Emacs-ng embeds JavaScript or TypeScript or something and a web engine for UI. But then I really don't see the point. You're just about halfway to Visual Studio Code, so why not just use that?
"Now I see the whole picture. The Emacs Lisp interpreter lock bungs no cake. The buffer-pruning-time crenellation is a glaze which conflicts with the cthulhu fhtagn peripatetic saxophone layer; the result is not cromulent. Three pounds of VAX. This has now been fixed."
They're already doing that, which is why you can't buy any fucking RAM. The semiconductor companies have already fallen past the event horizon of their commercial black hole.
The "genie out of the bottle" argument has been used in the ongoing AI-or-no-AI, we're-so-cooked/we're-so-back debate among software engineers, something like: you can't undo technological advances nor would you want to, so best cope with this new reality.
And there are technological "advances" I would very much like to undo. One of them being social media, another being modern cars. Automobiles peaked when they were purely mechanical. An average American high schooler could understand all its systems, and many did. When they started becoming LANs on wheels beginning in the 90s, they became necessary millstones around their owners' necks, and these days they're as inscrutable as a smartphone, just as user-hostile, and just as tethered to vendor services. I think my father was speaking from a place of wisdom when he groused about computers in automobiles.
And no, EVs are actually simpler than ICE engines, their drivetrain being basically a battery, a set of electric motors, and maybe some variable resistors to control speed. An EV that is purely electromechanical and operable via analog controls would be a godsend, but it's not going to happen under current regulatory environments.
One of the great joys of following guys I admire like Carmack is the little smile I get when I see one of his tweets and go, "yeah, John Carmack was totally wrong about that." For example he argued that UI buttons should act on press rather than waiting for the release, and it's been a UI principle for decades that once a button is pressed you wait for the release on the button, giving the user one last chance to back out of a destructive operation by letting them move the pointer off the button and release. And I was like no, I don't care if you wrote Quake, or the Principia Mathematica, don't fuck with my UI expectations.
Carmack has cheerfully admitted to being wrong in the past, for example admitting that the Saturn port of Doom should have used the Saturn's hardware primitives for a smoother experience rather than a faithful replication of the PC's BSP renderer which made it slow. When brilliant guys like him are wrong, they often are in profound ways.
I would suggest that last line is both wildly indulgent and dangerous. Inventing reasons why someone being completely wrong is actually helpful is a level of freedom no one really deserves.
Someone being wrong almost always offers an opportunity for them or others to learn. If someone extremely smart is wrong, the gaps in their knowledge may point to interesting directions for the curious. Einstein was wrong to doubt the principles of quantum mechanics, but the conflicts with relativity he elaborated helped point the way for future physics work.
Of course, it's important to be right when there are consequences on the line, but being wrong isn't ipso facto something bad.
I think you got downvoted unfairly because I really think you're sincere. My brain heard your comment in the voice of Nightcrawler from X-Men—and as the descendant of German Catholics, he's become one of my favorites.
> We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.
AI is getting good at picking those as well. Frontier models can be fed a vague problem, analyze the code base, and pick out an architectural solution that makes sense.
We're going from a world that needs specialized "software engineers" to speak the language of the machine into one where ordinary people need only sit down and think, "what exactly would solve my problem here?", spell it out in ordinary procedural language, and get a software solution that employs best practices without the intervention of professional computer-touchers.
Tim Bryce was right 20 years ago. Abolish programmers, bring back systems analysts!
The idea has been to get the nerds out of computing since 1971.
Milt Bryce and his son Tim were pretty much the inventors of modern information-systems management[0]. And they were open in their hatred of and contempt for programmers and how they worked. Their methodology, PRIDE, was centered around giving the programmers as little to do and as little autonomy and leverage over the organization as possible, because information systems is a business function and not a technical one. The key decisions would be made by systems analysts and designers, not programmers. Without AI, the part that programmers contributed in a PRIDE project was about 15%; with AI, it asymptotically approaches zero. I've been studying PRIDE a lot over the past few years, because with Tim Bryce's death it's at risk of being forgotten; and because now with AI in the mix, it helps me understand what's actually going on from a business perspective.
This is what management has wanted all along. Programmers are expensive, tetchy, and they resist standardization and discipline, preferring instead to employ their own little bespoke methods and tool choices. (Hello, vim vs. emacs!) Failure to keep them in tight rein can spell doom for the company, as they can use their technical skills to their advantage, potentially holding the whole business hostage. You may bristle and think the above is not true, but your boss or skip-level manager probably thinks it's true, and the C suite absolutely does (especially in traditional businesses: banking, insurance, manufacturing, etc.). Nerds were seen as a necessary liability to automating a business's information systems; now, they are no longer necessary.
The only way out for us is to follow Rogue's mom's advice: "Have you tried not being a nerd?" Learn business, learn what customers actually want and what business operations need in order to fulfill those wants. Think like a systems analyst—big picture, focused on information flows between companies, departments, people, not like a programmer (detailist obsessed with the machine in PRIDE ideology).
[0] Maybe Margaret Hamilton predated them, but not by much.
>The only way out for us is to follow Rogue's mom's advice: "Have you tried not being a nerd?"
Tried and failed for decades, yes. Turns out caring for your craft makes you a nerd. Turn out what people want is to stay in their lane and simply want "the fries in the bag", with no curiosity on what's in the fries or bag as long as it tastes good.
I refuse to stop caring in this otherwise uncaring world. Now what?
>You may bristle and think the above is not true, but your boss or skip-level manager probably thinks it's true, and the C suite absolutely does
It is true. What this ultiamtely breaks down to is simple: Nerds are thinkers, and thinkers question. The context here is in tech and automation, but that's a trend that extends to a lot of systems and societies. Those in power hate the thinkers, they hate the questions. They will suppress it for as long as possible.
Use this lens in other kinds of communities and you see the pattern pops up everytime. To "stop being a nerd" in this context is akin to saying "stop questioning the system and exploit it like the rest of us".
Yet as a programmer myself, I've been in situations where I'm artificially separated from the customer against my will.
I want to build something useful for them but if they let me be too close to the customer, I'll be making important decisions that are supposed to be someone else's job.
> You may bristle and think the above is not true...
Hehe, my undergrad was comp sci, I turned down an Oxbridge postgraduate in Advanced Computing Science to do an interdisiplinary PhD, technically in the social sciences department, because I genuinely do understand and agree with you on a few levels. At the end of the day, people are the ones who need to be kept happy. The flip side of 1000's of isolated hours of screentime is a lack of practice at making people feel comfortable in real life. But, the same is true for basically any craftsman of any craft, just swap screen with lathe or instrument or other tool of choice.
I think there's a biological element to being a nerd, so "Have you tried not being a nerd?" is like asking someone with ginger hair "have you tried not being ginger?" Sure, they can try/dye, but the roots will keep growing through, fighting against something that's a massive asset in the right environment.
Regarding PRIDE, it sounds like that came from a time where people were genuinely scared/amazed/confused by computers. When you consider that, minimising the role of people who are going to make it all about tech and computers makes sense. Maybe the tide is changing over the past 2 - 5 years against tech, but the entire 2000s up until recently were defined IMO by the pervasiveness and excitement and accessibility of tech by literally everyone on the planet. In that world, where customers pay good money for magic tech they don't understand, a company of nerds brings safety and reassurance (and high salaries and decision impact for said nerds).
I worry nerds and the products of nerds at the top like Zuckerberg, Altman and Musk are causing the public attitude to shift back to what they were like pre-2000s, where tech is dangerous and powerful and scary and normal humans need to be kept away from it, and advocates of tech should be viewed sceptically.
> Nerds were seen as a necessary liability to automating a business's information systems; now, they are no longer necessary.
This is essentially my central point/worry. I hope there's more nuance to it though, mainly because 1 younger relative in particular is in his early teens, and he's clearly a naive/friendly/enthusiastic/hyper-fixating/lots of nerdy screentime type. Until a few years ago, I assumed he'd have the life a lot of us have had. Now though, I wonder what life will be afforded to nerdy, weird people born into a world where they're seen as significantly less necessary.
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