>It is hard for me to imagine another engineering discipline ... engineering background required to do the work.
Well, that would be because you don't really need to be a real engineer for what people call "software engineering". 50 years ago - maybe, 30 - maybe, but way less.
But for the last 15 years at least - you don't really need a degree to build meaningfull software.
Maybe you need it to build a new compiler or to work on a "close to metal" project etc.
But thats is. Most of people in the industry are called engineers, but let's be real - we are not the same kind of engineers as people who build brindges or airplanes.
I don't think Rust vs. Zig has anything to do with why people are talking about this. It is a large piece of "real software" that underwent a full language transition in ~1 week using LLMs. That is a big deal regardless of the language and will be a case study regardless of how it turns out.
It’s a watershed moment. Basically one of the most controlled applications of an LLM into a robust codebase without regard for the implications of doing so.
Anthropic needed something like this and it must proceed flawlessly. My guess is that nothing will explicitly break. But that’s the difficulty of LLM generated code: nothing breaks. You sit with a codebase that swallows all errors and appears to be working. Silently failing makes debugging performance and behavior much harder.
>I don't think Rust vs. Zig has anything to do with why people are talking about this.
Maybe, but I've seen quite a few comments from people who felt sort of betrayed(?) by the decision. I feel like Bun was important for people as a project that advertises Zig and keeps it relevant even in it's current "pre 1.0" state.
> And those living "inbetween" typically have no money or time for things like mesh, they are struggling with simplier things.
It's just a personal opinion, but I really think this is not the case in reality.
Those guys in the middle of nowhere are the biggest geeks in LoRa networks. They have more practical scenarios, more to gain and better conditions for great distances.
A friend of mine lives far away from me, barely populated area, a big city in between of us. He struggled to get any network traffic, but now he uses narrow antennas to point to particular repeaters and suddenly the whole metropolis is open to him. We talk with acceptable delivery rates (I'm guessing 70%, which is actually very decent in dense area like mine). He is currently trying to expand his local network. His neighbors are less technical, but they have frequent power failures and need alternative way to reach each other.
On the other hand there is A LOT of client nodes and repeaters in my city. Many struggle to reach even a single repeater - hard to access roofs, high buildings, crowded network with plenty of conflicts. This kills motivation for many.
>Those guys in the middle of nowhere are the biggest geeks in LoRa networks
Population dynamics in Russia are vastly different than in the West.
Geeks don't exist or survive in the countryside.
Not only it's abject poverty, it's also the culture that penalizes anyone who sticks out.
Russian countryside is kept poor and uneducated with no opportunities other than signing a military contract. That's how Russia was able to fight its 3-day invasion of Ukraine for 4 years without doing a full scale mobilization.
Anyone who even knows what a "mesh network" is would be in a city.
That's one aspect in which Ukraine and Russia are different.
You shot off a one-sentence rejoinder about capitalists building a future. What does it mean? Not worth your time to explain, but worth your time to nuh-huh about your autor intent after the fact.
Well, that would be because you don't really need to be a real engineer for what people call "software engineering". 50 years ago - maybe, 30 - maybe, but way less.
But for the last 15 years at least - you don't really need a degree to build meaningfull software.
Maybe you need it to build a new compiler or to work on a "close to metal" project etc.
But thats is. Most of people in the industry are called engineers, but let's be real - we are not the same kind of engineers as people who build brindges or airplanes.
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