I absolutely disagree with this. All the things the author said will still exist and keep on existing.

Nothing will prevent you from typing “JavaScript with your hands”, from “holding code in our hands and molding it like clay…”, and all the other metaphors. You can still do all of it.

What certainly will change is the way professional code will be produced, and together with that, the avenue of having a very well-paid remuneration, to write software line-by-line.

I’ll not pretend that I don’t get the point, but it feels like the lamentation of a baker, tailor, shoemaker, or smith, missing the days of old.

And yet, most people prefer a world with affordable bread, clothes, footware, and consumer goods.

Will the world benefit the most from “affordable” software? Maybe yes, maybe not, there are many arguments on both sides. I am more concerned the impact on the winners and losers, the rich will get more rich and powerful, while the losers will become even more destitute.

Yet, my final point would be: it is better or worse to live in a world in which software is more affordable and accessible?

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terminalbraid 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> All the things the author said will still exist and keep on existing.

Except the community of people who, for whatever reason, had to throw themselves into it and had critical mass to both distribute and benefit from the passion of it. This has already been eroded by the tech industry coopting programming in general and is only going to diminish.

The people who discovered something because they were forced to do some hard work and then ran with it are going to be steered away from that direction by many.

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paulhebert 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t think it’s that simple. A couple of examples:

Food:

A lot of the processed foods that are easily available make us unhealthy and sick. Even vegetables are less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. Mass agriculture also has many environmental externalities.

Consumer goods:

It has become difficult to find things like reliable appliances. I bought a chest freezer. It broke after a year. The repairman said it would cost more to fix than to buy a new one. I asked him if there was a more reliable model and he said no: they all break quickly.

Clothing:

Fast fashion is terrible for the environment. Do we need as many clothes as we have? How quickly do they end up in landfills?

Would we be better off as a society repairing shoes instead of buying new ones every year?

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ahepp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's true, they don't "make 'em like they used to". They make them in new, more efficient ways which have contributed to improving global trends in metrics such as literacy, child mortality, life expectancy, extreme poverty, and food supply.

If you are arguing that standard of living today is lower than in the past, I think that is a very steep uphill battle to argue

If your worries are about ecology and sustainability I agree that is a concern we need to address more effectively than we have in the past. Technology will almost certainly be part of that solution via things like fusion energy. Success is not assured and we cannot just sit back and say "we live in the best of all possible worlds with a glorious manifest destiny", but I don't think that the future is particularly bleak compared to the past

	▲	paulhebert 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, it’s complicated. I worry that humanity has a track record of diving head first into new technologies without worrying about externalities like the environment or job displacement. I wish we were more thoughtful and focused more on minimizing the downsides of new technologies. Instead it seems we’re headed full steam towards huge amounts of energy use and job displacement. And the main bonus is rich people get richer. I’m not sure if having software be cheaper is beneficial. Is it good for malware to be easier to produce? I’d personally choose higher quality software over more software. I’m not convinced cheaper mass produced clothing has been a net positive. Will AI be a positive? Time will tell. In the short term there are some obvious negatives.

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zeroonetwothree 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would also add:

Cars make people unhealthy and lead to city designs that hurt social engagement and affordability, but they are so much more efficient that it's hard not to use them.

And then the obvious stuff about screens/phones/social media.