The theses I would like to discuss goes as follows (and I'm paraphrasing): during the last 15 years, low interest rates made billions of dollars easily available to startups. Unfortunately, this huge influx of venture capital has led to no perceivable innovation.

Put cynically, the innovation startups have brought us across the last 15 years can be summarized as (paraphrasing again):

• An illegal hotel chain destroying our cities
• An illegal taxi company exploiting the poor
• Fake money for criminals
• A plagiarism machine/fancy auto-complete

Everything else is either derivative or has failed.

I personally think spaceX has made phenomenal progress and would have probably failed somewhere along the way without cheap loans. There's also some biotech startups (like the mRNA vaccines that won the race to market during covid) doing great things, but often that's just the fruits of 20 years of research coming to fruition.

Every other recent innovation I can think of came from a big player that would have invested in the tech regardless, and almost all of it is "just" incremental improvements on several decades old ideas (I know, that's what progress looks like most of the time).

What do you think? Do you have any counterexamples? Can you think of any big tech disruptions after quantitative easing made money almost free in 2008?

And if you, like me, feel like we're stuck on a plateau - why do you think that is?

It's pretty clear that those times are over, but I'm sure many of us remember the heydays of VC funded tech extravagance. These are the ones that come to my mind, hoping to hear others experience.

• At one point, uberpool was cheaper than the cost of public transport in the city.
• No sales tax on Amazon!
• So many promotions and code to get you to join in on their platform. This was also before they try to get you to subscribe to their monthly plans.

So, what's the hottest new thing in IT today, what's that coolest new tech which might prove to be a goldmine some years down the line? The way PCs, websites, databases, programming languages, etc. used to be in the 90s or mobile computing used to be in 00s? Early 00s gave us many a goodies in terms of open source innovations, be it Web Technologies, Linux advancement and propagation through the masses or FOSS software like Wordpress and Drupal, or even the general attitude and awareness about FOSS. Bitcoin also deserves a notable mention here, whether you love it or hate it.

But today, I think IT no longer has that spark it once had. People keep mulling around AI, ML and Data Science but these are still decades old concepts, and whatever number crunching or coding the engineers are doing somehow doesn't seem to reach the masses? People get so enthusiastic about ChatGPT, but at the end of the day it's just another software like a zillion others. I deem it at par with something like Wordpress, probably even lesser. I'm yet to see any major adoption or industry usage for it.

Is it the case that IT has reached some kind of saturation point? Everything that could have been innovated, at least the low hanging fruits, has already been innovated? What do you think about this?

I know it's a technical question but I want to know specifically from freelancer perspective. A freelancer's decision making differs from that of regular corporate worker in this regard due to many reasons:

1. Freedom to choose: Unlike corporate, a freelancer isn't imposed any process or specific software guidelines to follow. They're free to use Linux and open source if they want to.
2. No team compatibility: A freelancer can work on specific project with a geographically distant team but they don't have to submit to any long-term compatibility constraints.
3. Budget constraints: A freelancer can't typically afford costly licenses. With corporate, they can scale well and bring down the licensing costs which isn't true for freelancers. Hence, open source software is typically more suited to their workflow (even when using a Windows OS).

Given all these factors, do you think a Windows or Linux laptop is more suited for a typical Freelancer? What do you happen to use?

This might be a weird framing but it's been bugging me for a few days. Many fields have a concept of classical training -- this is most common in music but applies in the humanities and many other areas. For example I do a lot of CAD work for my job, but I received what I would consider a "classical education" in design...I learned to draft by hand and physically model before I was ever allowed to work digitally. I got a lot of value out of this approach and it still informs the way I work today.

A lot of people view computers and technology as modern and almost anti-classical, but as the tech industry matures and the internet moves from something shiny and new to something foundational to our society, what will the new classicism look like?

Thanks for reading my question.

In this post, I'm going to say something which might seem controversial, politically incorrect or even downright harsh to some of you. Feel free to let me know and express your strong disagreement if that's the case. Everyone's world view is different and I'm ever ready to adjust my own in light of new found facts and evidences.

What I'm observing these days is that many big tech companies and large corporations are pushing lot's of content on Linkedin, Twitter, etc. which conveys the idea that these companies are standing up for the rights of supposedly oppressed section of the masses (females, minorities, etc.). 8 out of 10 postings from them are typically about these, a group picture of women employees, retweets or likes of those who have posted on new joining and promotions, etc.

With all due respect, the problem here isn't with the virtues of women empowerment, etc., needless to say these are good things to be celebrated in a society. But the problem is with their approach. When 8 out of 10 posts are only on these topics, the impression or narrative being pushed becomes that the world at large is very cruel and gruesome whereas these large capitalists are the ones who are implementing just rules and ethics on that world. Do you think this narrative or story they're selling is based on any factual reality?

I've seen and experienced a fair part of that "world at large" myself and while there are indeed many problems with it and it's far from perfect, it's a bit rich of these capitalists to make that kind of narrative signaling when, in fact, they're the ones who are partly responsible for keeping it ever poor and oppressed. These companies have the highest privileges of the world and they profit out of a crony system that thrives and benefits from the gates which keep the competition away.

Now, I'm not one of those "ancap" dudes who blatantly cancels capitalism entirely. Oh no, we all do need capitalism, not only because it's a system that pays your salaries and bills but also because the alternative is much worse and we have seen what it did in Russia and Korea and China. I just wish capitalism was more inclusive and of the Adam Smithian Laissez Faire and free competition kind and less of the big tech and surveillance capitalism kind.

This constant narrative pushing by the corporates, in effect, keeps people distracted from this truly bad aspect of capitalism. The masses are gullible, they can't see it, but the people sitting at top positions in these companies should know better. What kind of society are they trying to create with this? These companies have nothing to fear. Even if the masses actually realized and start thinking about this problem, they're hardly in a position to do anything about it. The way our rigid systems are designed and work, I don't see it changing for at least decades, if not centuries. But I wish these brands stop pushing on the narrative front in the meantime. In fact, the only thing that will change is make them more trustworthy in the eyes of wise people in the society, that's what I think.

I'm a solo freelance programmer who codes on small to medium sized projects, and I realize that I can upskill myself a lot by keeping up with the industry trends, by listening to what the best in this field have to say. The problem is that there is just so much information overload everywhere, just so many youtube videos and articles that it seems overwhelming to differentiate the wheat from the chaff!

Since reading is my preferred medium of instruction, I want to know what are the blogs, journals, etc. on this topic with some street cred? And preferably individual experts and blogs, not companies. Company or corporate sites and blogs seem to be more hype than substance these days.

Which ones do you refer for keeping up to date?

Hey all, I'm transitioning from a plain old software engineer at my company to tech lead (first in responsibility, then eventually in title)!

I'm very excited about the opportunity, but the role is new, both for my company and personally. Would anyone have recommended reading I could peruse? I'd love to get a solid footing for what I should be doing as a tech lead, and how I can do it well!