TechTakes

1489 readers

30 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

dgerard@awful.systems

In a rare moment, the orange site asks where the emperor's clothes are (news.ycombinator.com)

submitted 3 months ago by sue_me_please@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Perhaps there will be some quality sneers, perhaps not. But in this moment the orange site becomes sentient and asks if the emperor is really wearing clothes

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Another thing from the comments

Now non-technical people with ideas can start prototyping and raise money

Didn't people use to say stuff like this about HTML? (Also paper prototyping exists, and I would also think that for almost all interesting ideas you actually need to have a technical person up front to know if a thing is even technically possible/viable (Wait, looking at the computation requirements of LLMs and the hype about that, im taking that last statement back ;) )).

The people discussing a random asspulled number to make a point as actually important is also very HN.

[–] dashdsrdash@awful.systems 14 points 3 months ago

The history of technology teaches us that every non-trivial problem -- and a large fraction of trivial problems -- require specification beyond the bounds of conversational language.

Greek geometers may have invented the idea of formalizing language with specific definitions, and inventing new symbols to represent special meanings. When important consequences accrue from getting things wrong, people develop jargon: knitters and sailors and shepherds and farmers; engineers and lawyers and plumbers. If you want to convey your knowledge and intentions, you can't chat informally and expect a human to really understand what you want.

For about a century now we've had devices that turn instructions into actions. Everyone who uses these becomes an expert in the particular form of instructions that the device needs, or else they don't get what they want.