This is what John Osterhout calls a _tactical tornado_. It's a programmer who only develops tactically. I find his book, "A Philosophy of Software Design" provides a good vocabulary to think about the technical aspects of this. See Chapter 3: Working Code isn't Enough. It may be enough vocabulary to begin working on the problem without attacking the person.
As for the psychology of such people, I haven't found a single resource. Clearly the system they operate in provides a feedback loop that reinforces their behavior. I'm sure personality, as defined by the Big Five model, plays a part (e.g. orderliness).
Oh man, I remember the difficulties explaining to management that "but it's working code" is just the absolute minimum requirement(!) for any piece of code and not a real measure of quality - any expectation lower than that, that also satisfies the term "software", just doesn't exist. There is some truly incomprehensible stuff out there to trick the type system into accepting your way of coding, to safe another 2 LoCs, or some assumption where team members didn't want to communicate with each other etc. Specs are hard enough.
As for the psychology: I always assumed that some people just don't perceive the contrast between creation and maintenance as very expressive or strong, the article The Maintenance Race[0] from Works in Progress comes to mind here. That article distinguishes between 3 types: Robin Knox-Johnston, Donald Crowhurst and Bernard Moitessier. Maintenance isn't fun for me, it's just tedious work that needs to be done. The easier and the faster it can be done, the better. There's accidental complexity anyway, and the world sure can be messy, but I'll do my best to keep my produced artifacts in line. My perception to orderliness is probably pretty sensitive, maybe my tendency towards depression plays a role here ("Doing maintenance cures depression" is a quote in the mentioned article above) and I can acknowledge that not all people are like that. But for me it feels somewhat similar as if I would compare real vintage things to things that just have been designed with that certain vintage look. Real vintage has to be accepted, it's history after all, but history just can't be designed and you're better off to work into the time ahead. I'll honor accidental complexity, it feels like history, but incomprensible problem-solving skills aren't somewhat part of it, in my book at least.
I really like that book. A bunch of people I've mentioned it to said there was nothing in there that was new to them and they thought it was a waste of time.
I fear they missed the vocabulary part, which was what I found most valuable.
What regulatory scrutiny do you mean? They don't need to provide severance, as far as California law seems concerned. I'm not a Californian, but an Internet search shows they're an at-will state. So it seems like everything is on the (legal) level.
California has the WARN act which I believe requires notice of 50 days, which people usually use to give severance. In the USA when someone is told they will be fired, usually we do not keep them on staff so severance is the usual middle ground.
It's 60 days, not 50. But 60 days of severance would be significantly less than what they are offering. They're definitely not doing it strictly to avoid regulatory scrutiny, more like to avoid bad press and a bad reputation in the tech market. When things eventually swing back up, companies still want to be able to hire the best talent, they don't want to be grouped with companies like Twitter.
This is a terrible example because it's simply not true:
> Davies gives the example of the case of Dominion Systems vs Fox News, in which Fox News repeatedly spread false stories about the election. No one at Fox seems to have explicitly made a decision to lie about voting machines; rather, there was an implicit understanding that they had to do whatever it took to keep their audience numbers up.
Rupert Murdoch conceded under oath that "Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election."[1] He knew the claims were false and decided not to direct the network to speak about it otherwise.
Communications from within Fox, by hosts, show they knew what they were saying was false.[2]
These two examples clearly fit the definition of lying [3].
The "External Links" section of Wikipedia gives references to the actual court documents that go into detail of who said what and knew what when [4]. There are many more instances which demonstrate that, indeed, people made explicit decisions to lie.
Voting machines are hacked every year at DEFCONs voting village. They're wildly insecure and no one should trust them. Frankly, any claims of manipulation of voting machines are at worst plausible.
No, you are confusing terms here. We are talking about Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network, which alleged that Fox had broadcast false statements that Dominion's voting machines had been rigged specifically to steal the 2020 election.
That is a wildly different than reporting on what is demonstrated at DEFCON's voting village. What are you trying to pull.
Winning or loosing a lawsuit doesn't say much about the truth of any matter. Especially when it's a civil suit between corporations, or a criminal suit in a jurisdiction that has plea deals.
Accounts are hacked every second. They are wildly insecure and noone should trust them. Frankly saying you are just a hacked account is at worst plausible.
You logic is flawed at the core.
With that train of thought you can infer everything.
Programming with AI, so far, tries to specify something precise, algorithms, in a less precise language than what we have.
It's the difference between Euclid and modern notation, with AI programming being like Euclidean notation and current programming languages being the modern notation:
"if a first magnitude and a third are equal multiples of a second and a fourth, and a fifth and a sixth are equal multiples of the second and fourth, then the first magnitude and fifth, being added together, and the third and sixth, being added together, will also be equal multiples of the second and the fourth, respectively."
versus
a(x + y) = ax + by
If AI programming can find a better way to express the problems we're trying to solve, then yes, it could work. It would become a matter of "how well the compiler works". The current proposals which use natural language as the notation is not better than what we have.
The only problem with this is the fact that the 99%+ of issues with software products aren’t the fact that a parsimonious language was used and tightly coupled to the compiler
The vast majority of issues is missed edge cases between what the user wants and expects, and the design and function of the software
Higher productivity would in theory allow programmers more opportunities to address more issues
Programs don’t exist in a vacuum, users and other actors need to interact with them
Whether or not these LLMs result in increased productivity with the same or better quality is a more pertinent question
You probably know more about this than I do since you claim "people keep repeating this without context." Looking at your links, it seems to me a confusion of terms. Yes, the legal entities behind GM and Chrysler went away...in order for the new entities to receive billions.
So, technically, you are correct. The business entities of June 2009 failed. However, the consumer DGAF who owns www.gm.com or www.chrysler.com. They can still go to their local dealer and purchase a vehicle "made by" these companies. The "companies" live on.
