From Daniel Dresner, University of Manchester, UK
Don’t tell my students, but I am often tempted to beg them to stop coding. I lament lines of code that spew features that may not vary discernibly from those of another program (13 June, p 8).
The result is burned-out developers, as you describe in your article, dumping fragile software more likely to print out a ransomware demand than “hello, world”. And then there’s the expectation that they fix the quagmire of bugs, while also adding the latest idea that someone in sales thought of on the way to work.
The late Terry Pratchett described progress as “bad things happening faster”. There is much to laud in “alleged intelligence”, just as apples are part of a healthy diet. Pick from the tree of knowledge with caution, and apply that knowledge with even more care – for the people over the technology.
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