Sure, Cisco benefited a lot during the boom - as did ISPs who laid down internet infrastructure. Those were the shovel makers. Eventually, the people who bought the shovels significantly outclassed the shovel makers. Google and Amazon are both 10x larger than Cisco in 2024. Meta is 10x. Microsoft is 15x. Hell, Uber was bigger than Cisco for most of the last decade.
These shovel maker comments get tossed around a lot in any AI "bubble" talk. Yet, the shovel makers did not even come close to being the most profitable from the dotcom boom.
Totally non-expert thought: Isn't that only true if you're total RAM cpacity is N(2), where N is the amount of RAM for the server. Due to the volatile nature of memory, without snapping, freezing, modifying, and promoting how would one envision updating a RAM-disk OS?
You only need N(2) if you're updating by downloading and switching to an entire second rootfs image. If your OS takes up 500MB and you update a single 5MB component, then you only need 505MB, and that only until the update completes and the old version is dropped and you return to 500MB.
A datacenter should be condensing as little as possible. The cold side (where condensation occurs) is the inside, but you don't want your cooling system dripping on your racks.
It's because no other profession has the combination of (1) forcing people out of a highly trained role so young (with no options to reuse those skills in any other roles - forcing folks to go have to go back to square one and get a new professional education to move anywhere else), along with (2) the peculiarities of a government pension.
Unless you overhaul the way government workers earn retirement, or we decide that it's safe to employ older air traffic controllers, any other choice would be highly exploitative.
No, why? If there's a company that provides actual value, why should splitting off the financialization part kill the part that provides real value? It's maybe the same as closing down the financialization part of the company, but if so, what loss to society?
IMO, if you want to write code for anything mission critical you should need some kind of state certification, especially when you are writing code for stuff that is used by govt., hospitals, finance etc.
Not certification, licensure. That can and will be taken away if you violate the code of ethics. Which in this case means the code of conduct dictated to you by your industry instead of whatever you find ethical.
Like a license to be a doctor, lawyer, or civil engineer.
There’s - perhaps rightfully, but certainly predictably - a lot of software engineers in this thread moaning about how evil management makes poor engineers cut corners. Great, licensure addresses that. You don’t cut corners if doing so and getting caught means you never get to work in your field again. Any threat management can bring to the table is not as bad as that. And management is far less likely to even try if they can’t just replace you with a less scrupulous engineer (and there are many, many unscrupulous engineers) because there aren’t any because they’re all subject to the same code of ethics. Licensure gives engineers leverage.
I think that could cause a huge shift away from contributing to or being the maintainer of open source software. It would be too risky if those standards were applied and they couldn't use the standard "as is, no warranties" disclaimers.
Actually, no it wouldn't, as the licensire would likely be tied with providing the service on a paid basis to others. You could write or maintain any codebase you want. Once you start consuming it for an employer though, the licensure kicks in.
Paid/subsidized maintainers may be a different story though. But there absolutely should be some level of teeth and stake wieldable by a professional SWE to resist pushes to "just do the unethical/dangerous thing" by management.
I might have misunderstood. I took it to mean that engineers would be responsible for all code they write - the same as another engineer may be liable for any bridge they build - which would mean the common "as is", "no warranty", "not fit for any purpose" cute clauses common to OSS would no longer apply as this is clearly skirting around the fact that you made a tool to do a specific thing, and harming your computer isn't the intended outcome.
You can already enforce responsibility via contract but sure, some kind of licensing board that can revoke a license so you can no longer practice as a SWE would help with pushback against client/employer pressure. In a global market though it may be difficult to present this as a positive compared to overseas resources once they get fed up with it. It would probably need either regulation, or the private equivalent - insurance companies finding a real, quantifiable risk to apply to premiums.
Trouble is, the bridge built by any licensed engineer stands in its location, and can't be moved or duplicated. Software however is routinely duplicated, and copied to places that might not be suitable for ite original purpose.
I’d be ok with this so long as 1) there are rules about what constitutes properly built software and 2) there are protections for engineers who adhere to these rules
I believe it’s worse than that. I don’t think they can use donated funds for Firefox development since donations are tax-deductible and Firefox is a for-profit company.
