undefined | Better HN

0 pointsAstroBen4mo ago0 comments

> you have to account for the fact that AI will get better rapidly

that's nowhere near guaranteed

0 comments

7 comments · 2 top-level

holoduke4mo ago· 5 in thread

Nothing gets worse in computers. Name me one thing. And if the current output quality of LLM stays the same but speed goes up 1000, quality of the generated code can be higher.

fragmede4mo ago

Hot keys. Used to be, you could drive a program from the keyboard with hotkeys and macros. No mouse. The function keys did functions. You could drive the interface blindfolded, once you learned it. Speed is another one. Why does VSCode take so long to open? and use so much memory and CPU? it's got a lot of features for a text editor, but it's worse than vim/emacs in a lot of ways.

Boot time.

Understandability. A Z80 processor was a lot more understandable than today's modern CPUs. That's worse.

Complexity. It's great that I can run python on a microcontroller and all, but boring old c was a lot easier to reason about.

Wtf is a typescript. CSS is the fucking worst. Native GUI libraries are so much better but we decided those aren't cool anymore.

Touchscreens. I want physical buttons that my muscle memory can take over and get ingrained in and on. Like an old stick shift car that you have mechanical empathy with. Smartphones are convenient as all hell, but I can't drive mine after a decade like you can a car you know and feel, that has physical levers and knobs and buttons.

Jabber/Pidgin/XMPP. There was a brief moment around 2010? when you didn't have to care what platform someone else was using, you could just text with them on one app. Now I've got a dozen different apps I need to use to talk to all of my friends. Beeper gets it, but they're hamstrung. This is a thing that got worse with computers!

Ever hear of wirths law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

Computers are stupid fast these days! why does it take so long to do everything on my laptop? my mac's spotlight index is broken, so it takes it roughly 4 seconds to query the SQLite database or whatever just so I can open preview.app. I can open a terminal and open it myself in that time!

And yes, these are personal problems, but I have these problems. How did the software get into such a state that it's possible for me to have this problem?

heromal4mo ago

Native GUI libs look like shit out of the box, and are terrible to work with when you want to make something that doesn't look like out of the box tkinter/swing/qt/winforms Windows 95 looking crap.

wiseowise4mo ago

> Wtf is a typescript.

A godsend.

> Native GUI libraries are so much better but we decided those aren't cool anymore.

Lolno.

dannyfritz074mo ago

Software has gotten considerably worse with time. Windows and MacOS are basically in senescence from my point of view. Haven't added a feature I've wanted in years, but manages to make my experience worse year to year anyways.

CPU vulnerability mitigations make my computer slower than when I bought it.

Computers and laptops are increasingly not repairable. So much ewaste is forced on us for profit.

The internet is a corporate controlled prison now. Political actors create fake online accounts to astroturf, manipulate, and influence us.

The increasing cost of memory and GPU make computers no longer affordable.

blibble4mo ago

Windows

vidarh4mo ago

Even if the models stopped getting better today, we'd still see many years of improvements from improving harnesses and understanding of how to use them. Most people just talk to their agent, and don't e.g. use sub-agents to make the agent iterate and cross-check outcomes for example. Most people who use AI would see a drastic improvement in outcomes just by experimenting with the "/agents" command in Claude Code (and equivalent elsewhere). Much more so with a well thought out agent framework.

A simple plan -> task breakdown + test plan -> execute -> review -> revise (w/optional loops) pipeline of agents will drastically cut down on the amount of manual intervention needed, but most people jump straight to the execute step, and do that step manually, task by task while babysitting their agent.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse