I am in a similar situation as you, but in a lot of ways you're asking more sophisticated questions than me. FWIW, I've been building a little toy lisp-scheme like scripting language as a learning tool: https://github.com/zeraholladay/lispm/tree/main. It's been a lot of fun and I've really enjoyed exploring parts of CS that my career hasn't really taken me to.
I think a lot of developers naively rely on "software design" principles. They often can't state their reasons for adopting these principles and assume these principles are self-evident. This can be a problem when these principles conflict with external priorities, or when a complex "principled" design is used instead of an obvious, intuitive design. There's also a certain amount of trendiness to software design, so trends can be applied haphazardly.
That being said, I've also seen plenty of "scientific code" that's totally incomprehensible even to the point where the scientist who wrote the code can't debug it. So there's an extreme in the other direction.
Think we agree that blocking ad blockers is in YouTube's immediate, short-term interest. However, I'm not sure it's in their long-term interest because it goes against the principle of reciprocation.
Regarding reciprocation, a lot of platforms offer a free tier and then offer additional features for paid subscribers. There's the principle of reciprocation at play: they give me something for free and that then makes me more likely to pay for additional features. But I'm only willing to pay for features, not to have an annoyance, like ads, removed. The conditions I'd have to agree to feel coerced ... like making an agreement with Darth Vader: "pray YouTube doesn't alter the deal further by now only blocking 50% of ads for a paid subscriber." What do I, as an end user, get out of this other than feeling hostile towards YouTube?
It's my computational device and my internet connection. I think there's a very complex argument to be made but this isn't the forum for it.
Why aren't you hostile against your Internet service provider for charging you for access? Why do you accept paying the ISP to access YouTube, but not paying YouTube or video creators?
I think with ISPs there's an obvious upfront material cost for building infrastructure. In that sense I'm very much the consumer. Obviously, there's substantial infra cost too with social media platforms like YouTube. However, the consumer-producer dichotomy isn't as clear with social media platforms since the user base is the product. That is, the value of a social media platform comes first from the masses of people using it and second the design, the infrastructure, etc. This is why I think reciprocity (in the psychological sense) is so important for social media companies because the product can just walk out the door.
My understanding is that content creators see very little or next to none of the ad revenue. The content creators are the reason people are using YouTube. So I prefer to support them through Patreon. Second, I've heard that the vast, vast majority of content creators make next to nothing through YouTube -- these content creators are paying the opportunity cost to "make it big" or simply enjoy making content or using YouTube as a promotional vehicle for other services. I'm not trying to define a moral equivalence of why it's right to directly support content creators but not YouTube (Google is making enough money off me so that I have a clear conscience), but for the price of their ad free service I'd like to see a more equitable distribution.
You are mixing two completely different groups when talking about users. Some users make and publish content. YouTube and others are dependent on them. Some users consume content, and as the end consumer they are the people who have to pay if producers want to have an income. Either paying directly in money, or by suffering advertising.
It's not about the infrastructure cost of YouTube's servers, but the time and effort cost of the people producing the videos. Hackers seem to conveniently always forget about these people.
A pure consumer is not worth anything to YouTube or any other platform if they're not paying or can't be advertised to. They're just a cost with no benefit.
I think the argument for paying content makers (through YouTube) is higher than the argument for paying ISPs. When the cables are laid, they don't cost any time or money except for a little of maintenance. Video creators work constantly to publish their stuff.
I agree that YouTube should distribute revenue more equally among their creators, so that it stops being a casino of people working for scraps trying to make it big (Hollywood anybody?). I think it's OK to support creators through Patreon and such instead of paying for Premium, but it might not be very fair in the end, because people unwittingly will donate to creators making the type of videos they want to be associated with and not the creators making the type of videos they are spending the most time watching.
I think it is fair that a video creator who doesn't ask for donations and didn't make her videos with the aim of making money, also gets paid her fair share if a lot of people are watching and enjoying her videos. That's why premium makes more sense to me than the hassle of donating.
but the time and effort cost of the people producing the videos. Hackers seem to conveniently always forget about these people.
FWIW, I tend to find the opposite. Maybe the people I know are just more vocal about things that make them look good to others.
A pure consumer is not worth anything to YouTube or any other platform if they're not paying or can't be advertised to. They're just a cost with no benefit.
I disagree but I understand what you're getting at. In the case of YouTube, you may be correct (or more correct than me). I'm thinking of platforms like Strava or dating apps where an active user population is part of the attraction to upsell features to paying customers.
Aesthetics are rooted in civilization, time, and class. It's very difficult to say if these works by Johns will survive 500 years from now given that famous bronze statues were melted down to make bullets. However, if you have time you should try to understand what's happened to fine art in the past 200 years if for no other reason than it's interesting and to challenge your views on aesthetics. Not all of it will last another 100 years, so that gives you an idea where things currently stand too.
I've been wondering if the perspective won't shift as the current generation of developers ages. When will HN be the old farts site; will perspective's shift then? More of a hypothetical question.
Second, and this is a broad statement, society is currently in a phase of devaluing the older mind. We're too quick to assume older minds cannot learn as easily, and older minds accept this as fact in a self-fulfilling way. The reality of the situation is that we're living longer, so we'll need to make valuable contributions later in our lives. Tech definitely isn't a mistress for 50+ year-olds, but that's a problem with our culture and not technology.
this is interesting. my father was a tech guy that found himself laid-off a few years back when he hit 50. He hung up the tech boots, started importing foods from his home country to sell to local gourmet shops. Not a huge business but it is the thing he is doing since he was too young to retire. He genuinely enjoys doing it, meeting people and delivering products. It was a complete 180 from what he was doing before. Maybe tech is something inherently for younger people/minds? Maybe techies need to become more open minded with career options as time goes on?
I've worked in a "tech" department with mostly older folks as the youngest person. It was frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I heard "nobody knows how to do that." There were plenty of older COBOL programs, in 10 years they'll be called Java programmers. The COBOL programmers maintained a legacy business application, which was a mammoth beast of obscure rules and uncharted/unknown results. But the system worked and made the company money. Point is, there are still opportunities for older developers although they might not be ideal. Frankly, it was a soul crushing job and I can't believe I'm defending it even in this context.
That's good about your dad tho. I don't know if I'd be able to make that kind of change if I'm ever in his position.
When you put it that way, as the current generation ages, sounds like you are talking about one or two decades down the line.
Call me crazy, but I think that within two or three decades, its not just going to be "old" programmers who are worried about their jobs. I think that actually sooner than we realize, artificial general super-intelligence will arrive, and make ALL of the humans (at least version 1.0s) obsolete.
Thanks, you're awesome! This was exactly what I needed. I'm switching jobs and receiving a monthly figure to buy insurance. It's very easy to use, looks clean and PDQ. Great work.
I don't know if it even qualifies as "schmuck bait." The Prof's actions are ethically objectionable (and personally disgusting to me) since he actively solicited unethical behavior from gullible students. Frankly, it's not a challenge to bring out the worst qualities in people, especially scared undergrads.
