Nilay Patel on software brain: “a particular way of seeing the world that fits everything into algorithms, databases and loops”:
that is pure software brain: the idea that we can force the real world to act like a computer
Folly.
I’ve reviewed a lot of tech products over the past decade and a half, and all I can tell you is that it is a failure when you ask people to adapt to computers. Computers should adapt to people.
Computers 👏 should 👏 adapt 👏 to 👏 people.
the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at enormous cost […] and locked into the narrow framework of software brain without realizing they are also asking people to be fundamentally less human. They then sit around wondering why everyone hates them.
Mandy Brown:
Documents and whatnot are all mechanisms for communicating between humans—a communication that is always lossy, because creating a shared understanding between people is, and always will be, one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. Workslop dramatically increases that lossiness, with what we mean to say drifting further and further away from us, mediated through machines that smooth out the tone and blur the intent until we are saying nothing at all.
Absolutely spot on.
Workslop is bullshit work at scale. This will get framed as a morale problem, which is true enough. But I promise you the technocrats pushing the slop machines do not give the slightest of fucks about your morale. This isn’t their problem; it’s yours.
Jan Miksovsky’s talking about journaling specifically, but this is great advice generally:
There are plenty of purpose-built systems [...] If you want to use one of those, go ahead. But at the beginning it might be better to do the simplest thing that could possibly work until you can identify your real needs.
Jason Gorman:
am I at all surprised by this revelation that – “with AI” – a team of 6 can deliver more value than a team of 26? No. It’s exactly what I’d expect, with or without AI.
Coordinating humans or agents, it’s still coordination.
The combinatorial explosion in lines of communication required to keep team members in sync applies whether those team members are human or AI.
John Gruber, quoting Walt Disney:
We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies.
Gruber’s version: don’t make software to make money, make money to make more software.
My version: don’t make websites to make money, make money to make more websites.
Bryan Cantrill:
I actually view the primarily role of a technical education, in computer engineering or in computer science / software engineering, is giving you humility that anything works at all […] that once you understand how extraordinary it is for a machine to work at all, you’re humbled.
More 👏 humility 👏 please.
Cantrill makes a good point that “complexity is contagious”. It doesn’t merely accrue, it can go viral and spread to everything around it when not properly managed.
When simplicity in the abstraction is a non-goal, you don't know what to say “No” to.
When constructed systems are done well, there is someone at the helm, or a group at the helm, or unifying principles, that allow them to know what to say “No” to and give them permission to say “No”.
New software is so hard because people aren’t ready for it. No matter when you ship it:
The most calcified software of all: the software in our minds.
Which is why:
The biggest problem for a revolutionary system is to stay funded.
When you’re drowning in complexity, just know that it can get better — it will get better! How do you know that? Because revolutionary ideas can change the abstractions we build on.
when you are mired in accreted systems, that is when revolution systems form. That is a solace we can take when we are in extremely complicated, accreted systems.
It’s very complicated to make things simple — and it’s very simple to make things complicated.
Mandy Brown
Documents and whatnot are all mechanisms for communicating between humans—a communication that is always lossy, because creating a shared understanding between people is, and always will be, one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. Workslop dramatically increases that lossiness, with what we mean to say drifting further and further away from us, mediated through machines that smooth out the tone and blur the intent until we are saying nothing at all.
Just absolutely nails it 🎯
Workslop is bullshit work at scale. This will get framed as a morale problem, which is true enough. But I promise you the technocrats pushing the slop machines do not give the slightest of fucks about your morale. This isn’t their problem; it’s yours.
John Oliver:
The thing about not waiting until you’ve solved all the problems with your product is you’re then launching a product with a shit ton of problems.
(Context: Olver had just played a video of an AI company CEO who said he was happy to not be making a “Doctor” AI chatbot because that would involve too much risk because it has to be right. A “Friend” chatbot, he argues, doesn’t have to be anything but “entertainment” so you can launch it into the world before all the problems have been ironed out.)
Dave Rupert:
I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve abandoned at least two projects because the LLM generated more code than I wanted to read. I looked at all the folders of files and said “Meh” and closed my laptop.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve done this with code I’ve written myself!
I spent a bunch of time and effort getting it exactly how I wanted, stood back and looked at what it took to get there (and what my maintenance burden would be), and in the face of that I threw it all away.
Multiple times.