Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I'm being charitable).
Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.
I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.
What's happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.
If the world survived Perl, VBA, CORBA, SGML/XML, and Code Generation from UML, it can survive this.
I sure hope our beloved industry survive this wave of self-destruction, mate.
The fundamental difference I observe, at least in my small corner of the world, is that modern AI seems to be eroding the professionalism of the very practitioners of AI. This wasn’t the case with prior technological hypes, from FRP and micro services, back through time, to FORTRAN and ENIAC.
In some ways, AI appears to be validating and encouraging unprofessionalism, the same way today’s political discourse on social media is validating and compounding ignorance.
People say a mild case of XML isn't so bad, but they don't think about the effects of Long XML on a project.
People say a mild case of XML isn't so bad, but they don't think about the effects of Long XML on a project.
Perhaps we should take the first word literally in "unparalleled expressive power" (the first sentence of the last section of the quoted page).
A little like "there is nothing like a biscuit when you are thirsty"...
@maxpool @dougmerritt @robpike
"AI" is not just the wrong tool. It's eroding the very fabric of society, and especially the fabric of our industry.
See also: https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
@robpike A profound grief I feel.
I retired this year, creating considerable financial stress, but I just don't want to be associated with this trade these days.
And yes, it's been coming for some time, and the LLM craze isn't really the root cause. For me, at least, it's the tipping point.
Anyway. Just a note to say that I feel your pain. About the only bright side I can offer: we lived through the golden age of computing, created amazing things, found many friends, and felt great joy.
@dabeaz @GeePawHill @robpike y’all know all the pains. The tech domain has been increasingly uncomfortable over the last 10-15 years, with the generative and agentic push marking where things got unrecognizable.
I like code and solving problems. I can live without code if I must, but I don’t see problems being solved either.
I’m not currently interested in what they’re making, why they’re making it, or how they’re making it. That’s a sad state of affairs for this brain.
@randomgeek @dabeaz @GeePawHill @robpike
I.T. has become the sweatshop.
We need to discover the "knitting" of the technical domain, whether it be #permacomputing, #retrocomputing, or just all-around #HumbleTech.
Cottage Industry will save tech. (Hope!!)
@randomgeek @GeePawHill @robpike Definitely agree on the last 10-15 years. Honestly, I probably fell out of most of it about 10 years ago, but managed to carve out a little niche for myself doing some advanced CS topics for awhile. That's pretty much run it's course at this point though.
I loved the struggle of solving problems and challenging myself. Just not getting it with the current stuff. I dunno--maybe there's something there, but I don't care.
Happy are those who can retire now. No ill-will or resentment meant by that. I'm not retired, but most definitely retired from I.T.
I hope that those who can remain can put their foot down and stop the madness, somehow.
@robpike (from a DE perspective - and we're always 10 years behind) I'm only 27 years into the industry (give a few years as a teen stumbling around ... well, maybe I STILL am) and just sat in a political/economical conservative AI booyaa-whatever-it-was last Friday due to impact on my state in the near future and the opportunity for some embodied experience.
I feel we're screwed in so many ways it's unfathomable. The anti-intellectualism, the pure not-even-thinly-veiled greed in the "SQUIGGLY LINE MUST GO UP" sense gave me an impressive physical reaction. My wearable told me a 65 pulse, so it must have been adrenaline I guess sitting in the middle of old greedy men.
I'm not even against ML technology - but why 'o why do we have to pervert EVERYTHING.
If you like, take my comisery.
You wrote:"But hey, the industry has spoken. Who am I to question it?"
In fact, the industry has NOT spoken. Instead it's done a Wylie Coyote, and overuses the first thing it thought of. It's just now looked down...
IMHO, it's an excellent editor for my books and articles already, and is starting to be a good lint. With all lint's problems (;-))
Think of ways to make code "simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible".
One of my experiments is at https://leaflessca.wordpress.com/2026/04/30/a-prompt-for-hunting-bugs-in-claude-haiku/
One that I've debugged for writing is in my repo at https://codeberg.org/davecb/Prompts/src/branch/main/developmental_edit.txt
@[email protected] i don't have any hopes with industry. only with floss communities, not companies. of course some niche communities are a separate and unknown world for commercial developers, but who cares.
292 Posts, 99 Following, 103 Followers · Dave Collier-Brown, once of the (late, lamented) Sun Microsystems Systems programmer and author Nom de Guerre: DCB
@petrillic @robpike The recent Timothy Snyder essay on "Superpower Suicide" was posted/re-posted a lot this weekend. "Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity." I hate to be susceptible to trying to make everything-look-like-everything-else but these two rots feel related if not foundationally then at least spiritually.
From this essay:
#Trump announced his main weapon would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China ...
It would serve the USA for Ukraine to win; but Trump switched to support Russia ...
Ukraine has performed ever better. The US failed to see its own interests ...
Trump left Iran with uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new economic power ...
Instruments to influence Iranian society were willfully demolished in early 2026.
@swggrkllr3rd "Remember when 7 gop'ers went to russia on July 4th to talk to pooty ??"
Yes, I remember, and what you are whining about is trivial bullshit. Trump is terrible. Putin is terrible. A lawmaker speaking to Putin, on any day, is not a problem. Those Republicans did far worse things than talk to the leader of a foreign nation. Your Luckovich cartoon is very good, but your additional comments spoiled it.
@sstrader To me the connection is the triumph of hype over substance. And in some sense I think we did it to ourselves. We heard the line about a lie getting half way around the world before the truth got its shoes on, and then we built a machine that sped that up drastically.
I expected a different outcome, of course. I thought that once people had ready access to the facts there would be little room for lies. How wrong I was!
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