Ubuntu is used in many serious backend environments. Heroku runs tens of thousands (if not more) instances of Ubuntu on its fleet. Or at least it did through the teens and early 2020s.
This is one of the more level-headed and empathetic writings that I've seen on the impact of LLMs on software engineers and our (or at least my) current strange combination of unbridled enthusiasm with existential dread. And it finishes with actual practical advice. (the post was derived from a talk the writer gave at his company)
> there’s fear in the air. You’ve heard that if you don’t learn these tools, you’ll be unemployable. That sounds pretty awful to me. What if none of us have jobs at the end of this?
> The industrial revolution didn’t eliminate human labor. It changed what human labor meant. Human labor still mattered at the end of it. The people who adapt to major technological shifts don’t just survive—they become more valuable, not less.
> I’m here to tell you it’ll be okay. You are smart. You can adapt. I believe in you.
> It’s not about 20x the number of lines of code you write, though you can do that. It’s about doing things you wouldn’t have attempted at all.
> A refactoring you’d never have had time for.
> An analysis you’d never have bothered with.
> A prototype you’d never have built.
> I’ve been doing this for nearly thirty-five years, and this is the most exciting time to write software I’ve seen. Yes, there are pleasures lost here. I love the flow state of writing code, just like I love printing black and white photographs in the darkroom. I don’t have to lose either one. I can still do both for pleasure. Black and white photography isn’t part of anybody’s journalism workflow any more, but people still do it. There’s a place for it all.
> The tools make it easy to produce a lot of code fast. They do not make it safe to skip evaluating what it did. Nobody is exempt. Don’t make our security team have to file disclosure reports, or clean up our messes.
> More recently, all Git-based deployments (which is to say, virtually all deployments) to Heroku were blocked and review apps were halted for all users as a result of a GitHub OAuth token leak.
It should read "all GitHub-based deployments". You can still deploy with `git push heroku main`.
My story’s similar to @dnilasor’s sibling comment except with a little twist. I’m a Dev Advocate at Render now but used to be a Dev Advocate at Heroku.
I’m very excited about the potential future of Render.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Raja. It's great to read a more personal experience about someone using Render rather than just seeing a number go up on one of our internal dashboards.
Had you ever used a platform like Render (or Heroku, Fly, Railway, etc) or only VPSs?
I feel your frustration, but worry that this sort of defeatist attitude (if adopted by many) will end poorly.
We have to be resilient. If we as citizens want to have any say in government, we need to engage despite frustrations, setbacks, and what even appears to be bad faith attempts to circumvent established procedures like this seems to be (and the FCC net neutrality comment process was).