Comment by tempaccount5050
6 days ago
Software companies have been about automating human labor since the invention of computers. It's the whole damn point. Why do you think finance used to be (sometimes still is) the head of the IT dept? Because we automated accounting away. Then typists. Then secretaries. Then drafting. Etc etc.
> It's the whole damn point.
Believe it or not, for some of us it’s not “the whole damn point”.
Whether or not you want to admit that is up to you. If you're selling automation or efficiency gains, you're removing human labor.
My first "job" in computing, where someone else paid me for code, was in a research context where we were modeling radio propagation. Nothing about that was removing human labor. It in face eventually called for a bunch of humans to interact with each other. See: https://www.hamsci.org/basic-project/2017-total-solar-eclips...
I don't think it is fair to claim computers are about putting people out of jobs.
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I'm improving error prone systems to make the world more efficient, not to replace people.
The purpose of a system is what it does. If people constantly use your device to turn kittens into pulp, you have built a kitten grinder, even if the label you slapped on the side says "coffee beans only".
Nonsense. By your logic anything pointy is a killer machine, because people constantly use them to kill.
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Why else would one create software, if not to do something that a human does/did?
A few off the top of my head:
- Video games
- Medical device firmware
- Synthesizers
- Detailed universe-scale physics simulations
- Mars rover control software
- The Linux kernel
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To do things that a human could have done in theory, but did not do because it would have been too expensive.
To do new things no number of humans can do
No one is taking away programming as a hobby from you :)
There are software components out there that are the backbone of our industry, and they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies. Linux, postgres, HTTP, TCP/IP, qemu,…
It’s not that anthropic/google/openai/etc are unavoidable
> they are not governed by multibillion dollar companies
Every tech you mentioned is absolutely governed by multibillion dollar companies. Something like 75-85% of OSS code is contributed by employees doing their day job. Most Linux and Postgres contributions come from those same employees. HTTP and TCP/IP are managed by standard bodies and industry working groups that, you guessed it, are governed by multibillion dollar companies. Red Hat and IBM are responsible for 40-60% of contributions to Qemu.
The way I understood op is that we don't necessarily have to pay to use linux or postgres (when self hosting, for example). But we have to pay to use claude code... which sucks big time (also, open source models are behind private models)
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The usual model for OSS projects is that initially they are written for free. Then an inner circle forms and exploits the second generation of idealists who write entire large features without ever getting the same rights.
Some of the inner circle move to corporations to increase their power and are joined by corporate developers (sometimes their bosses) to take over the project.
A lot of corporate OSS development are entirely unnecessary rewrites or simple things like release management. So I'd put the number of useful code by employees much lower.
But governed, hell yeah, I agree. The corporations crack the whip and oppress real contributors.
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[flagged]
Don't make accounts just to add comments for a specific thread, you will get flagged.
"ok guys, that's enough progress since now it's my job at stake, we can stop."