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Ben Campbell
2c405fa031a9f4770a4aeec06b4959f92969d4560525e684bb596b57aa018370
Software Engineer

Where are all the people from #Montana at?

I am thinking of how to whitelabel #nostr and create specific community groups. I feel like the technology laggards will prefer area focused relays.

Rise and shine #plebchain

The value of #nostr is the data is independent of the “view.” Any change to the protocols that undermine that principle undermine the value of nostr.

The problem with people is that we like to conflate presentation with reality. People feel that the clients ARE the mechanism and seek to govern from their perspective.

I tried explaining to colleagues today that I feel like I have a hard time expressing myself to others.

They didn’t know what I was talking about because I had a hard time expressing the idea.

Replying to Avatar unclebobmartin

Clearly the growth cannot remain exponential. If it did then thirty years from now 3 out of 4 humans on the planet will be programmers. That's not feasible.

What is driving the current exponential growth? Exponential demand. Every N years the demand for new software that people are willing to pay for doubles. Thus, every N years we must double our capacity to write software.

What will slow the exponential demand for nnew software? Perhaps we'll run out of applications. Or, perhaps the price of software will increase.

Why would the price of software increase? Because the supply of programmers will become too low to meet the demand. This will drive programmer salaries up and therefore software prices up.

What could increase our capacity to write software? Hiring more programmers of course; but also better tools, better languages, better environments etc.

Will our tools become so powerful that we can meet the exponential demand for software without hiring more programmers? That doesn't seem likely; but some folks worry that AI will take over most of the work of writing software. If that happens then software will get cheaper, and demand for new software will increase without the need for more programmers.

The most likely outcome of all this that the exponential growth of programmers will eventually consumem the supply, driving programmer salaries up. This will create enormous pressure to automate more and more of the software process, allowing programmers to magnify their productivity. At some point all these forces will stabilize and the exponential growth of programmers, and demand for software, will plateau.

>From: (benc) at 04/26/23 23:38:35 on wss://nos.lol

>---------------

>#[3]​ when suggesting the population of programmers doubles every five years we end up with an exponential growth.

>

>Exponential growth isn’t very natural.

>

>Any thoughts on it being more like logistic growth and that some compensating factor will curb growth in the future and maintain an equilibrium?

Thank you for humoring me. I’ve been writing code for eight years and had never though about software in this way until recently.

I wonder if low code/no code technology is an attempt to automate to the extreme. Build the platforms that enable more people to construct applications. I guess we see things like IFTT, zapier, salesforce, etc and it hasn’t changed much in the software world yet. I think public API products fit into this category too.

That brings up and interesting thought. How does relate to the average level of craftsmanship across the profession? It seemingly creates a divide. Those who enable more software development must be must account for the delinquency of a newer generation of software development.

In my experience that is not on the top of engineers minds. Who knows though, I may just be part of an previous generation of software delinquents.

#[0]​ when suggesting the population of programmers doubles every five years we end up with an exponential growth.

Exponential growth isn’t very natural.

Any thoughts on it being more like logistic growth and that some compensating factor will curb growth in the future and maintain an equilibrium?

There is treasures in those hills.

This morning My wife told me that during the night I sat up abruptly from my sleep and told her about “a cycle that they can use for the protocol.” I have no recollection.

I believe in #nostr!

I can hardly wait.

I have to say bringing these ideas to my org has been very difficult. I think it boils down to the fact that many people see specification and implementation as the same thing with a preference on implementation.

Any tips on breaking that down?

#[0]​ Just finished Clean Craftsmanship. I enjoyed the recasting of ideas in terms of ethics. Thanks for writing the book!

Spent the evening reading #nips.