Great article! You've pinned down a bunch of intuitions that have been floating around my head lately. I especially liked the Ahmdahl's law reference.

> I've learned a lot about using a tool like this but the biggest result is that development has lost its joy. There were no challenges, there were no puzzles, no hurdles to overcome. The biggest lesson is that software development is now about the destination not the journey, the journey is for the agent.

Which is why I minimise my use of these tools. I'm not going to delegate the fun/meaningful parts to a machine.

Do you have a link to that video?

Sorry, I don't remember. But I think it was in this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpCHo5v-Gc

Though I believe the core of his opinion hasn't changed so any video would tell you a similar thing or at least that's how I understood it. That LLMs, in the hands of an "expert", can enhance the way you work. Which is very different and a lot more realistic to what the current AI companies are saying(or were saying before they toned it down a bit for their IPOs).

Thanks!

> The web is a few dozen companies, each holding a filing cabinet, each with a receptionist posted out front. He'll read you one file at a time, but only files you can name, as fast as he cares to read, and as long as his boss allows.

Fortunately this isn't true. Social media consists of a few big walled gardens, but the web itself is still open. Go forth and create a website!

Yeah, but the web is getting smaller, as the most valuable and interesting parts got turned into private whatsapp groups or non-indexed discord and other "community first" nonsense, and went dark.

Yeah, I used to Google things until Google went to shit. Now I use Kagi, but it doesn't sound like a verb. I'll gladly add "search [it] up" to my lexicon :)

I learned about 0mq a few years back, found myself wondering why it had such an air of quality. Then I found Hitnjens' writing, only to learn that he had been gone for a while. I was surprised by my sense of loss.

Fwiw, not that it mattes a lot, I think most of that sense of quality in ZeroMQ is due to the very tasteful efforts of its main author, Martin Sustrik (https://www.250bpm.com/). Pieter Hintjens sortof stewarded the project but, I believe, didn't code all that much on it.

I did use the Xitami webserver in anger or years back in the early 2000s though, and that very much was Pieter's work! It was amazing!