World functioned before modern medicine, clean water, metal working, cars and farming What's your point? - ThreadSky

jackbeingbad.bsky.social • 176 days ago

World functioned before modern medicine, clean water, metal working, cars and farming

What's your point?

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TC had earlier posts about how little need existed to upgrade a lot of Pre-XP legacy software in hospitality. This appears to respond to a backlash centered around the idea hospitality would fall apart without computers, a suggestion he never made but nonetheless is also stupid.

awebde.ch•175 days ago

having been a software engineer for ten years taught me that the luddites had a point, actually

gerhard.innerfire.net•175 days ago

But then customers expected online booking or at the very least, online availability look ups so that gets bolted on somehow and the whole system gets more complicated than it would be if they were running something designed from the ground up to handle the internet.

techconnectify.bsky.social•175 days ago

No! That's what nobody in tech seems to understand.

Hilton has a central reservation system. It knows how many rooms every property has, how many are available, etc. A lot of stuff is interfacing with that system, yes. But the actual hotel? It's just polling that database repeatedly.

techconnectify.bsky.social•175 days ago

If you boil the actual tasks that are needed to run a hotel down to the surface level, then you need to know

Room inventory
Room status
Reservations
Method of payment
Accounting

That's it. That's literally it. The people operating the hotel only need a system which lets them operate the hotel.

rodangol.bsky.social•175 days ago

All that solved with 2 people and 3 boxes:

Room maintainer
Desk clerk

A box of keys
A box of money
A box of room maintenance supplies

techconnectify.bsky.social•175 days ago

For some reason people in tech seem to imagine this as being a lot more complicated than it actually is.

It is the very basics of running a business. That is what hotel operators need.

Trying to design software which *does* handle it all seems to me to be the reason we have so many problems.

lundyfox.bsky.social•175 days ago

IT Integration is popular but unreliable

If a booking system automatically orders clean bed sheets, it needs to be more complicated

If it prints a report that tallys 100 sheets, and you can phone the supplier, that’s more robust

Perhaps employers won’t employ reliable people on a good wage?

highlearn.bsky.social•175 days ago

People (execs? marketers?) want attribution and/or credit for those events, which they imagine means the ad system needs to be tied to the management system deeply, and not off a single value. It really doesn't.

sammich-blt.bsky.social•175 days ago

I think there might be a bit of a disconnect as well with people seeing "running on the same system" and then thinking "running on the same VERSION"

klaatu82.bsky.social•175 days ago

I suppose my point is, you don't know if something can be improved until you try...

lilgief.bsky.social•175 days ago

The problem is that we (software devs) spend too much time with sales/executive people.

We know how to build something that would solve the client's problems, but we also know that that won't lead to repeated sales, extra fees and that sweet market saturation and monopoly control to our product.

grunklederek.bsky.social•175 days ago

But if it works reliably out of the box how can you sell them a support package? Can this be ported to a SaaS model? Where is the continuing revenue? Can we integrate this with Salesforce?

gerhard.innerfire.net•175 days ago

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.

Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

-- Brian W. Kernighan

gerhard.innerfire.net•175 days ago

There is a classic problem I have seen with many software designers where they try to imagine every problem rather than just the problems they are presented with.

The key is to not have those programmers in charge.

3dbeergoggles.bsky.social•175 days ago

We manage to have all of those things without a Juicer that connects to the Internet, is a bit of the point here as I read it.

An air fryer works fine with an analog thermostat and doesn't need a microcontroller, etc.

stevewithaq.bsky.social•176 days ago

If I had to guess, it's that technology is not strictly necessary, nor strictly good.

I noticed you didn't mention bombs, tanks, HFT, biological weapons, addictive opiates, and similar products of the same technologies that brought us those products you mentioned.

lostsonofpluto.bsky.social•176 days ago

The point is that not every problem requires modern computing to solve

jackbeingbad.bsky.social•176 days ago

Computers are just a tool.

Trying to make opposing a tool a point is weird.

rimunroe.bsky.social•176 days ago

That would indeed be a weird point to make. Fortunately, they don’t appear to have been making that point at all 🙂

Saying many things can work fine without computers or that computers are often used inappropriately isn’t the same thing as a blanket opposition to computers

chiefeosh.sodom.gay•176 days ago

Misusing tools is weirder.

jackbeingbad.bsky.social•176 days ago

And is it's own punishment

3dbeergoggles.bsky.social•175 days ago

It's not opposing the tool, it's opposing the mistake of thinking that every problem is a nail for the proverbial hammer.

Like "my air fryer doesn't need a 4mhz MCU to measure air temperature"

"My juicer isn't improved by an internet connection"

Sometimes we need to check the rest of the toolbox

lostsonofpluto.bsky.social•175 days ago

Thank you! This exactly the point I was trying to make

lostsonofpluto.bsky.social•176 days ago

Oh I agree, computers are a tool. But you don't use a hammer to drive a screw. Computers can often be amazing tools for the jobs they're needed. But there's also plenty of use cases where yeah a computer could work, but isn't strictly necessary for the desired result

klaatu82.bsky.social•176 days ago

No… but you use a screwdriver. You don’t use an OCT on a patient with keratoconus, you use a pentacam. You don’t use a pentacam on a patient with macular degeneration… but they are both computer driven. Sure, we have dilation… we have placido’s discs… but if I had ARMD… I would want an OCT.

jackbeingbad.bsky.social•176 days ago

That's what a point about tools sounds like.

klaatu82.bsky.social•176 days ago

As a tech, I know how to use a Placido's disc… It’s a cool little non-computer tool. I also know how to use a pentacam. It is also an invaluable tool that does the same thing… and more!
Optokinetic drums, Goldmann tonometry, Goldmann visual fields, all non-computery… all useful… but ya.

retrobytes.bsky.social•176 days ago

However if not strictly nessicary, often subsationally more efficient with a computer, or makes the follow up tasks much more efficient. You can run a hotels check in/out process on paper, however its then far more labour intensive todo to the accounts afterwards, or do any analysis of of that data.

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