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   Brewster Kahle (brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 20:21:03 JST Brewster Kahle

   "what is the biggest change in computer software in recent times?" (question from a friend)

   his answer: the move away from the filesystem.

   Another answer: Software is increasingly "trained" rather than procedurally programmed.

   any other?

   • alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Brewster Kahle (brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 20:28:30 JST Brewster Kahle

     in reply to

     • buherator

     @buherator

     sorry, I dont understand. is recent software higher quality? lower?

     is my question of lower quality?

   • Embed this notice
     buherator (buherator@infosec.place)'s status on Sunday, 01-Dec-2024 20:28:32 JST buherator

     in reply to
     @brewsterkahle Finally giving up on quality?
   • Embed this notice
     alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:15:49 JST alcinnz

     in reply to

     @brewsterkahle A distrust in the end users, who apparently now need to be protected from themselves.

   • Embed this notice
     𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e (enkiv2@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:18:06 JST 𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e

     in reply to

     @brewsterkahle

     When I first started programming in the late 90s, everybody cared (at least a little bit) about performance & resource use.

     Today, I have to explain to junior devs that they should use an O(<n) algorithm instead of an O(n^3) one -- on a web app (so, a system that uses a text-based protocol & 3 different languages to remote-edit a rich text document to simulate the OS's built-in widgets), & why we don't need to spin up a whole VM for their 10 line python script.

     Weirdly, this change seemed to happen at exactly the time that new machines stopped getting twice as beefy every 18 months & people started moving more and more of their computing to dinky resource-strapped pocket devices.

     alcinnz repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e (enkiv2@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Monday, 02-Dec-2024 02:18:27 JST 𒀭𒂗𒆠 ENKI ][e

     in reply to

     @brewsterkahle

     (If I wanted to be paranoid, I'd say that encouraging slow client-side technologies means that you can justify centralizing more and more power server-side on user experience grounds, but realistically I don't think the people making these decisions are capable of foreseeing their results)