> Mobile Platforms Did the Most Damage, and They Did It on Purpose

So true, but this has been going on for quite a while. Phones accelerated it and I have seem many of the concerns come up in IT where I worked.

A couple of examples:

1. My favorite, about 10 to 15 years ago. A user said this finance report always had 2147483647 in the total. This was looked at for weeks by another group.

After a few weeks our manager's manager called a meeting with everyone to look at the issue. Everyone had no idea what to do. When I saw the number it look real familiar to me. I then released it was the max value if an int. I told them the issue was its variable could was too small. A simple change fixed the issue.

Another old programmer who was not at the meeting asked me what happened. I showed him the report and he know instantly what it was too.

2. hex dumps, no one can read them now. About 25 years ago I was looking at a dump to see where a packed numeric value was, people who saw be thought it was magic. I had to explain how that number was read and what the hex represented.

I fear what will happen if AI becomes a real thing.