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> Writing software has never been difficult.

That's not true at all, sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner.

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Yes. Audio, video encoders, decoders etc, 3D modeling, rendering etc.

That too is "domain" even it feels like it is NOT. Domain of signal processing, Euclidian spaces, information theory and what not. Thar too is all "domain" and that "domain" part is difficult to write.

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Then what do you mean by pure software? I think there's essentially zero domain-free software.
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I prefer co-domain free software. Has no side-effects.
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It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even see the difference between 1080p and 4k from a couch, and people are trying to sell me 8k to watch the same stuff.

It just does not matter. The ideas matter. Novel functionality matters. But that isn't what any of that is. Same old. And the effort spent, the resources, the energy. All for more polygons on Lara Croft.

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I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.
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CU-SeeMe worked pretty well in 1995 if you had access to a half decent Internet connection, which admittedly most people didn’t.

For well funded organisations, ISDN video conferencing facilities were reasonably common.

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Verizon in NYC was trying to make ISDN happen in the home in the mid 90's. I had it. The hard part was getting an ISP that supported SLIP.
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CuSeeMe certainly was being used before 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe

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That took until skype in 2003 I guess. The idea is pretty old though and people were trying for it for a while from different angles.
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Maybe not between continents but we had meaningful live video chat in 1968
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>all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in compariso

Mordern GPUs are streaming multiprocessors. Complaining that GPUs use a ton of resources is like complaining that a firehose uses a ton of water. Maximum data throughput is the point!

>But that isn't what any of that is. Same old. And the effort spent, the resources, the energy. All for more polygons on Lara Croft

There are MANY novel games being released every year. It's up to you to find them.

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You do realize that all the domains you used in your example are trivial for an LLM to write?
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"sure CRUD might not have been that difficult, but absolutely there is extremely complicated software out there that is really difficult to write in a performant and correct manner."

I was a developer for 20 years, before I pivoted to cybersecurity. My hobby projects were always more complex than the software I wrote at my day job.

The majority of software developers are writing some type of CRUD code or glue code for business processes. A small minority are writing complex code at big tech companies.

AI will most likely replace the need for many software developers.

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Writing software for a domain is itself a domain of expertise, with a similar learning curve. It isn't enough to know the programming language.

For example, it takes years to develop the knowledge and idioms required to effectively write high-performance systems code, which is separate from the language the code is written in. You can have decades of experience in a systems language and zero experience writing modern systems code in that language. Same with embedded code, supercomputing code, etc.

Writing software is only "not difficult" if you've already learned how to write it.

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The type of software the average hacker news commentator writes is not difficult. That does not mean there aren't industries where the code is legitimately difficult. Games, embedded, etc.
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