> One unambiguously positive development that's followed is that software professionals are writing specs again. LLMs - like many of us - do not perform well with ambiguity, and specifying problems is proving to be an effective tool for generating correct code.
Replace "LLM" with "compiler", "specs" with "code" and "correct code" with "correct machine code" and we are back to square one.
So this period last year the visits went up 300K, and this year they are down 200K. So compared to the two year ago it's still up 100K? Am I missing anything? It would be interesting to see the data over a multi-year period.
edit: they actually even say that the data "go back for 3 years", but only show 1 year of data.
It makes sense that 2024 had more travel than 2023, given Covid. But a longer timeline view would be nice, as would measurements in percent rather than numbers.
Alan Kay was right classifying most software engineering as pop culture. It's 2024 and we are still fiddling with spaces around radio buttons, a problem that should have been solved decades ago.
I don’t get this take. “Still fiddling with spaces around radio buttons.” It’s design. Design is unique to the creation. We still fiddle around with spacing around radio buttons because one spacing doesn’t work for every design.
Unless you’re talking about the clicking dead zone, which I would argue is more a problem with not using the right cursor than the dead zone the gap introduces.
I personally first tried 4-day workweek about 10 years ago and still love it. That was one of the best decisions I made in my life.
Especially in software industry, it's not that hard to arrange I believe. Even easier if we do it collectively. And when more and more people do it and it becomes a norm, the income will just readjust and return to the current levels.
But even today, when it's still not a norm, and I have a reduced income compared to my fulltime working peers, I still consider it a bargain. Extra free day is totally worth it. I am basically paying for some extra happiness.
For me 6 months on and 6 months off would be incredible. But of course by the time 6 months goes by, someone has learned how to do my job and maintain all the shit I built, and I'm no longer valuable. Also I lose my health insurance and probably seniority. But man would it be sweet if I could make it work.
This would be my dream setup as well. Heck I would do 7 days a week 12 hour days (with a few mental health days built in) for 6 months if it meant not having to think about work for the other 6. I'll even live on a cot at the office during the work 6!
This is something that will never happen in India because no matter how bad you want 4 day work week theres always someone who will do full 5 days a week and do additional work over the weekend.
> Why employers can't see this on the balance sheet is a different discussion.
Because it isn't on the balance sheet. The job gets done, the overtime is unpaid.
They assume that if the hours reduce, the job won't get done, they don't see each hour of less hours being productive because they've but been convinced to try the fewer hours option.
The comment you’re replying to also has many characteristics of trolling. It’s ignorant of what actually happens inEU countries, as well as the motivation behind the regulations that seem to have become a between noir for a certain libertarian flavour of HN commenters.
Yeah some of the best times of my life have been on 4-day work weeks. Added bonus, they were 10 hours days so we not only got our 40 hours a week but a chunk of that was OT!
Oh yeah I totally get it, but we were hourly rather than salary so it was the best of both worlds. We were working out of town so what's a couple extra hours a day on the site getting paid when your alternative is primarily the hotel room. For us the killer benefit was driving home Thursday night (avoiding all that extra Friday traffic) for a full extra day home with our families
I've switched to 90%, working a total of 36 hours, and spreading that to 9 hours per day. Not even much of a difference on work days, as I used to work more Monday through Thursday to have a shorter Friday. So it's basically 30 minutes more, and a day off. And only 10% less pay instead of 20%.
I would bet most of these protests were funded by the fossil fuel industry. The chances of this many people organically being anti-nuclear are near 0%.
It’s also funny how it was the environmental activists who were the ones who were powerful/influential enough to be “entirely responsible” for killing nuclear energy as opposed to be the poor old fossil fuel industry.
They were able to kill the nuclear energy industry because the economic cost of killing it was low. The alternative to cheap, reliable nuclear was cheap, reliable coal.
They're struggling to kill off the fossil fuel industry because the alternative to cheap, reliable coal/natural gas is expensive (when accounting for energy storage + backup energy production capacity), less reliable renewables.
Ironically, they'd have a much easier if the alternative to cheap, reliable coal/natural gas was cheap, reliable nuclear energy!
> Funny how environmental activists were powerful enough to kill the nuclear energy but not the fossil one.
It's a lot harder to affect something that's so firmly embedded in how we do things as a society. Blocking new nuclear developments was a lot easier than undoing generations worth of infrastructure around fossil power.
A comparison can be drawn to the USA's short-lived attempt at prohibition of alcohol versus the long-lasting prohibition of marijuana which is only now finally calling apart.
The one our society has been at least partially built around for generations has its problems normalized and mostly disregarded until something unignorable happens, which still often gets swept under the rug, where the alternative gets constant scrutiny and has to meet standards the established norm has never been held to.
Interesting to note is that the rated life time (1,000 hours) stayed the same after the cartel dissolved. Even the ones available today have the rated life time in the same order of magnitude: https://www.mcmaster.com/products/light-bulbs/light-technolo...
Sure, the cartel existed. At the same time, the engineering trade-offs are still there.
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