Comment by freediddy
6 days ago
Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.
Microsoft uses React Native in their Start menu because the kids don't know Windows programming anymore.
Makes no sense if you look at the start menu as an interface to the operating system.
Makes perfect sense if you look at it as one more place to show ads
Windows native app development is a mess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475938
Never use any new technology!
You see how ridiculous that sounds
The more sensible take is “don’t use new technology where it doesn’t make sense.” The start menu should need a web browser engine and a heavy JS framework because…?
The start menu just.... doesn't open sometimes these days.
It's a laggy resource hog. It's slow to open. You can spam the windows key and watch CPU usage increase.
Putting words in someone's mouth to defend that dreck sounds ridiculous, yes.
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That new technology could be Zig or Rust, if that's the spiel.
Or it could be Ada, old and boring but generally safe.
New for the sake of new is vanity.
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Another way to look at it: Microsoft APIs have fallen from grace. Even their own devs don't dogfood anymore. They download something that Facebook made instead and reimplement the Holy Start Menu using that.
Let me introduce you to a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Let's use new technology just because it's new.
You see how ridiculous that sounds
I think it was perhaps useful, at least in knowing which things are Chesterton's Fence. I doubt that AI can figure that out, since it's not always possible for humans to figure that out either.
But with AI, simple codebase understanding or even just paving over everything, including the fence, is potentially easy, and getting easier each month.
Certainly, a certain amount of senior experience is needed. The AI lacks taste and discretion. But the greybeard sensibilities the come with increasing seniority will probably hold back the new pace of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
>There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.
Learn, yes. Will they get the time and training for that, given that they are taking on 30+ year legacy code? I'm less confident.
Ah, but can they tell the same tales as you can? Maybe in time when their beard starts getting grey in it, but that time is not now.
There is a difference between figuring out and already knowing. Especially if time is a limiting factor