An interesting article about software development

bikegremlin · January 7

The title: War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape

It is very well written and I enjoyed reading it. It showed me a different perspective, and talked about some stuff I didn't know existed.

Encoders · January 8

man.. this forum is so quiet.

let's get into it, let me babble about this.

The biggest lie

The first of the big lies is the biggest, but it's also one of the simplest, one that you've probably never questioned.

It's this: Computers today are better than they have ever been before. Not just that they have thousands of times more storage and more speed, but that everything, the whole stack – hardware, operating systems, networking, programming languages and libraries and apps – are better than ever.
But that's not really true.
(...)
First, and less visibly because they were so expensive, department-scale minicomputers shrank down to desk-sized, and then desk-side, and later desk-top, workstations. Instead of being shared by a department, these were single-user machines. Very powerful, very expensive, but just about affordable for one person – as long as they were someone important enough.

Unfortunately, though, in the course of being shrunk down to single-user boxes, most of their ancestors' departmental-scale sophistication was thrown away. Rich file systems, with built-in version tracking, because hard disks cost as much as cars: gone. Clustering, enabling a handful of machines costing hundreds of thousands to work as a seamless whole? Not needed, gone. Rich built-in groupware, enabling teams to cooperate and work on shared documents? Forgotten. Plain-text email was enough.

Meanwhile, down at the budget end and at the same time as these tens-of-thousands-of-dollar single-user workstations, dumb terminals evolved into microcomputers. Every computer in the world today is, at heart, a "micro."

At first, they were feeble. They could hardly do anything. So, this time around, we lost tons of stuff.
(...)

this..hits too close to home. let me take this from a perspective of an average joe that uses computer from day-to-day basis, not having enough brain to design a EUV to create cpu or anything.

last time I bought(build?) a desktop pc is from 2012 (intel i5-3470), aside from the gpu that's it (RX580 - 2017, mostly for CAD & Blender). and honestly, It's pretty impressive knowing this thing still perfectly usable in 2024. starting in 2020 I put this thing in my seperate room since my employer are paying for it as my remote workstation for WFH.
I never had a plan to upgrade this since whatever I'm doing, this unit can handle it. until this year, one of my workflow I had to test an app that explicitly requires AVX2, so my employer had to set up a remote server for it (vscode-server, cicd stuff).
If it doesn't break, I will not replace it. as shrimple as that.

during this 2012 to 2024, I'm sure as heck getting told whatever I uses already obsolete. and intel/amd have now has way better IPC or just better performance in general. yeah sure the performance is better, but as an enduser i feel like they're getting more restrictive. people like me will see intelME as an inconvenience, like, wtf? if you want to have remote hardware access don't put them in consumer level hardware. keep it in servers or OEM. those Rockstar Ninja 10x Sales were shoving it in just because they'll have the justification to raise the product price. we don't care if you don't use them, or if it will become a liability in the future lol! money money money!. In the other hands, looking at OS department, everyone and their boyfriend's sons are trying their best to put as much as DRM compatibility into it, they were seeing that god forsaken mobile OS has awful walled garden and think now even Desktop OS must have the same principle like that.

as from someone who've been using internet since 1995, it's sad to see that the current state of workstation are:

you pay for unecessary stuff in general
you pay for your hardware and still getting treated like you're renting it
you pay for your software, yet you're getting datamined the hell of it. analytics for improvement my arse! software updates are mostly removing features, and doing shenanigans into whatever feature you actually uses.
computing power are increasing, but you have more restrictions to utilize it
this current_year improvement plan are to have hardware acceleration to run LLMS, so those big corpo can datamine you more efficiently.

Every breath you take
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Every game you play
Every night you stay
Every payment you make
All are tracked in the name of telemetry to turn you into more profit numbers.

I hate the antichrist.

Not_Oles · January 8

Hey Relja!

Thanks for this link! I read the article. I need to read it a couple more times. Like you, I didn't know about several of the people or about several of the topics discussed.

How did you find it?

Did you read any of the linked pages?

I kept the article open on my Chromebook. Probably I will look at it again. I might even check out some of the links, do some Google searches, and read more.

Thanks again!

Tom

Edit to add: Looks like this article was on HN 13 days ago.

bikegremlin · January 8

@Not_Oles said:
Hey Relja!

Thanks for this link! I read the article. I need to read it a couple more times. Like you, I didn't know about several of the people or about several of the topics discussed.

How did you find it?

Did you read any of the linked pages?

I kept the article open on my Chromebook. Probably I will look at it again. I might even check out some of the links, do some Google searches, and read more.

Thanks again!

Tom

Edit to add: Looks like this article was on HN 13 days ago.

I found it shared on a social network. It looked quite different from the average articles that are published nowadays ("SEO crap" mostly). I thought other LESbians might like it, and I was curious to hear what others think about it.

Still haven't read all the linked pages.

An interesting article about software development

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The biggest lie