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So in case you're worried about watching a 35 minute video and wishing you hadn't, here is what I think is an interesting observation that the speaker starts coming around to at around the 7 minute mark.
Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities, and isn't interested in doing the hard work required to increase the reliability and reduce the technical debt in software. Engineers who care about such things, often engage in acts of "benevolent noncompliance". Common workarounds are "asking for forgiveness instead of permission", secrecy, and misdirection. Alternately you can confront management and fight for doing what you think is right. These sorts of things can be risky. You can be fired, you can be reprimanded if caught, you can be retaliated against or lose political advantage. In the past, software engineers had a lot more agency than they do now, because nowadays the supply/demand ratio no longer favors software engineers, and as a result we have weaker negotiation power. Now we're more afraid of being fired and not being able to find a job, and managers aren't afraid of us quitting and not being able to replace us.
I haven't yet finished the whole thing, but there are sections around dark patterns and other forms of user-hostile software. I'll probably finish it.
I don't think this is really entirely true. Everyone who isn't a FAANG or Frontier Lab seem to be absolutely starving for good talent. It's far more often that I hear "we interviewed someone we thought looked good and they couldn't even write a for loop, where are all the good engineers".
I think you have far more leverage than you think in most places still.
> In the past, software engineers had a lot more agency than they do now, because nowadays the supply/demand ratio no longer favors software engineers, and as a result we have weaker negotiation power. Now we're more afraid of being fired and not being able to find a job, and managers aren't afraid of us quitting and not being able to replace us.
This sounds like a job for unions. It would have been advantageous to have formed and joined them before so much power was lost, but it's easy to be shortsighted when you're happy and comfortable with where you are and ignore that the situation could easily change, if not for you then for the next generation. Companies are happy to leverage every advantage they have against workers. Unions can be a powerful tool for workers, one that could help solve a lot of problems current and future, and it's sitting there just waiting to be used.
"You can be fired, you can be reprimanded if caught, you can be retaliated against or lose political advantage."
You could also silently burn out. Especially if fighting this as your own personal sisyphean uphill battle.
I think especially people driven by passion and curiosity are at risk of this. And I mean, that's pretty much what the "hacker mindset" of many people on here amounts to. There's also a reason why people with a lot of passion are often taken advantage of, e.g. game development industry.
> Why does software suck? Management often has other priorities
This is Hacker News syndrome. What you described is why everything sucks. It's because people at the top are more concerned with making money than doing good things well.
> Engineers who care about such things, often engage in acts of "benevolent noncompliance". Common workarounds are "asking for forgiveness instead of permission", secrecy, and misdirection.
Without the support of a unified vision, these good intentions could pave the path to hell by the way.
In defence of management, there is definitely a pattern of engineers (or employees in general, really) spending inordinate amounts on time doing something that they find personally gratifying but adds no real value to the product/business.
I've been guilty of this myself.
Aren't you glad the govt let them import a bunch of cheap labor they can treat like trash to undercut the US economy?
This hits so hard. I used to admire Senior developers who would do this. Now, I find myself in a place where there is no one to do this, and I've taken up to playing this role. It is the hardest job, but I cannot do any thing else as my team is committed to just non-stop slop thanks to management directives.
I realize all the time I spent admiring, and now I have become.
The title is bad. Anything "-pilled" is incel speak until proven innocent
Thank you for this.
(I think HN should consider creating TLDR type of comments for upvoting separately from commentary. @Dan incentivise with different karma credits?)
I think such comment are the exact reason why "the speaker" has quit HN. This is literally some AI transcription from the video + "I find this interesting". Why is this even in the top?
In the same vein, Jonathan Blow's modestly named "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
Crazy how time flies, given that talk is seven years old at this point. But could've been given today, with the points being more relevant than ever.
This concept of knowledge degenerating between generations is relevant for software developmnent of today, since many junior developers have a hard time finding a job and if they do they just prompt the AI until they get a result.
One of my favorite talks.
I really enjoyed this. This talk contains a powerful message of optimism, possibility, agency and power that resonates strongly with me.
Computers and technology are force multipliers for humanity. As coders, we are lucky to be gifted with such high agency and global reach, all at a fairly affordable price tag.
I love computers.
I loved the talk as well. The recommended music video by Ninajirachi was really cool as well! Have a good day fellow computer enjoyer :)
Generally agreed with most of the points.
Building software that serves you only...and then sharing with others is like serving others. It's good stuff and we need more of it.
I'm not sure how the deconversion of his faith needed to be conflated as related to the main ideas, especially when the next point was about weilding technology for good or evil in the next point as if these aren't pre-existing realities of our world or universe.
This was a prelude to his argument for needing a set of moral standards.
Yeah, I wasn't clear how his (lack of) religion/faith related to the theme. I like personal details shared thoughtfully in conference talks, but he structured the talk as if those details mattered to the overall message.
> “I almost fell into this trap (...) I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so, so much to learn, and unlearn, in order to date comfortable and confidently.
Is this engagement bait? Is this a cultural critique? What is meant to be said here? At any rate, this is the kind of speech which will alienate a lot of people. Look, I'm more on the progressive end of things, I get it, but I think this just feels mean and divisive from the perspective of a conservative OR a Christian, and I find that to be a message made in poor taste... which is difficult because this is such a potentially inspiring and positive talk. I lost the energy to be inspired by the talk due to this style of messaging, but I don't think you should have to. I'm just a bit thrown off, I guess.
This not a rare thing to express. There are a lot of people raised under conservative Christian environments who have spent a considerable amount of time recovering from this. It is not surprising that they feel the need to express something of the journey that has dominated much of their early life.
Taylor Tomlinson puts much of this into her comedy. She often asks the audience to call out if they were similarly screwed up by their religious upbringing. The is a loud audience response every time.
While I don't agree with Andrew Kelly's adversarial attitude, I do understand it a little more from the perspective of someone who had to fight his way out of an ideology that will not seek consensus with his values.
I have so far only completed about 14 minutes of the talk, but I would imagine it to be some sort of relatable analogy which foreshadows what the thesis of the talk is about. The "Christian Parents" are the authority figure and following their rules, lessons, and expectations for dating is a lot like doing only the software engineering tasks that management prioritizes for you. You end up unsatisfied with your life to the point where you become jaded about software (software development is like "dating" in this analogy) instead of learning the skills necessary to wield influence over what you get to work on. I'll watch the rest to see if I'm right.
edit: it's wasn't just about developing software but also using software. You don't have to accept the bad situation you're in (or the bad software you've been given or told to use). Finally, I'll say that while the speaker's comment about conservative christian upbringing isn't a universal one, it is a widely shared one. If you take offense by it maybe take a moment to pause and consider that maybe the way you were exposed to it was probably more balanced than what many others experience, or in the worst case that maybe your negative reaction to it is a sort of defense mechanism that you've learned to shield yourself from confronting the reality that your own conservative christian upbringing was not so good after all?.
This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place.
I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!
I don't think it's meant to be mean or divisive, he clearly had trouble dating and he feels his conservative Christian upbringing was partially responsible for that. If you think he's wrongly attributing it to those things, fair enough, but his experience is still valid.
EDIT: just saw your reply to a similar comment below, appreciate your response!
I liked the talk and was about to post a link to it in the $dayjob slack, but this threw me off as well. Still watched it to the end, and I still recommended it to a friend (along with the Youtube channel of the "Software should work" conf), but I'm saddened that the talk paints Christianity as something that is inflicted upon you and that you should strive to get rid of.
It's clear that he had a bad experience, and I'm nobody to tell him what to put on the slides and what to leave out, but my impression is that there are lots of believers out there who do cherish their faith, experience it as a very positive force in their lives, and draw from it the power to make the world a better place around them. Speaking for myself, I'd say faith has been a net positive so far in my life.
He shouldn't talk about his own experience? Why not? Why is it in poor taste to talk about a difficulty he went through?
Does anyone know what the "discord alternative" is that Andrew says he's working on at the end[0] of the video?
[0]: https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4?si=45knBo2Hsy_6wjEM&t=2092
I'm much more interested in a realistic bang for your buck discussion about software value for effort and diminishing returns rather than a conversation about whether it's possible to build great software.
Also notable that not up for discussion was any second order effects about user interaction with software; software always must serve its user in the immediate first order. Why? I suppose it's because if you attempt to examine nth order effects the proposition completely falls apart because the world is much more complicated than "software must serve the end user".
Finally, the purpose of software isn't determined by the end user, nor necessarily its author. A user can have their goals, the author(s) theirs, the funding body theirs, and so on. The "purpose" is diffused in this way until what's left is what it does. Saying it _must_ serve the user is a principled stance reflecting a world view, but it's just that. That are other coherent worldviews where software has more than one master. Or no master.
This is exactly what I needed, ending my work week for the company, and transitioning to working on my own project over the weekend. Good to know I'm not alone, still dreaming of making things that serve people the way they (the people, not the things) want.
I hope I can get this out soon
I didn't find any of the arguments for optimism compelling, even if I wanted to agree with the talk's message.
Free software is about the worst example, as it has inadvertently built the technology that has, more than any other, concentrated corporate power and debased the profession.
I once had an argument with a close friend of mine while earning her PHD in a non-computer engineering field. It was about the semantics of "Computer Engineering" and "Software Engineering", or any variant involving computers. Her argument was that every (virtually, I think?) other engineering discipline requires a certificate after graduation to ensure their competency. Every since then I've also argued for similar industry standard certifications for Computer and Software Engineers. I was a hiring manager for over a decade at a well known MNC, so I can attest that this doesn't, or didn't exist (since the global mass-layoff). I tried to improve interview standards in the past and help establish some forward momentum, but pulling-the-ladder-up and biased-hiring-practices have made this even more elusive.
Edit: I know there are some certifications that may be required by some software engineers, computer engineers, etc. But this is limited to critical/near-failure-proof systems. Which I willing to wager is less than 1% of those employed in these fields.
I hope this guy gets an option to inherit the FSF.
But in a way that does not diminish his work on Zig.
As an old school Free Software kinda guy, I was a little shocked at the lack of enthusiastic support for "if you do not own the source code, you are not in control". From where does this apathy come?
After 3 years in a US public company’s IT department between 2013 and 2016, I had been working in private closely help companies with revenue between $100 and $500 million the last few years. Cashflow to invest in good systems and software, but conscious about investments.
I recently took a consulting engagement with another US public (pink sheets) company and remembered how dysfunctional some software development structures/cultures are.
This is an amazing and inspiring talk. Humanising and empathetic, especially when compared to the vast majority of other related content.
his flagged "goodbye" submission mentioned at the circa 26 minute mark for those who are curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928645
and while i'm not a massive fan of the music (not my kind of electronic) the mentioned Ninajirachi - Infohazard music video really is fucking cool (strobe warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ZdeIKJA8c i definitely feel like my jaded oldtimer critic got called out there.
edit -- jfc, from one of the youtube comments
> From Ninajirachi, in a RollingStone interview about this song: “I love my computer for a million reasons, but it’s also exposed me to some pretty dubious material when I was far too young to see it. Infohazard is about the first time I encountered a snuff film as a kid. It’s kinda like a rite of passage and loss of innocence moment for people who grew up online. If I’d been in high school a hundred years ago, without ever touching a computer, would I even know things like that existed? I can’t ever really forget about it.”
The comments here indicate a surprisingly, in my view, mixed reception, for such an unambiguously good talk?
The main thrust is simple:
- Technology is not good or bad, it is an amplifier of human values and our collective ambitions.
- Those of us who are terrified of where technology is going are actually terrified that humans are, on the net, bad, and technology will amplify that, bringing about dystopia.
- Believing this this is self-fulfilling. By embracing such beliefs you surrender your agency, which is what actually brings about dystopia. If you, instead, have a positive vision of humanity, then you are one of the people that drives society forwards rather than backwards.
We are currently at a moment in history where this message bears repeating.
A lot of things feel unstable, and as a result we have an opportunity to redefine the world in good ways and bad ones. Those who choose to redefine it in ways that are intractably bad will often do so from the point of view of a system observer, not a system participant. This is cope, because in reality everyone, whether they choose to accept it or not, is a system participant.
Props to Andrew for a refreshing and optimistic message in what is an increasingly uncertain and scary industry to be in. Appreciate you Andrew!
So, today I'm one of the lucky 10,000[1] who finally understands what "black pilled" actually means. (Edit: The video explains what black pilled means)
As a mapper[2], that knowledge now gets subconsciously checked for matches and usefulness against all the other chunks of knowledge I'm fairly certain of.
The first thing that popped out (and there will be more over the next 24+ hours) is that y'all are black pilled about computers and security. You believe, incorrectly, that computers can't be safe AND secure AND easy to use all at the same time. I believe otherwise, and this might help convey that at some future point.
Currently my best hope is that the upcoming release of Genode offers a way forward. Their roadmap[3] features this line when describing the upcoming release
Sketch of a capability-based desktop environment
[2] https://garden.joehallenbeck.com/container/mappers-and-packe...
Wow. I have been really put off by seeing some of the vitriol he’s spewed lately, but this is a shockingly engaging and simultaneously thought-provoking talk. I’m totally going to riff on this in the future, for something completely unconnected to computer science and with credit, of course.
Why isn't software better is a complex question and can be a matter of market forces. For example, who remembers a company that sold buggy software and made you a beta tester, then sold the fixes to their customers as updates?
Clearly they had discovered or created an incentive to write "bad software", push testing onto users, and sell the fixes. Bad software or smart business?
Look at Rock stars GTA V Online a money printing machine: still has bugs. Are we to assume they are incapable of fixing them? Or that there is no market for doing so. People play anyway.
The "developers are no good" is a red herring that blames individuals who are doing what they are told to do, or not do.
people like Andrew give me hope - that they're smart people out there with a moral compass.
"Our task as the older generation is to shield the young from those who would exploit their naïveté without infecting them with our own accumulated pain and cynicism." [33:53] stuck with me and is my take away.
Crazy to see how many people miss 26:15.
I think Andrew Kelly is just a rockstar. Honestly, I find a lot of his overall perspective hard to understand. I get that he's an idealist.
He talks about developers not standing up to management's unreasonable demands, but doesn't he himself receive donations from wealthy people at his foundation? Everything seems contradictory.
The concept of 'pure will' is also really hard for me to grasp. It feels like trying to bring Plato's Forms into reality.
I always feel like the purity advocates on HN are contradictory. They just try to package their own superiority as purity. Honestly, in what sense are they pure? I don't really get it. Is not using AI somehow superior? Is using a hand drill instead of an electric drill more admirable?
I also know that dark patterns undermine user autonomy. But that has clear limits. It's like Prohibition. I understand the criticism of A/B testing in context, but shouldn't we be criticizing Goodhart's law, trying to hit metrics without understanding user behavior, rather than demonizing the tool itself?
The younger generation never experienced the open web or software sovereignty. How can they give up system convenience and choose free software?
I understand that there are problems arising from the nature of capitalism. And I agree that the world needs ethical brakes. But honestly, what I find hard to understand about this person's argument reminds me of a line from Russian literary criticism: 'Those who praise the land are those who do not farm it.
I acknowledge Andrew Kelly's technical achievements are impressive. But honestly, I find it hard to understand the people on HN who keep echoing his words. The Zig foundation runs on sponsorships from big tech companies.
The development cost of 'free software' paradoxically comes from the 'excessive profits of monopolistic big tech' that they despise.
Kelly's uncompromising will is not actually built on pure individual will alone—it rests on the autonomy provided by a very unique sponsorship structure. Can that really be presented as a universal developer ethic?
Ordinary developers don't get $300,000 in sponsorship from anyone. If they refuse a Jira ticket, they could be kicked out of their room next month.
I wish he wouldn't speak while erasing his own economic conditions. It's not that developers are evil—they're just working within the system as a condition of survival.
Honestly, the fact that he achieved that life through his abilities is admirable. But whether it's right to generalize his own minority experience and insist that everyone should follow it is a different matter.
How is that any different from a high-class courtesan telling a cheap one, 'I'm different'?
Andrew Kelly's words are just a symbol of vicarious satisfaction for cogs in the machine. Not just me, but the vast majority of programmers live as cogs—solving Jira tickets, chasing deadlines and KPIs. To them, Kelly appears as an icon of rebellion, refusing to compromise with reality and preserving his purity. But the irony of rockstars is always that they are the most devoted to capitalism.
When I strip away the halo effect around Andrew Kelly, I can't make sense of the contradictions inside.
I watched 8 minutes and feel like my time was wasted. Thank you.
Yeah, we always knew how to build reliable software, but it's expensive.