Comment by hyperhello

I find these water-against-a-rock literary tones so tedious. Even the writer always seems to have to go back and put some of it in BOLD TEXT, supposedly highlighting the main ideas, but really optical affordances.

The truth of this seems much more banal. Computing has become a major drag. There have been tens of thousands of libraries that reinvent the wheel. Every operating system has become a toy. All major language systems have an absurd learning curve. Each important application is fortified by a giant corporation. Social media is self-important pop babble.

LLMs are surprisingly good at dealing with complex systems. I can fire one up and ask, for example, why this Swift code is not compiling. But why doesn’t my Swift editor explain that problem? Why is it a confusing question at all? The entire system was built from the ground up at enormous expense. Why do I seek outside help?

Our computing is full of whizzy animations and pointless Victorian ironmongery. All meaningless. AI is medicine, not the cure.