Yup. The problem was never the hardware. It’s the stack. We’re all carrying supercomputers in our pockets now.

Feels like so many (dare I say most) programmers don’t even understand the work that the OS does to make the C programming environment as nice as it currently is, let alone a 200 line TODO app that uses 6GB of RAM.

That’s fucking nuts because any device that can connect to a cloud is powerful enough to run an operating system (they will probably not give user access to the non-volatile memory). Just not the bloated AI spyware box that they want.

I work in embedded, and you would be surprised how much work a CPU under 100mhz can do when there isn’t an operating system/browser in the way. We need to get back to basics in the software industry. We’ve been going down the wrong road for a looooong time, and the AI bubble is only accelerating us in that wrong direction.

I feel like this has more to do with what field you work in and what language/paradigm you use. Especially if you’re working within some bullshit walled garden, you may not have a choice. I’m a terminal jockey myself, but I mostly program in C, so my code is procedural and to the point. Maybe I might want some fancy smart refactoring feature if I worked in a language where half the code is boilerplate or glue.

If I have the choice though, I don’t see any advantage to an IDE. It’s like the combination of many tools rolled into a single, bloated UI with about 60% of their original functionality. And I guess it lets you build “projects” and choose which files will be built. That part never made sense to me. I don’t need a program for that! Just delete it dog. It’s in the repo!

IDE:

• Text editor
• Source control
• Debugger
• Compiler
• Terminal
• File explorer

I’m my opinion, these programs are just better as separate programs.

(Rant) One thing that grinds my gears… Some IDEs will leave you with the dumbest possible directory structure imaginable. Like actively hostile toward us terminal jockeys. Remember, we are repeatedly typing these things out like cavemen. For example, c/c++ developers who put their headers in a separate, but identical directory structure. Oh and let’s do full taxonomy and go 10 directories deep. And what the hell, capitalize random letters and throw in some with spaces into the directory names for good measure. These things don’t have to matter to IDE people, but it is something to be mindful of.

https://filepilot.tech/

AI hype in a nutshell

Similar thought… If it was so revolutionary and innovative, I wouldn’t have access to it. The AI companies would be keeping it to themselves. From a software perspective, they would be releasing their own operating systems and browsers and whatnot.

It’s a form of engagement hacking.

I think the order of Java and Python makes perfect sense. The OOP C++ -> Java pipeline was massive in the early 2000s when python wasn’t really on the radar. The world has been slowly moving away from that, and Python is one of the most popular languages right now.

Odin mentioned!

gcc main.c

- unity build gang

Maybe try convincing him in terms he would understand. If it was really that good, it wouldn’t be public. They’d just use it internally to replace every proprietary piece of software in existence. They’d be shitting out their own browser, office suite, CAD, OS, etc. Microsoft would be screwing themselves by making chatgpt public. Microsoft could replace all the Adobe products and drive them out of business tomorrow.

Edit: that was fast

Also depends how hard the AI runs them. A good chunk of the graphics cards that were used as miners came out on life support if not completely toasted. Games generally don’t run the piss out of them like that 24/7, and many games are still CPU bound.

I took his comment to mean recession from bubble popping.

I don’t think you would get much traction on C developers’ existing projects. C gives you the option to do everything your way. If the developer’s paradigm doesn’t agree with the borrow checker, it could become a rewrite anyway.

Most projects don’t use the newer c standards. The language just doesn’t change much, and C devs like that. This might get a better response from the modern C++ crowd, but then you are missing a large chunk of the world.

They are also dev friendly too,

Not saying you’re wrong because I don’t use it, but from the outside, they appear actively hostile toward developers.

We are eventually going to stop writing code and focus more on writing specifications.

I don’t think this will happen in my lifetime.

100%. In my opinion, the whole “build your program around your model of the world” mantra has caused more harm than good. Lots of “best practices” seem to be accepted without any quantitative measurement to prove it’s actually better. I want to think it’s just the growing pains of a young field.

You shouldn’t have any warnings. They can be totally benign, but when you get used to seeing warnings, you will not see the one that does matter.

And, you can have pointers to bits!

Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs

Niklaus Wirth