to i.e. FOSDEM I feel that feeling from my youth, it's still very much there.
Ok, it is very annoying that they are messing with the prices of our hardware and I feel that. But that will pass. Perhaps in a year or so we get a wrinkle effect and stuff will be cheap for some time. And we can do "AI" our way (on our terms and hardware).
Let's not get so negative, just try to ignore the negative things and focus on the positive (like my gigabit symmetrical connection whoop whoop, yes it has cgNAT but I have WireGuard).
by teekert - One of the main reasons I fell in love with computers was determinism. I always felt weird seeing people get upset and curse at the C++ compiler. In my mind, the “computer” will always give you the same output for the same input. Therefore, you must be doing something wrong if you’re fighting the compiler. The answer to your problems is in the source code.
This is something LLMs took away from me. I can’t just look at the source code and figure out why a prompt didn’t produce the expected outcome. I have to go with my gut feeling, and with the little I know about LLMs.
On the other hand, LLMs have enabled me to code prototypes that I would have only dreamed about a few years ago.
Do you want your own fancy terminal emulator? Done. A couple of weekends’ worth of work.
How about your own Linux windowing system, running Firefox and a terminal? Done. A couple more weekends.
You always hated KiCad routing, but never had time to go through the code and change it to meet your requirements? No worries. A day’s work.
Of course, none of this is production quality, but it gets you started very fast. And I’m sure you can turn it into a solid, production-quality product in much less time than it would take without using an LLM.
by noncoml - I loved (past tense) the computer.
Many of us here can wax nostalgic on our first memories of a computer in our home. And when we look at the current slab now in front of us with a little less wonder, it's easy to dismiss this as us having grown up with the machines, having become older, perhaps even a little jaded. That spark is gone?
It's also possible though that the machines now just aren't the same as the ones we grew up with.
Personally, I remember beginning to dislike computers a little when I was suddenly tasked with remembering passwords. At first it was simply to log into my machine (didn't need to do that on Mac System 6.0). Then when the internet came along, suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine…
After working 25+ years at Apple, when I finally retired, people have asked me since if I miss working at Apple. I have to tell them "no and yes". I don't miss working at Apple in the 2010's or the 2020's (when I finally retired). I do however miss working at Apple in the 90's, when I began. It was a very different time to be working at Apple. I miss it and have been missing it for several decades now.
by JKCalhoun - I love the computer too. Never more than while writing 6502 assembler for a decades-defunct home computer for literally no purpose at all.
Meanwhile, the economy needs software to be written and I need employment, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that hews somewhat close to my interests, whether that be learning the latest JS framework or to prompt Claude. It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day.
by pmg101 - I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. AI does more or less what it's marketed to do, sometimes badly.
I still write code by hand. But LLMs have been a legitimately useful tool when I've wanted to dig into a new field like computer graphics, theoretical physics, or numerical analysis. Or even just asking the LLM to write a piece of code and learning from its output. I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster and spend more time programming.
by fasterik - I still like the computer itself. Breaking something, poking at it, fixing it, and then it suddenly works. The hard part now is liking the industry around it.by suyavuz