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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Glyph's recently sneered his fellow programmers' enthusiastic acceptance of the slop machines - recommend checking it out.
For a while it looked like devs would resist the slop, but now it looks like the slop is winning. It is pretty depressing. I am thinking about leaving tech altogether.
Now it seems like a lot of meetups are all about AI, and if the topic is not AI, someone brings it up: Can AI do this, did you use AI, etc, etc.
I don't think I ever saw this. The only indication would have been a major dev org like the FSF, OSI, SFC or somebody hitting Microsoft with a really aggressive lawsuit over OpenAI. They would have had a slam dunk and it would have set the tone for the way the rest of the world reacted, I think.
Instead it was just 'wow cool toy.' That was when I realized the real politics of Foss wasn't just a couple of bad actors like Eric Raymond but a full on rot.
I wish I had a plan B, but I've devoted my life to being a software engineer and have no idea what else I could do .
Yeah. I've sort of resigned to my world being ruined and everything I ever worked on stolen and sold back to my bosses for the rest of my career.
I just wish there were some way to inflict some fraction of this pain on the people responsible, the people who go to work every day to ruin mine.
@EFreethought @BlueMonday1984 not even just meetups, having dinner with programmer friends also mostly revolves around AI. Sure, some of it is talking negatively about it. But a few years ago we'd talk politics, hobbies, personal life etc. and now that's overshadowed by AI talk. It's just invading every space. Luckily still less so with my non-tech friends.
I've been squeezed out of physics academia after years of ordinary career pressure and obstacles that aren't very interesting or pertinent to this thread. The fact that the insitutions and the community have no resistance to slop, that's why I'm not even trying to go back.
What are you doing now? I feel like after I graduate I'm gonna have to find a new field.
Writing fiction and expository material to build emotional stability while looking for the next thing to do.
Not the most encouraging answer, I know, but so it goes.
Best of luck to both of you in your searches for cleaner pastures!
Years ago I thought, I like writing hobby software but I don’t think I would enjoy it as a career. And so, I do not work (at least directly) in software development.
If only I knew the armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot I was dodging there.
@rhamph @EFreethought I’m glad I retired from professional software development just before LLMs came on the scene. Now I program the old-fashioned way as a hobby.
However I recently was sent an ai-generated report of bugs and vulnerabilities in one of my projects and I have to admit that it is genuinely useful.
Cool testimonial bro.
If that was all GenAI was being (aggressively and incessantly) pushed as you probably wouldn't be seeing terms like cognitive surrender and technofeudalism being thrown around as often, and this lemmy instance would still mainly be about dunking on SFBA quasireligious get-smart-quick scams.
the fuck was the point of this post
@rhamph @EFreethought I don't think I would enjoy much of anything done for work under capitalism.
Practically everything has to compromise for profitability and exploitation.
That is no way to live or build a society.
Honestly, can't blame you - with how utterly tech's surrendered to the slop machines, and how its actively sabotaged attempts to resist them, I'd be looking to leave as well.