Software Is a Superpower (opens in new tab)

(flaviocopes.com)

28 pointsflaviocopes5y ago13 comments

13 comments

threatofrain5y ago

Boring advertisement blog full of choppy dreamy sentences.

brandly5y ago

The tiny paragraphs are really jarring to read.

esperent5y ago

These are not paragraphs.

They are lonely disjointed sentences.

Floating freely.

In a sea of whitespace.

yepthatsreality5y ago

It’s a draft for the blog post the author never wrote.

0d3115y ago

+1 on this, paragraphs are meant to group ideas. The way they’re used here, there might as well be just a wall of text with no paragraph delineations at all.

ken5y ago

Not every new line must have the same meaning. Do you also look down on James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound?

1 more reply

davidlinc15y ago

I agree with the underlying sentiment and even find the subject matter inspirational, but the post falls pretty flat.

xwdv5y ago

I disagree with the article, for thousands of years slavery was how you automated tasks at scale, and you could build massive impossible things this way.

Software is the tech equivalent, except the slaves are machines and tiny shell scripts.

esperent5y ago

By definition, machines (at least any built so far) cannot be slaves, so this is not a great equivalency.

At the very least it's a sign of amazing social and technological progress.

invalidOrTaken5y ago

It really is pretty great. Getting automated out of a job sucks, but it beats being a slave forced to do that same job by a country mile.

It's interesting that as machines have become more powerful, slavery has become less and less profitable---but so has employment!

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

13 comments

threatofrain5y ago

Boring advertisement blog full of choppy dreamy sentences.

brandly5y ago

The tiny paragraphs are really jarring to read.

esperent5y ago

These are not paragraphs.

They are lonely disjointed sentences.

Floating freely.

In a sea of whitespace.

yepthatsreality5y ago

It’s a draft for the blog post the author never wrote.

0d3115y ago

+1 on this, paragraphs are meant to group ideas. The way they’re used here, there might as well be just a wall of text with no paragraph delineations at all.

ken5y ago

Not every new line must have the same meaning. Do you also look down on James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound?

1 more reply

davidlinc15y ago

I agree with the underlying sentiment and even find the subject matter inspirational, but the post falls pretty flat.

xwdv5y ago

I disagree with the article, for thousands of years slavery was how you automated tasks at scale, and you could build massive impossible things this way.

Software is the tech equivalent, except the slaves are machines and tiny shell scripts.

esperent5y ago

By definition, machines (at least any built so far) cannot be slaves, so this is not a great equivalency.

At the very least it's a sign of amazing social and technological progress.

invalidOrTaken5y ago

It really is pretty great. Getting automated out of a job sucks, but it beats being a slave forced to do that same job by a country mile.

It's interesting that as machines have become more powerful, slavery has become less and less profitable---but so has employment!

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse