Autor surely always could be journalist. He can write a exceptional story.

Don't like to go against everyone but this not particularly well written.

It's a long winding absurdist metaphorical tale, that is really more or less a rant. It's not particularly well grounded.

It's a nice piece of personalized fiction, but it's not particularly good writing and nothing approaching what we'd think of as 'journalism'.

Maybe 'journalism' wasn't the best suggestion by the OP but I have to disagree with the rest of your message. It may be a rant, or less pejoratively it may be a cry for help of someone seeing their industry's future, but I can't accept that it's not well written.

When is the last time you opened an HN comment section and the main comment was that people enjoyed the writing quality? Maybe it says more about what we usually read as a crowd, but to me this was a breath of fresh air, it was engaging but also quite deep at times.

I think the mark of great writing is that it makes an impression on you, on others, in a way casual writing doesn't. At least that's my take on this.

I commented only because I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.

It's highly personalized and interesting, but I wouldn't call it well written.

As a personal bit of art - 'thumbs up', but anything else is overstated.

But more appropriately, the nihilism on this thread is unhinged.

"seeing their industry's future" ???

I'm seeing people empowered to do the most spectacular things that they have ever done in their lives.

Software hiring on the aggregate is up, job postings are up, people are doing more, non-developers get to tinker.

Speculative money is coming into the industry for people to try wild new things.

The implied reality in the story is totally detached from reality.

Surely - there is a movement of people who lament a sense of loss of control, but that's normal with change.

There are also people in crappy jobs with crappy bosses in crappy companies doing crappy things - but that's not a feature of AI or the industry, in fact, software is a pretty good place, relatively speaking.

As I said, this is a reflection of someone's state of mind, mood, being interpreted as some kind of metaphor, but it just doesn't line up with reality in general. A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.

> I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.

Here is a thought that seems not to have occurred to you.

All these people saying it's good. You commented multiple times to say you disagree and think it is bad.

Maybe that means you do not get it. Maybe the problem here is you and your reading and your lack of comprehension. Maybe the problem is not in the article and the way the article is written.

> I commented only because I didn't think it was particularly well written, and I found the threaD to be full of people commenting on how well written it was.

While "well-written" is subjective, the bar for "well-written" is whether people enjoyed reading it and the author managed to deliver his message.

I'm now very curious what bar you personally use for well-written, because it obviously differs from the majority of the people in this thread.

> A personal reality sure, but that's not a reflection of the community.

You say, to the community, as it describes how it relates to the message.

You may not agree with it, but surely this thread among many should show you this view is not fringe or denial, but how a strong segment feels. I concede it's a divisive topic, some people feel optimistic, others less so. I myself don't fully know where I stand. I just don't agree with branding all of this as "unhinged nihilism".

I read it as a comment on how bad journalism is nowadays, with the extensive prose instead of getting to the point.

Indeed I should use "writer" instead.

It's not absurdist. It's shining a light on something that actually exists and is absurd.

hi, author here. what mental disposition would that be?

Whatever your mental disposition is.

The writing is an expression of a state of mind through an absurdist voice, not any kind of reasonable articulation of reality. It's at least a much about the lens as it is the subject. Which is fine, if we ingest it roughly from that purview.

the writing is a tribute to a 2014 similar article, based on my experiences since. it is absolutely a reasonable articulation of reality, although through a sarcastic or satirical lens. you might have different experiences, that doesn't invalidate mine.

your experiences (and probably mine as well) are not a reflection of the general reality of the industry - that's the root of the problem; the writing is a projection, not a reality. The writing is fine (even good) as a personal story, not in the manner in which people here seem to be interpreting it.

i dunno. i'm happy to read in the comments here (and elsewhere) that my experience is not unique, many others have similar experiences and are going through the same feelings: grief. i think we're allowed to grieve, don't you?

I think you're extrapolating on something that hasn't even happened yet. We're still hiring juniors. They're thriving with LLM coding. They're learning rapidly.

I actually enjoyed your writing (though it does mimic a certain style I see coming out of the US), and I even enjoyed what you wrote. A lot of it definitely resonates, but you could have omitted any mention of AI, written it 20 years ago, and expressed the same sentiment. And I guess that is the main point "greed is to blame, not AI".

I hear a lot more rage, envy, cynicism, bitterness, nihilism, and and learned helplessness than grief.

it sounds like you should learn a bit more about grief. also, please, for god's sake, read the original. I've linked to it in at the top of the article. As to envious, I'm a Director of Engineering. What exactly do you think is left for me to be envious of? The levels above (VP, SVP, CTO at a non-startup) are outside of my interest.

Chill dude, I was talking about the comments here.

I do not see that in the article. For me it was irony written well.

I think there is another "mental disposition" in need of some examination.

Thank you for writing this and your below longer comment.

I printed them with OP to remind me any time i’m afraid somebody can criticize my work and that it’s not worth to produce/write/publish.

no matter how good, there will always be people like you here, so no need to worry.

I could have done without the five paragraphs of the ship analogy.

Yeah, I fancy myself a decent writer but I am not anywhere close to this good. Very engaging, you can tell they're writing from the heart.

Keep writing please! Where can I find your writing?

You're giving "yet you participate in society" vibes that I don't love, but let me address a few things:

- We're not indentured workers yet. We should always have been fighting for their dignity & rights, because they're ours too. - Might I invite you to read the original, it's linked at the top of the article. Sure, programming isn't physically demanding, but that doesn't mean we should just accept the bad parts. - All of that being said, yes I agree, other jobs are more valuable and it's insane that we get paid what we do. That's why I'm a socialist. Your value shouldn't depend on a grabbag of accidental circumstances outside of your control.

As to selling consulting on the side: I've been an employee for 2 decades, and am striking out on my own to build a better life for my newborn son & fiance. Sorry for wanting to be a more present father.

The day Gaben would fade away will be very sad moment for gaming industry. Steam is rare incredible company.

I'm kinda being upset because on top of his ridiculously amoral and sometimes illegal behavior there are people which lives were ruined because they shared few mp3 files. Now this person once again — have absolutely no responsibility for his actions even for something so idiotic like copyright infringement when others were severely punished.

Every few weeks I run my nginx access logs through a script that uses the same textual ASN database to tally them up and spit out a summary report. There are many different sources for periodic textual ASN databases you can parse with UNIXy tools.

Only way to cope with this I found is to grind leetcode or advent of code. It's kinda funny how fast this all changed. Less funny part is the fact that I'm now kinda feared for my job in some time.

lol, nice to know that I can go blind just randomly while working on the street.

I'm kinda curious what was sum of the damage in the end.

With high-powered lasers, you can go blind instantly. I also worked with lasers (in a lab, with all the safety precautions), yet I have slight eye damage in one eye.

There's a small burnt patch on my fovea, so if I look at something like a regular grid (e.g. a page with text) with the damaged eye, the grid becomes warped at the point of focus. And I found out about that only when I was doing a regular planned eye exam (I was wearing corrective glasses).

This type of damage is extremely common with lasers, and it can stay invisible and compound until the brain runs out of its ability to do fixes in post-processing.

Wow. As my only experience with lasers is playing with laser pointer I suppose the laser damage of this type is mostly by multiple reflections that are not really even seen by visible eye or scattered beam reflected from some surface you are not expecting it from?

This type of damage is common if you look at the spot that the laser makes on an object. Your eye automatically focuses it into the foveal area.

I don't remember ever doing that without protective glasses, but evidently I did at some point.

This is not X or 4chan mister.

I. Love. This.

American chips depend on European-made Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machines, which are among the most complex machines ever built and rely on European high-tech mirrors, etc... Everything is then assembled in Taiwan. This industry is so interconnected that nothing can be done independently, at least not in the Western part of the world.

The main point should not be the hardware or software itself, because these are just tools that can eventually be obtained. The real issue is development and its cost. US companies now have to cover substantial capital requirements for developing entirely new business models, capital that would likely never be accumulated in Europe. In the past, they competed globally, but in a more fragmented world this is no longer the case. As a result, the risk associated with such investments is higher because potential reward is smaller.

Mistral does not have to compete in the same way. It lacks both the ability and the intention to fight on the global stage against Silicon Valley capital. Instead, it can wait for the industry to stabilize and for business models to mature, then adopt them.

Over time, there will be standardized ways to train models to a certain quality, and key technologies will become less opaque. This is already happening. A similar pattern occurred in Europe with hosting services, for example Hetzner.

Mistral is not playing the same game. It is also unlikely that US attitudes toward Europe will change significantly even with a different administration, that Russia will stop trying to undermine the EU, or that China will become a fair and friendly player. All of this supports the case for local providers of critical infrastructure, which benefits companies like Mistral or similar European counterparts.