> parade of garbage software that is slow as a dog, and uses gigabytes of memory to perform simple tasks.

and of course, this isn't even the worst. A lot worse can happen, such as data loss and corruption. Things that can directly affect people's lives in real life.

As a developer, these things are constantly on my mind, and I believe this is the case for people who do care about the quality.

As has been said elsewhere many times, AI producing code is not the same as say, a compiler producing machine code. It is not such a well-defined strong abstraction, hence why code quality still is highly relevant.

It is also easily forgotten that code is as much a social construct (e.g. things that have to be done in certain ways due to real life restrictions, that you wouldn't have to do in an ideal world).

Sometimes I feel very powerless though. It feels as if some of us are talking past each other, even if we seemingly are using the same words like "quality". Or in a way, that is what makes this more futile-- that we are using the same words and hence seemingly talking about the same thing, when we are referring to completely different things.

It is difficult to have a conversation about a problem when some of us don't even see it as a problem to begin with-- until it reaches a point when it starts affecting their lives as well, whether it be directly or indirectly. But that takes time.

Time will tell.

Perhaps on a related note, I've noticed that a lot of the positive talks about AI are about quantity. On the other hand, there is disproportionately very little deep discussion about quality. And I mean not just short term, local quality, but more long term and holistic quality (e.g. managing complexity under evolving requirements in a complex system with multiple connected parts) at real production scale, where there is much less tolerance for failure.

In all the places I've worked in throughout my career, I've felt that there have always been a tension between those who cared more about things like the mental model and holistic quality, and those who seemed to care less or were even oblivious about it. I think one contribution of the current AI hype is that it gave a more concrete shape to this split...

Perhaps so-called AI is slightly different from hypes like NoSql and microservices in that these reduced to usages that practically apply to only a fraction of the engineering population (albeit, it's still good for anyone to know about them even if we never use them), whereas AI will probably still affect us all even after the dust settles. Just in much less spectacular ways than is being trumpeted currently by some groups. Reminded me of No Silver Bullet: "There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. "

I think it's similar with computers and programs. The essence of a computer is information, so the main skill a common person needs is knowing how to work with information e.g. in the present day, navigate the web safely, how to research appropriately + identify reliable sources, organize and analyze data, manage privacy, etc They shouldn't have to be programmers themselves, and indeed, that's the whole point of software, so that a common person can focus on their main task of working with information, and not have to be concerned about technical details under the hood.

note: things like excel macros where a software has a programming-like feature is a different matter, since it's a feature exposed explicitly by the software for users to exploit if need be. In any case, it's a software choice and hence specific only to that software.

I think we tend to underestimate the importance of this kind of uniformity (aka homogeneity, consistency, sameness, equivalence etc) that allows us to freely shift back and forth and work across different environments (aka contexts, mindsets, etc) without any essential changes and translations. i.e. in a sense, minimizing the boundary such that the difference effectively disappears and it feels as if it's all just one same. In this case the environments being shell <-> script. But I think I see similar patterns in many other places, including outside of tech.

So, similar to as you also mentioned, as long as there is no language that beats the current shell as both a shell language and a scripting language, and one that sufficiently matures for real practical uses as both, I have a hard time imagining the most perfect scripting language alone still being able to make shell scripts go away. At least, I have a hard time imagining myself abandoning shell scripts otherwise.

p.s. I've been running in circles like this myself for decades..

Similar to Paul Grahma's design paradox: " I call it the design paradox. You might think that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer?" (http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html)

As long as people (including the business owners, customers, the rest of society, the rest of the world, etc) don't recognize the cost or don't care sufficiently even if they do recognize it, the best tool still won't have any effect nevermind solve. Usually, that's the critical problem, not the tools. And of course, tools won't fix people either. Software is useful only if used by the right people in the right way, which is usually much later.

For example: > Deprecate yourself. ... Don't own the code.

On one hand, this is true: ultimately, you want the code to be independent of you. But on the other hand, I've witnessed bad code quality proliferate in a repo many times because no one is taking ownership of the code they write: they just write enough to finish the task and move on. And it rarely gets caught in code reviews either because all the other members are operating in the same mindset too. His principle misses this side of the coin.

Over the years, I came to realize that at least for me, there is one root force behind almost everything for me, including how I code, how I interact with members, etc. It is: responsibility. I am simply trying my best to write responsible code, create a responsible product, be responsible to my team members and colleagues, etc. The rest of the stuff (like what you might call 'principles') are just specific manifestations of this feeling. e.g. code ownership: I need to own my code to the extent that I need to be responsible for my work, but on the other hand, it is also my responsibility to ensure the code does not depend on me forever. Albeit this probably may be too abstract to call a principle. In that case, I'd rather not have any.

But in general, I feel like we are too self-conscious about staying in touch. And often because we have experiences where something happens in our lives and we find ourselves regretting "I wish I had stayed in touch with ----".

But when that happens, maybe we can ask ourselves: even if I had stayed in touch, would it really have turned out as I am fantasizing now in my regret? If we think about it carefully, I think the answer is probably no. A meaningful relationship is not that simple nor easy.

As others have mentioned, a relationship is two-ways so it takes both sides. And it only takes one to remember occasionally to stay in touch, so if we both were interested in each other, most likely we would have remained in touch already. And even if we had not, it's never too late. With such relations, I find that I can just reach out now and resume the same relationship no matter how much time passes in between. Even in the worst case where I don't have the contact anymore, if I were truly determined, I will do everything I can to find a way to reach that person.

On the other hand, a shallow relation is bound to not get too far: it will fail (or break, or be lost, etc) at some point in one way or another anyway. So it most likely wouldn't have turned out as my regret is fantasizing anyway.

And the article itself is another "should".

I sometimes hear people say it's a matter of how you define words like "believe" but to me, that only to complicates the matter.

I think almost all if not all of our serious problems can be traced to this kind of discrepancy. Maybe that's my outrageous belief, heh :S