Exactly, Sci Fi writers almost never invent an entirely new technology for their books, they just look at current technology, think a bit about where it might head, think about how that could interact with broader societal forces, realize some flaw there-in, and write about it.

Technologists are doing basically the same thing, looking at current technology, thinking about where it might head and what might be useful and/or profitable, and then start trying to overcome current obstacles to develop and build it.

But one of them takes a single person a year or two to write a book, and the other has to start trying to do research and building things and testing them and breaking them and getting funding and overcoming the current obstacles etc. etc. If they start at the same time it will look like the technologist has just built what they were warned not to, when in reality they’ve been building it the whole time on a parallel path.

The SOLID principles are just that principles, not rules.

As someone else said, you should always write your code to be maintainable first and foremost, and extra code is extra maintenance work, so should only really be done when necessary. Don’t write an abstract interface unless multiple things actually need to implement it, and don’t refactor common logic until you’ve repeated it ~3 times.

The DRY principle is probably the most overused one because engineers default to thinking that less code = less work and it’s a fun logic puzzle to figure out common logic and abstract it, but the reality is that many of these abstractions in reality create more coupling and make your code less readable. Dan Abramov (creator of React) has a really good presentation on it that’s worth watching in its entirety.

But I will say that sometimes these irritations are truly just language issues at the end of the day. Java was written in an era where the object oriented paradigm was king, whereas these days functional programming is often described as what OO programming looks like if you actually follow all the SOLID principles and Java still isn’t a first class functional language and probably never will be because it has to maintain backwards compatibility. This is partly why more modern Java compatible languages like Kotlin were created.

A language like C# on the other hand is more flexible since it’s designed to be cross paradigm and support first class functions and objects, and a language like JavaScript is so flexible that it has evolved and changed to suit whatever is needed of it.

Flexibility comes with a bit of a cost, but I think a lot of corporate engineers are over fearful of new things and change and don’t properly value the hidden costs of rigidity. To give it a structural engineering analogy: a rigid tree will snap in the wind, a flexible tree will bend.

Honestly I haven’t seen a single article written by someone who actually understands the mathematics involved so I call a huge amount of HORSeSHIT on your headline.

No, workers are not doing more for less compensation then they were in 1811. Overall things have improved, though obviously not ideally or universally.

For instance we all have relatively cheap well made clothing in a variety of different designs, primarily because of the automation machines that the Luddites smashed. The problem with Luddites is that they blindly attacked automation when their issue was with capitalism.

It’s strikingly mask-off utilitarian discourse from a tech CEO

No it’s not. It’s literally just basic engineering and logic.

This article is nothing but rage bait for luddites.

Omg, a sustainable, repairable, and open source project costs the same as a closed source, non repairable, locked down option … Those are totally the same thing!

/S

There is an open source project to replace the innards:

https://sett.homes/

No it’s not.

It might be to you, but there are enormous numbers of elderly and disabled people who would benefit from more assistance.

I still wouldn’t trust a robot around them given how inherently dangerous a massive motorized contraption is, but we also shouldn’t be blind to accessibility and utility just because we don’t personally need it.

Yes, I know, do that, or save to do it sooner, or see if you can get low interest financing to do it.

There’s a difference between ‘oh this house’s outlets are mounted lower than code says these days’, and ‘most of the house is missing a core safety wire that’s been part of the code for 50 years’.

Really makes me try and catch myself complaining and just to stop it.

A lot of conversations revolve around ‘dont you just hate this one process, or people like x, or y never works’ and it’s always weary and exhausting, but much more so since I became the tech guy and realize how much people default to stories like that when they have nothing else to say about your profession.

If you want to say ‘ive noticed that x never seems to work properly and I’m wondering why it couldn’t be fixed with z’ and are genuinely curious I’m more than happy to problem solve and/or explain complexities, but most people never want to hear a complicated answer about systemic forces.

I would really recommend fixing the wiring before investing any money in home automation.

Don’t build advanced sensitive low voltage systems on top of shaky high voltage systems that can melt and destroy them. Not having enough outlets because of old shoddy wiring is inconvenient when you can’t plug stuff in and waste time running extension cords, it’s expensive because you end up buying that much copper to run extension cords, it’s expensive because shoddy wiring can easily fry electronics, and it’s tragic and expensive when it burns your house down.

And your point is wrong because you keep boiling it down to simple black and white.

The Nobel prize is not purely political and is not devoid of merit.

The world is not full of binary systems. It’s made of multi variable systems where multiple influences can be true at the same time.

If you want to make a point about why accurately predicting the structure of hundreds of thousands of proteins doesn’t deserve the Nobel in chemistry then I’m all ears. Please tell us all exactly why you think their prize was political and not meritocratic, and why predicting protein structures automatically is not important?

Because if you can’t answer that very specific question, then you weren’t making a point relevant to the conversation, you were making a snide generalization to hear yourself speak.

Thank you for finally spewing out the point you wanted to make from the jump. It’s irrelevant in the context of the original discussion, but you got to hear yourself talk.

Lmao, it’s binary cause you say it’s binary.

Bro grow up. The world is not black and white. Literally not a single award on the planet is meritocratic if you insist on dealing in absolutes. Every award is awarded by some committee and there is some room left for human judgement, which leaves room for human bias, which makes it not perfectly meritocratic.

If you want to go an unhinged rant that no one wants to listen to then email the nobel association directly, don’t waste federated server time.

Lol if you rigidly define things binarily in a way that doesn’t reflect real world systems, then sure they’re binary.

This is false, it’s not a binary system. The prize is both.

Use this thing called empathy and try and imagine how a non-tech nerd thinks. If you lack the capability of empathy, then you’re never going to get a satisfying answer.v

You cant make anyone do anything, you can entice them over.

To do that they need to be simple and easy to use, what you’re describing is already more complicated than downloading signal or WhatsApp, signing up, and starting.

For start, search xmpp on the app store and notice how the first result is a paid app that costs $8 and isn’t clear whether or not it will connect you to your friends.

You can’t understand why? Are you incapable of evaluating a user experience?