The philosopher: A conversation with Grady Booch

I thought this was particularly interesting:<p>I had the opportunity to conduct an oral history with John Backus—one of the pioneers of functional programming—in 2006 on behalf of the Computer History Museum. I asked John why functional programming didn’t enter the mainstream, and his answer was perfect: “Functional programming makes it easy to do hard things” he said, “but functional programming makes it very difficult to do easy things.”

I cannot get over an image from Dr Dobbs Journal sometime, where a well-drawn set of seven (?) gray beard, pocket protector guys were standing in a semi-circle solemnly considering a poster, meant to be a computer programming problem. The vibe was lots of wise old males deciding on the wisest course. Of course everyone was paid well but most &quot;chose&quot; humble attire.<p>The reality is that every senior coder that could not put a signature on some legal paper was replaced and outsourced, faster than anything. It continues to this day. &quot;Do not hire anyone over 40&quot; they say, in Fast Company style. Since I was also once in my own early 20s I cant say I blame them entirely, but, you know.. In the 90s it was 50 year old car engineers in Germany.. &quot;oh those guys, too bad no one will hire them oh well&quot; .. but fast forward to the go-go second round of post 2008, and it was the csh coders, Solaris jockeys, Mac and Amiga graphics experts.. and even some of the digital printing people.. &quot;no room at the Inn!&quot; out with you, and hope you saved some of that money you got.<p>Grady epitomizes the era and standing of those old gray beard guys, to me.

Not a great interview. For instance, after his answer about LLMs &quot;.. we must be cognizant of their risks and limitations.&quot; the interviewer asks &quot;What do you make of transhumanism?&quot;. Overall too many topics briefly touched upon like Babbage, Lady Ada, Quantum Computing without much substance.<p>Why did IBM not develop a Large Language Model?

This is also strong: &quot;Web3 is a flaming pile of feces orbiting a giant dripping hairball.&quot;