| ▲ | bensyverson a day ago |
| Can we just fast-forward to the part where the moralistic hand wringing is over, and we all accept that this is a part of software development now? Were accountants this internally conflicted about the energy use of computers when they switched to spreadsheets? |
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| ▲ | adamddev1 a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Spreadsheets were deterministic, reliable, hard-coded tools. This is a false analogy. |
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| ▲ | bensyverson a day ago | parent [-] | | All analogies are "false" | | |
| ▲ | eviks a day ago | parent [-] | | But not all are false | | |
| ▲ | bensyverson a day ago | parent [-] | | An analogy is by definition a lossy comparison, not an exact equality. | | |
| ▲ | eviks a day ago | parent [-] | | Read the definition of "analogy", its core lies beyond your simple misunderstanding of a "false/true statement". If the commonalities your suppose exist in your analogy don't really exist, it's a false analogy regardless of the fact that a true analogy would still not be an "exact equality". | | |
| ▲ | bensyverson a day ago | parent [-] | | I did not mean it to be a 1:1 analogy, but rather a similar situation in history. My contention was not "this is precisely like the introduction of the spreadsheet." It was a tangentially related comment wondering whether there was the same level of angst among accountants when their field was suddenly impacted by a new technology. hn commenters man | | |
| ▲ | eviks a day ago | parent [-] | | "hn commenters" indeed. Instead of addressing the substance of the criticism of your analogy you ventured into irrelevant (and incorrect) semantic tangent. Like you continue to do - I understand that it wasn't meant to be 1:1, but it doesn't impact the assessment that it's a very bad one because the things you think are common are not even close. |
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| ▲ | eviks a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why should they have been? Did computers consume much more energy than the bigger amount of people working much longer + all the energy wasted on mistakes than the computers? |
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| ▲ | zzzeek a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Were accountants this internally conflicted about the energy use of computers when they switched to spreadsheets? they were! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox spoiler alert, they went with computers after all |
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