Mcherm calls the entire premise absurd
11 Sep 22 9:57 PM · 1d ago · 5 comments · 1 source · development 11 of 11
Mcherm dismissed the concern as logically incoherent: the thesis requires imagining AI so powerful that programmers abandon all manual work, yet simultaneously so dumb that it forgets how to build text editors—which are "extremely simple" software.
“This is a ridiculous thing to be concerned about. First, you have to imagine that AI will become so incredibly effective and powerful that no one but a few hobbyists and historical reenactors will do ANY programming by hand. Second, you have to simultaneously imagine that AI is so incredibly dumb that it forgets everything that is already known about how to build text editors.”
mchermawal Essayist / Lobsters userdzwdz Lobsters commenterandyc Lobsters commenterrobalex Lobsters commentermcherm Lobsters commenter
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What people said 23 voices · verbatim
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To be overly-fair, I keep thinking the 1990s *was* 20 years ago
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It seems extremely far-fetched to me. People who dislike generate AI and vibe coding are very common.
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This is a ridiculous thing to be concerned about. First, you have to imagine that AI will become so incredibly effective and powerful that no one but a few hobbyists and historical reenactors will do ANY programming by hand, even just a few files. Second, you have to simultaneously imagine that AI is so incredibly dumb that it forgets everything…
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Just Monday I was at a conference. There was a presentation about a Linux desktop project deployed to civil servants. The devs had included a collaborative plain text editor almost by accident, mostly for their own use, in the installation. It turned out to be one of their most popular applications.
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> Is the thesis here that *literally all programmers* will switch to only interfacing with files indirectly, using LLMs? That doesn’t seem _that_ far-fetched to me. I don’t like it, at all, but it doesn’t seem crazy. > That sysadmins will never need to manually edit a config file on a machine with broken networking? Windows, iOS and Android…
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> But interest in plain-text editing has been fading for a while now. The footnote here links to the [google trend graph for "text editor"](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=text%20editor). I am not sure that's good proxy for "interest in plain-text editing".
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Most EXIF metadata is preserved but Android does strip out location, which has obvious privacy benefits but also [causes problems](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/android-now-stops-you-sharing-your-location-in-photos/) for legitimate needs.
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It was at a Dutch conference in Dutch about using technical standards in government. I think some video recording was done but I haven't found anything online yet. The presentation was about desktop tool suites; I may have confused web apps with Linux desktops but they were both discussed. I think the application suite in question is LaSuite…
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That sounds like an interesting presentation, would you mind sharing the name of the presentation+conference?
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LLM's are just plain text editors with advanced autocomplete. I've never seen one that doesn't operate at its best almost entirely within the bounds of interacting with plain text. Some of them even have an ability to save their output into (gasp) a file. Also, most phones have factory notes apps installed that very rarely venture outside the…
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I see a good number of crazy takes like these that are based on assumptions that show that the author hasn't had exposure to real world things that, if they had, would simply cause them to not have these takes. I don't think it's worth talking about them, really.
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hell, an engineer friend of mine used to send me images by first pasting them on a word document and then sending it to me
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I see it quite often - the notes app on your phone is either plain text, or almost exclusively used for plain text.
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I'd rather use the term "portal" (or "console") for that, as we do for other repl-like interfaces to complex UIs.
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what's old is new again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS#:~:text=a%20canceled%5B2%5D%20data%20storage%20and%20management%20system%20project%20based%20on%20relational%20databases Also, I'm relatively positive they tried that stunt before `node_modules` became a thing (which from a certain perspective could actually benefit from it if one got…
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> I think the platforms want everything API based to keep you locked into walled gardens. That's a stretch. It was likely aimed at just simplifying the operating system. Android is just very much based around portals and sandboxing. Anyway with Firefox I can download files just fine. There's even file managers that can spin up an HTTP server on…
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In the context of LLMs, they treat asm-decoded dumps of compiled binaries as plaintext just fine. I didn't even have to fire up Ghidra; it just patched the bytes I was interested in.
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> Society can remain irrational longer than you can remain a relevant nonconformist. thanks for the Keynes adaptation!
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I'm not sure plain text files will go away any time soon. Now, will direct use - both of text files and text editors - decline? Yes, i think so. Will usage by majority of the population also decline? Yes, i think that could be true too. However, i think what will remain is a long tail of both folks who directly interact with text editors and text…
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I imagine that's because copying a file using GUI file managers is too many steps, and requires more working memory than just resaving it. I tend to use `cp` for the same reason, and if I don't have access to a terminal (like on a phone), I sometimes just resave a file, too. Also, Windows and macOS have been going out of their way to hide people's…
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Llms have taken hold in many Web dev shops, but hardly have any in-roads on other domains like the embedded, game dev, low level or highly regulated industries . And that’s just industry. I am both professional and hobbyist. I can’t stand the thought of paying a subscription fee to write code in my free time; so I don't. I come home, fire up…
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Actually, can't we consider sqlite as a DB that exists as a file...which exists as a DB..um, which exists as a file....and crap, I've reached file vs DB inception! lol :-)
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That's a bit silly. 20 years ago was the 1980s.
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