Ask HN: Any tech enthusiast feel like apps or software is not for you anymore?
I've spent a lot of time on Slashdot, linuxforums and so on and always been interested in following development from big software companies and used to always watch Google IO and similar events
But the last 2 years or so, it feels like everything is just targeted and adapted to normies and we who actually use and create the stuff is totally forgotten. Before it was like programmers creating things for other programmers, and you could expect a certain behaviour in any homepage or app. Like the typical HN example of how sort by date or length is removed from Youtube or Facebook. Or how all the APIs is either getting limited or super expensive. Before there was many apps like TweetDeck released that built ontop of other things, but they are now always getting bought up or sent some lawyer letter
I don't know if there is a profability reason or I am just getting older, but I just have this odd feeling that both people and companies in tech is not just so into tech anymore.
I mean I even miss good old flamewars that could create a 1500 comment thread on Slashdot about some new JDK version. Now instead we have people like TechLead who talk about levels at FAANG companies and passive investment and stuff like that, which doesn't interest me at all but apparently is very popular by the software developer crowd
again I have a bit hard to put the finger on what feels off, but just this general feeling of software for the sake of software and discussing it on it's own merits is dying out both offline and online
18 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 47.2 ms ] threadLonger answer: We're leaving the early(ish) days of the industry. Tech is well established and solidly mainstream now, and it's even viewed as a prestigious path for young, intelligent people who have it together to pursue. Apps and sites are targeted at the average non-power user. I suppose you can say software has shifted from a creative medium to a mostly consumptive medium.
I do miss some of the old hacker style crowd. People that didn't care where you were from or if you went to school or where you worked, just that you cared to write code and do cool stuff for the sake of it. The feeling of exploring new ideas and doing things just because they were interesting. I feel like if you are caught using vim or emacs now people will raise eyebrows that it's not Intellij lol. Text interfaces are great, the command line is great, love that stuff.
You can also attribute some of this feeling to the centralization of the internet, mass adoption via smartphones, and shift from textual media to image/video media.
It's a different era for sure, but don't lose hope. The barrier to entry for making things is still super low, and there are tons of people out there doing weird experimental stuff. You can also contribute to this too, or not. The old net and community is still around just harder to find. Many of them are also just "logging off" as they raise families or pursue offline hobbies.
5-10 years ago before that, that was like the norm. I also have paid Spotify, but even there you can't find everything
and yes, good point about videos. I personally really hate youtube videos about setting up a Kafka cluster or stuff like that, sometimes you want to have the documentation on one scren and the terminal on the other. you can't really stop and scroll a video
Not that I’ll miss it, it’s just that there’s no where else to go.
but it's all the stuff around I just don't enjoy anymore. For example the last year of AI hype didn't interest me at all, for some reason. But stuff like setting up Docker clusters or reading about scaling MySQL I can spend hours on, because its more like "hands on"
I probably want to work with software and servers until I die in my chair of age :)
I’ve felt the same, and similarly I can’t put my finger on the why. I’ve mostly burnt out on the technical side of things too, not sure why either. Last bit of “passion” I had there died with my last side project a couple years ago.
I frankly think it was just a mistake to turn what was originally a hobby for me into a career.
Man, and that's the stuff that makes me gag. I've used Docker and like it, but it seems like gimmicky webvaporware to me that won't be around in 7 years. MySQL scaling is a big business IT problem I can't relate to since I'm just a tiny mortal.
But the AI stuff also didn't interest me much since it's black box tech leveraging how much spaghetti modern GPUs can throw at the wall, which no one understands, made and controlled by giant corporations. More proprietary magic than democratic science
Linux, new filesystems, writing cool/powerful code -- only stuff I can personally do at home and has the convincing illusion of being on a firm, long lasting foundation gets my brain invested enough to be "interesting". :p
I just gave Docker as an example, could be anything you like from CUDA clusters to having some cool iptables scripts
"But the AI stuff also didn't interest me much since it's black box tech leveraging how much spaghetti modern GPUs can throw at the wall, which no one understands, made and controlled by giant corporations. More proprietary magic than democratic science"
Exactly How I feel!
The retro computing scene may have some of what you're looking for.
I was amused at how quickly the ignorant and indolent dropped NFTs like a hot potato when they realized that (1) ChatGPT could write their pitch deck and (2) ChatGPT’s pitch deck was more likely to be funded than theirs. (Not because ChatGPT’s pitch deck is good but because theirs is bad.). The blockheads are still doing their blockhead things, somebody is still buying BTC, but few outside a hard core could care at all.
Longer answer: I won't be discouraged by the dumpster fire. I've been burned enough in the past to know that vendor lock-in is not for me. Don't waste time on flamewars.
Someone once asked me "There is a book called Computers for Dummies. Why isn't there a book called Computers for Smart people?"
Dig a little deeper. Dream big. Create your own platform that you control, on your own terms, the way you would want it. Don't get lost in the weeds.
The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one else has ever been.
— Albert Einstein
I could say "Everyone is a consumer on $big_tech_social_media_site" and that is simply not true. "Everything" is not streamlined. Standards certainly help. There are a lot of problems that are solved, thankfully. There are other areas to explore and maybe even work on. I have lots of questions. I learn new things everyday. Today I learned the term overton window perhaps apt for this conversation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Now it's a lot of making some project to get into company A or solving some leetcode problems. Or learning AWS/Heroku/Azure or taking the certificates to getting more employable
On the other hand I had friends in like 2005 running their own clusters of Sun Sparc servers just for fun and try it out. This type of nerdiness I didn't see in a while
It's overoptimized for profits, and the tech sphere has become subject to that overoptimization.
Nerdiness used to be uncool, but now it's cool because it's profitable, which means "normification". In the meantime, you're now the product, and advertisers are the customers on all the platforms you engage with (except perhaps here and 4chan).