Listened to nightlight while writing.
What is going on in software? You know what I’m talking about, the stuff with Generative AI. This thing that everyone is frothing talking about. Apparently I am too.
Is it good?
Let’s not talk about that for a minute, and instead look at my little world as of late:
The thrust forward
There are people who care. Around me I am seeing more and more people who care about the “art of software” force themselves to not give into LLMs, and we are.. losing slower, mostly. Or not?
Where I feel we are gaining, it is more extremely hobbyist. It is better ideas that are being done with the (little) execution we have. So now, what are these ideas?
Perspectives on software
Normalizing pro-human discussion
This has to come first for everything else to work.
We are normalizing handmade creative output and asserting that the practical merits of a tool cannot outweigh the moral ones; the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.@
I feel attacked when someone shows me an AI-generated video, forcing it on my eyes, devaluing good food with cheap sugar and MSG. Diet coke. There is no way out but through, our species is so addicted…
I can only feel sorry for the humans that fall down this trap.
Exacting design practices and surreptitious organizing
A friend of mine is working on Evocation, a ground-up computing system targeting x86 bytes with Forth. It is difficult work. She does not have many facilities to work with; the ones that do exist are a pain in the ass to use.
Programming is labor. Any particular project requires a lot of it, continuously. Most software systems are inadequately documented — context lives in developer brains.
We do not have the luxury of halting work for a year, to switch to something more important. We need to keep going, nothing can be done without that.
A software community I am part of is fairly young; a few months ago Polyphony was solely a vessel for polyproto, but lately it has been maintaining capacity for at least one more project — slopscore.
It’s been very nice to see that we can grow a community as substantive as this, and while it’s puny in effect compared to the likes of worm-blossom who are getting funded somewhat consistently.. it’s something! It makes me have faith what we are doing is right: it’s also a social movement.
Hopefully some more time passes, and we see a third project really come to life. We did try, but nothing much has come of it for now.
(Luckily, we didn’t explode from 2,320,103 people wanting to learn more about a Helix fork. So we should be able to keep trying.)
Intermission: “But I still need a job!”
Yes, me too. I don’t know yet, but EMMA is a good model. Maybe you should ask Dave instead. Might write about this if I figure it out.
Beautiful work and its polarization
A few years ago, I was contributing to rather mainstream projects. Stuff like wireless VR streaming or nixpkgs. This was fun, it felt like the most important place for me to be. I felt free to be one more ant building this Sisphyean castle of low-level dreams.
But I no longer feel aligned with these large commons, the way I do with Wikipedia or Polyphony. It’s simply… inadequate.
The whole world is polarizing lately, and the ruling class seems to understand the degree to which software rules the world. So they will take slop for less whiny developers who don’t care about ethics or appearances.
So many developers want to climb up the stairs ladder - again, to dismantle the masters’ house with his own tools. But this is futile; they don’t have to use LLMs! People just do everything for them. In fact — maybe the AI psychosis is good for not feeling like a horrible person!
breathe in...
...and out.
Okay.
Look, reader, there are some wonderful things out there being made. David Bushell’s website. Weird websites. Willow! And the Website League is trying to escape its Fediverse tech stack heading for a new greenfield solution. Fluxer is planning to add federation, E2EE and other goodies. Someone made a A DIY electrolysis machine with firmware in Rust.
Little corners of the internet where I feel alive and good about myself. Corners where we just get it, where I can look people in the (maybe-)metaphorical eye.
I want to see this keep going. I want to see post-LLM development grow and get institutional support.
Today, the Dutch government uses Forgejomore @ code.overheid.nl. There’s something akin to a flagship instance with Codeberg too, which is run by a German nonprofit (verein).
The French government uses NixOS, and they’re working on replacements for common cloud services. It’s not everything, and I don’t feel it is even close to reaching developers outside European governments and their periphery, but something is happening for sure.
Personally, I look forward to writing complicated software.
The world seems tired of one-more-SaaS to my eyes.