As one might expect, Automated Imitation has dramatically changed the sales position for what it is to produce code and code-like products. As one might imagine there is a delusion that LLM's are producing code faster for startups at lower costs... Maybe. I don't see a lot of formal proof of this, which also doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I also don't tend to read hacker news so take that how you like.

I have also noticed this move away from "Clean Code," which is fine, I guess because that "exciting" seems to be the same as my opinions on the dogmatic use of DRY and other "can't apply everywhere" navel-gazing.

I think LLMs themselves are just a step in a direction, a real breakthrough for reliable generation of specifics from a broad context. My senior thesis back 20 years ago was just this. I wanted to shove the works of Mark Twain into a computerized token store and have it answer questions in the style and opinion of his writing. I was naive and had beautiful ideas...

I wasn't able to accomplish that, but if there was an aspect of that project I should have spent more time on it was the ethics of the thing. There is clearly nothing unethical about the idea just that ethics always plays a part. A more interesting project would have been to partner with someone in my college's theology or philosophy departments to explore some of the bigger ramifications of the work.

I have seen an interesting shift, between the layoffs and "New" product hype that's worth mentioning. I see companies refusing to apply the label AI to their products and instead terming them as LLM and ML products. This has always rung true to me, not because I am a person who avoids reductionist language, clearly, but because it more precise to describe a product as what it is. Intelligence might be taking it too far is all. To me the position of computers has always been the same, do annoying repetitive things and leave the fun stuff to me. I don't wanna do DNS lookups, and I don't think anyone ever has.

I know this because in the 90s, I was on AOL(America Online) in a time without modern search engines and an internet barely with images. I had a printed book, like a phone book, with printed pages that listed AOL Keywords for Businesses. Yes, before there was really an internet, companies were competing over keywords to capture users' attention. For example CAFFE STARBUCKS - Caffe Starbucks or CANT SLEEP - The Late Night Survey. Back then, there was even a kind of human-run auction house where keywords were bought and traded. All this to capture the attention of my parents, who could barely be bothered. Everything was new, and yet it was just a better link aggregator, albeit like others from that time, like Geocities, long forgotten.

All that is consistent is our need to share, and be free to do so. The cycles that we repeat are glorious in how they change our lives. Once they did so by what felt like an accident, now those are marketed to us trying to re-capture that glory. The days of guestbooks and visitor counters were replaced with comments and likes. We were never slaves to these tools; our limitation was our self-education. Once we learned CSS and Java Applets to grab visitors' attention. Now, we invent clever camera and editing techniques to collect users. The only change is the evolution of what was the product.

Having stood sentinel to a world where the internet was almost free, through the advent of "popups" and "AdSense," and continuing to today, where there is no escape from the cacophony of influencers. I have always known that at its core all marketing is dishonest and all sales are exploitation but we all need the Money.

I have often considered the impact of all these deceptive interactions on my psyche. The noise is so fervent and quick that it loses meaning creating a kind of alternate reality where I feel myself disconnecting from reality in defense of the conflict it creates in me. It makes me want to cry, but it also has so little meaning that I would give it, which cannot be named collective value. My brain wasn't formed for this, and I cannot confirm that any brains are, but it has become viral.

What comes next, I wonder? Hopefully, it will be a renaissance through the revelation of Automated Imitation. A brain training on the noise produces "slop." It feels like that is probably the peek of its capability. We clearly have to create and build to grow the capabilities of a system that is a focused mirror on our desires.

Is it then true that the world of Clean Code is no longer needed? Why bother with the craft of structuring code if we can rely on a computer to do it for us. It's not exactly the fun part of the work. It is to me and I will continue to do it, but that doesn't mean you do. But what rules will the computers use and will we even read the code anymore? Is there even a need for anything not to be a binary? Consider a website is just conjured when requested as opposed to rendered. What's the point of not even having a website anymore, and how will it differentiate the ads? Will the content I receive ever be free of targeted influence. Consider the existential horror when the same query posed by my partner and me on different terminals produces completely different experiences. Using different terminology, injecting vague opinions referring to targeted marketing that spans multiple queries, and tuning our searches toward products.

The ethics of this astound me. Do all things need to grow? Are we all just enterprises? What if you didn't need to be a millionaire? How is luxury anything more than a prison?

Back in my senior year of college, we also took an ethics course tailored to our future careers in software, guided by the understanding that there was no end to this roller-coaster. It was going to be the builders that set the standards of not quality but morality. Like the Clean Code, it takes very few poor actions to impact the whole negatively. If you wanna hear a fantastic take on "broken window theory" I'll direct you over to Jeff Atwood for our purposes though the windows are broken, and its time to "take the neighborhood back."

I took my current position because the idea of being closer to the world of Clean Code was inviting, but in selling a service, I have to find the balance of saying yes to Money and no to producing slop. I think the same challenge is that of the pharmaceutical industry, an enterprise ridden with questionable morality. I deeply attest that there are workers, scientists, sales agents, custodial staff, and IT who are fighting for the moral right to the best anyone can. I specifically refuse to believe that a scientist wants to use science to hurt people and that they take the evaluation and communication of risk very carefully, I am probably naive. How do we get to a place where the collective view of the product of their acts is less than ethical?

If you had my 8th-grade history teacher, there could be only one answer. Let's all say it together, Money! Not that it is evil, but it is a prime motivator. It drives change because it's both the Golden Apple we covet and the Golden Apple we die for. Not a formal death mind you, but a spiritual one. We should be cautious of the need to succeed, and yes, maybe the era of worrying about the quality of our code has ended; I am still suspicious, but I prefer that the narrative be moved to Clean Values. We are not building so we can meet some arbitrary velocity that proves to our users, "we are doing things," but what we do matters.

I would argue that every engineer who decided to stay with Apple when they were required to have an open app store in the EU so 2 app stores could be produced was an indicator of the issue. Heck, I remember when Apple stopped using DRM on MP3s because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze to keep building DRM as music prices fell. The decision to have a legally distinct app store proves they think the juice is worth the squeeze to maintain a monopoly on certain users. Humans will do the work, and those humans, in some small way, accept exploitation as acceptable. They are protecting the profits of their parent company over their fellow humans, including other developers, creating valuable things for humans. That was a battle lost where those who control the means of production should have forced liberation for all.

You don't have to be a rebel to be moral; you just have to look at your actions and continue to take the one that produces the least suffering. We follow the rule, "Leave the campground cleaner than you found it." I would honestly rather argue about whether to build this on moral grounds during a code review or ticket grooming session than fussing about polymorphism anyway.