Post #2613343
2026-05-11 21:10 UTC
Replies (13)
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@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz 2026-05-11 21:11
@robpike@hachyderm.io Just like democracy: if the billionaires don't want it, who are we to complain?
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@feoh@oldbytes.space 2026-05-11 21:14
@robpike@hachyderm.io We should all be questioning it. At the end of the day we either have to do what the biz-dev ghouls demand of us or find a new line of work, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't raise issues we see just like any other engineering problem.
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@lykso@tiny.tilde.website 2026-05-11 21:15
@robpike@hachyderm.io Voices in the industry, as in capitalism in general, are weighted by how much wealth they command, and the acquisition of wealth is largely not a merit-based process.
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@GeePawHill@mastodon.social 2026-05-11 21:18
@robpike@hachyderm.io 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.
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@theuni@social.tchncs.de 2026-05-11 21:19
@robpike@hachyderm.io (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.
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@davecb@hachyderm.io 2026-05-11 21:27
@robpike@hachyderm.io 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
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@agreeable_landfall@mastodon.social 2026-05-11 21:37
@robpike@hachyderm.io I'm just happy to be at the end of my career. I can't imagine having to job-hunt in a time where installing software on your phone and being interviewed by an LLM is a requirement. No one seems to recognize that LLMs create technical debt *at scale*.
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@peterrenshaw@ioc.exchange 2026-05-11 21:44
@robpike@hachyderm.io there has been a-lot of optimistic AI in the experiment / spend cycle; The total dollar cost to Industry is not so rosy.
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@keithzg@fediverse.keithzg.ca 2026-05-11 21:49
@robpike@hachyderm.io It's far from the only problem with capitalism, but certainly one of 'em is that any longterm for-profit endeavour will, at some point or another, self-cannibalize for some wishful thinking of short-term profits. But I'm personally heartened by how the actual people involved skew far *more* against the malpractice the industry has abruptly standardized on. The big corps have *always* had fundamental pathologies stemming from the nature of such organizations in our socio-economic system, and that becoming painfully clear for more people may have positive affects that reverberate for a long time, even as the costs of the LLM mania inevitably do too.
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@spnw@gts.plexwave.org 2026-05-11 21:55
@robpike@hachyderm.io Your work has inspired so many of us, and I trust it will continue to do so long into the dark night that's fallen upon the computing world. Godspeed.
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@book@beige.party 2026-05-11 22:10
@robpike@hachyderm.io you, and others like you, are exactly the ones to question it, gramps. You, and the academics and the ethicists and professors and unions and legislators. And we should listen.
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@littlefox@gotosocial-dev.svc.0x0a.network 2026-05-11 22:39
@robpike@hachyderm.io I cannot express how happy I am that you are on the same side here as I am .. and how sorry I am for you to suffer through this as well I'm in this industry not nearly as long, but also just always hoped it would lead to the betterment of humanity and not ... this
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@xan@xantronix.social 2026-05-11 23:07
@robpike@hachyderm.io The counter revolution is underway. Those of us who still remember how computers can be playgrounds of exploration unto themselves, and not just means to extraction and rent seeking, will have had our fill of the contradictions, doublespeak, and outright lies. The kids with their weird hair and 9front on their ThinkPads grow relentlessly restless. Those that value autonomy, joy, artistry, and craftsmanship, will ultimately win. Far too much of our collective future is at stake.