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What's Some Tech That Was Better Than It Is Now? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by wuphysics87@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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When you connect a new device to a 'smart' tv, you must pay homage to the manufacturer with a ritualistic dance. Plugging and unplugging the device. Turning them on and off in the correct sequence like entering a konami code.

Every time you want to switch devices, the tv must scan for them. And god forbid you lose power, or unplug something. You are granted the delight experience of doing it all over again.

I have fond memories of the days of just plugging something in, and pressing the input button. Instant gratification. It was a simpler time.

What is some other tech that used to be better?

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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I for-real misread this, as asking what is an example of tech that actually has gotten better, because the general rule is that things become more shit over time, as capitalism gets its hands on them

I was gonna say programming languages. Having come up in the time of C++ and Java, having Python and Go and Rust around is fuckin fantastic. Even Typescript is… well… it’s not JavaScript! See, things are getting better.

Literally everything else is getting worse over time.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah developer tools have gotten easier and better. Never a better time to get into software. Even if its just to unlock your own devices. And repair things.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Dude, it's fuckin magic now

I was used to emacs + gdb + valgrind. That's actually pretty significantly powerful if you know how to use it, but I sort of bit the bullet really not that long ago and forced myself to learn VSCode, assuming that it would be a big over-feature-packed bunch of bullshit, and it's gold. It can debug any language. I can edit and run and debug code that's on the other side of an ssh connection in a git repo and all the different plugins and stuff just work (well, you know, for the most part, enough to be pretty massively useful).

Plus I can have GPT spit out boilerplate for me and it does it all semi-instantly, and it can teach me libraries and idiomatic patterns in environments I'm unfamiliar with way faster than I could do it myself from the documentation.

Fuckin magic man

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Yep and with docker/other containers it's easier to set up on new machines. Terraform and other like services also make provisioning potentially easier (depends on your setup).