Yet the economic pundits continue to promote the myth that endless growth is possible and write headlines that complain about growth being a bit low.
We need steady-state sustainability

Getting a basic understanding of how code works is good
Talent is real. It takes a special kind of mind to be good at software development and not all can do it. Add to that the rise of AI, and the path to riches in software development is not clear or easy, and few will make it

It's not a scam
It's a bunch of evolving tech that is getting increasingly useful
Unfortunately, because money is involved, the hypemongers vastly overstate the actual progress

I wrote bankruptcy filing software for my own use in the late 80s on hypercard. Some things it generated itself, and some it sent a mail merge file to word 5.1 (the last version that could simply use a text file as input rather than those bizarre inserts). In fairly short order, it ended up transferred to supercars, which could have multiple stacks open (but I never transitioned back when hypercard 2.0 came out. I suppose I could have scripted that, but . . .).

I thought about making a commercial project of it, but then in '92 (?) new forms were coming out, and the court clerk told me that anything submitted would have to be pixel perfect when they got their new scanners in the coming months. Add that to Macs only having 1% market penetration in law offices at the time, and I ended up simply buy-in another program (to my secretaries' dismay!)

The next year, supercard shipped a PC version. Oh, well.

And more than 30 years later, no such scanners (nor will they ever be; we electronically submit pdfs these days).

Had I known *either* of those*, I could have been the biggest player in the field.

After being away for more than a decade and a half, I trie what was then the biggest player--and it *still* didn't do stuff that I easily did with hypercard in the 80s!

I ended up implementing it, largely from scratch, using LiveCode.

Initially metacard on the NeXT, then runner on several platforms, and now LiveCode, it's basically HyperCard on steroids able to use databases and so much more. Now they're pushing AI, and I'm retired, so not my problem any more.

Advertisers, governments, the military and others have been lying to us for years.
Sometimes the lies can be kinda justified, like in wartime to keep secrets from the enemy.
Other times lying is used to cover up incompetence, fraud or inconvenient truths that may lead to loss of profit or political power.
Reasonable people develop a strong sense of skepticism. Others decide to stop believing everything except for the most insane fringe delusions.

Lying causes unintended consequences that are almost always bad

The answer is yes, it's OK to eliminate mosquitos.
Some people waste far too much time thinking about silly questions.

>The QWERTY and PC-based layout (especially for some non-EN
>layouts) are simply not suited for the prolonged use of the SHIFT-
>pinky and stretching the hand to the control characters on the
>numeric row,

Nor is EMACS, at least on a CKIE (control key in exile) keyboard.

I actually had to get medical treatment in grad school after days of heavy editing, requiring me to twist my wrist and fully extend my pinky to reach the key. He said that they could send me to physical therapy, but I could do just as well myself with rubber bands on my last two fingers, stretching against them for some amount of time a couple of times a day.

Now, I surely wouldn't be one to tamper with university equipment, but a couple of days later, there was a little piece of plastic on my desk next to the keyboard. It apparently somehow escaped from the toggle mechanism on the capslock key, allowing me to remap control to it!
 

>I was the only male in my high school typing class.

gosh, that alone would have been enough reason to take it! :_)

mine was all male, for the simple reason that it was an all boys school.

It was also a mandatory class for freshmen.

>Nothing of this comes natural.

some does, actually, under the right circumstances.

wordstar (and I mean the original eight bit stuff, not the later extensions) was laid out rather logically and consistently with its diamonds and prefixes.

To the point that a couple of times, I instinctively used combinations that I hadn't consciously realized existed--and then sat back amazed as I realized what I'd done!

hawk, who used to type over 100wpm on a manual

...and have had a very successful career as a software engineer.
I can't touch type. I tried to learn but just couldn't do it.
Being able to think deeply about complex designs is important, typing is not.

the 6 in 7 don't die simultaneously.

Some keep growing before dying, etc.

The unicorns don't start as such, but have already survived most of their contemporaries. Having survived that long, it appears that only another 20% die.

"call me Zilog" . . .

perhaps they could call this processor the "Z80,000" :)

is it even *possible* for an item that much smaller to generate audio waves in the needed frequency?

It would seem to me that that function is a prerequisite to using the name.

This, rather, seems to be a curiosity in the general shape of a violin.

It used to mean real tech, like chips, devices and serious software
Now it is applied to all sorts of silly social media, shopping, games and other mass market consumer stuff
We need a new word to describe hardcore tech

I guess I'm confused, how is a technology with a decades-long service life and is basically a capital investment subject to the same sort of label of 'bubble' compared to the explosive growth of something using a commodity model with obsolescence measured in years?

In 2020 I had to occasion to have some OS1 singlemode fiber installed back in 1994 terminated into splice cases and put into use. That fiber sat for basically a quarter century and was then usable when I needed it.

Where I work now I no longer have primary responsibility to deal with cabling infrastructure, but we still light up metro-crossing fiber between locations that could well have sat dormant for decades. Costs to install pathways right now are RIDICULOUS, like upwards of $1000/linear foot for underground conduit work. Stuff installed for a tenth or less that price 20 years ago is paying for itself now even accounting for inflation if I'm not having to spend $50k to go fifty feet between buildings. And unlike point-to-point wireless shots there's no recurring licensing fees to the FCC, there's no service-subscription costs to the wireless equipment manufacturer, and there's basically no lifecycle costs to regularly replace the connection.

If there was any sort of fiber bubble, it was that those looking to profit off of it weren't thinking like a utility, where the ROI takes awhile to see, but the investment in the installation lasts for decades, not months or years. It's only a bubble if you're not a long-term thinker.