Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)

"Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" by Jonathan Blow comes to mind - ▶ this video A fantastic talk.

Jonathan Blow already warned us six years ago. "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" ▶ this video There is the Handmade and Better Software contingent that is pushing against this trend. I don't know if they'll succeed, but they at least care about quality in a way that a lot of software engineers aren't incentivized or don't know how to do anymore. link

every once in a while everyone should watch Jonathan's Blow: Collapse of Civilization [0] by not reading and going through docs - we cut out our critique ability as we just ingest fully what A.I gives us. by not writing we don't exercise thinking - question our assumptions etc. since what AI writes will mostly be positive not negative. [0]: ▶ this video and just like that society stops thinking. stops creating. then civilization collapses.

Excuse me for not having much to add to the discussion but two interesting references for people to check out, if so inclined of course: a) Ginger Bill (the Odin language creator, no affiliation) stated on a podcast that Odin will never have an official pkg manager, since what they're, in his opinion, mainly automating is dependency hell, and this being one of the main reasons for rising software complexity and lower software quality; see link (timestamped to the correct position) (they mention Rust explicitly as an example) b) another programmer rather seriously worried about software quality/complexity is Jonathan Blow, who's talk "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" is worth watching in my opinion: ▶ this video (it's not talking about package managers specifically, but is on topic regarding software complexity/quality as a whole) Addendum: And sorry, I feel like almost everyone knows this xkcd by now, but since no one so far seems to have posted it; "obligatory xkcd reference": link

I liked Jonathan Blow’s ‘Preventing The Collapse of Civilisation’ talk on the same topic from 2019. [1] Although, it’s more related to software engineering. Previously discussed on a couple occasions. [2][3] [1] ▶ this video [2] link [3] link

"optimal amount of fraud in society is 0" - are you sure? why? Bad Things(tm) are useful for testing and improving safety/security, and when I see people/institutions with no experience reacting to Bad Things(tm), I know they're in for a world of hurt when it does happen. Perhaps you mean, the optimal amount of fraud that isn't prosecuted... or not detected... ? Even then, I'd argue that there's a tiny percentage that's useful for keeping the safety/security industry on its toes and at the ready. As a proof point, if you believe that war (world peace) is not a solved problem, then it's only a matter of time before your city/region/civilization/race faces an existential threat, for which the only true preparation is to be ready to innovate and mobilize. Sorry if this comes across as dark. I mean it in the same vein as having a small percentage of farmers is desirable. By contrast, I visited a traditional silk factory in Stockholm (amazing btw) and the craft has been lost to the point where they're struggling to find craftspeople able to work their looms and other old equipment. See Jonathan Blow's excellent talk about lost technology: ▶ this video

Software has definitely gotten worse, and tbh it will only keep getting worse. I really like this talk by [the possibly notorious] Jonathan Blow on the software industry and software in general decomposing [1]. [1] ▶ this video

After reading this I can't help but think of a talk "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" given by Jonathan Blow (the game dev) about progress and how it's not always increasing like we tend to think. Super interesting if you have the time for it: ▶ this video

▶ this video I think Jonathan Blow made a decent argument that we're in a decadent age of software. In a decadent age, the civilization still does and can do the thing, but has started to lose a grip on the fundamentals, so it's on the way out. A decadent age is a kind of end, doesn't necessarily feel like the end, it kind of feels like a stagnant bumbling. How many programmers do you know that can write assembly code? How many layers of abstraction between a web app and the silicon? Processor, OS, probably a byte-code VM, probably a framework... leaking a little bit all of the way. He makes a good point--where's the evidence that we can write good software? It seems possible , but it doesn't appear, so really, the feeling that maybe we could is just a feeling, not evidence.

I am reminded of the excellent "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk by Jonathan Blow: ▶ this video

I'm not even expecting technology to get better anymore, I just wish the quality of software wasn't constantly decreasing. I've turned off automatic updates for most of them, e.g. MacOS, Android Apps, Firefox. Just can't stand the constant messing up of UIs that may have worked or were at least not as bad as the next version with more bloated features. Beautiful talk on that topic by Jonathan Blow, called "Preventing the collapse of civilization": ▶ this video

Anyone who finds this concept interesting to think about and hasn't seen this video may enjoy it: ▶ this video See also Foundation by Asimov.