Nickersf

Exactly, we also have to think about support and maintenance when building and shipping products. It's always nice to play with new things to keep the learning fresh and see what people are up to. I started with php and .NET Framework ASP and in the early-mid 2010's when the reactive JS frameworks started coming around I just never found my jive with them and just started working at C#/.NET shops and am using Blazor Server now. For my domain of web application development the .NET web application ecosystem works great. Looking at the dagger.js docs and examples found myself thinking, this is more Java(SCRIPT) development. It's going to inherit the same issues as JavaScript (weak typing, no runtime reflection, no binary build output, locked into vendor interpreters with mixed feature support), and that's not mentioning all the oddities with the way object prototypes are implemented and interact with each other. I think the ambition and result of the project are amiable. The author did good work, but it's good work on a thing we need less of in my opinion.

I think they're another tool in the toolbox not a new workshop. You have to build a good strategy around LLM usage when developing software. I think people are naturally noticing that and adapting.

I encourage this!

I've had my Rotring 600 mechanical pencil for 10 years and I might need to add the ballpoint variant soon. I see some people mentioning that the new Rotrings aren't as good, which is a shame.

They need their clicks. lol

Not just the technical aspect here. I read through the page and nothing of any measurable importance was stated. What problems did this solve? What benefits does this bring to users? I guess I was expecting more from Google. The initial Material design system made some good points and addressed some issues for UI design. This just seems unfocused.

> We can finally just take a photo of a textbook problem that has no answer reference and no discussion about it and prompt an LLM to help us understand what's missing in our understanding of the problem, if our solution is plausible and how we could verify it.

I would take that advice with caution. LLM's are not oracles of absolute truth. They often hallucinate and omit important pieces of information.

Like any powerful tool, it can be dangerous in the unskilled hands.

Am I missing something? This is a color palette for a website? Is there something special going on here?

I have two kids in grade school and middle school and I see why we have a STEM gap. I have to constantly correct the learning at home in math. Also, I think it's fair to assume that in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China the school kids are actually put on an academic grindset unlike here where there is such little academic rigor or discipline being enforced by the school it makes sense why the k-12 education numbers are as bad as they are in the USA.

It might be worth getting up in front of the kids in middle school + and saying "Hey you're in competition at a global scale here. You're going to have to work your butts off to stay relevant."

I don't think it will boost the fertility rate in any significant way. I think the only way to really make a dent in low fertility rates is to incentivize mothers to stay at home and men to work full-time at least for the first five years of a child's life. I know people disagree with this, but it's worth considering if the declining birth rates are a major concern for the State.

Thank you very much for this amazing piece of software.

Imagine blending the traditional educational structures into EdTech and using network engineering to clamp down what can be accessed in a classroom device to only the educational software modules needed. For example, you could put timers on how long each module is open. Give teachers the ability to override them and tap into each student individually if needed.

The issue is that the surrounding infrastructures would need to be much more competent than they currently are in education. I worked at an educational institution in the IT department, and the level of knowledge the IT staff had was abysmal. It was surprising that anything worked at all.

Additionally, not everything needs to be gamified. Somehow this notion that everything a child interacts with on a computer has to mimic a video game is a really narrow way of thinking. Instead, we could start with basic computer usage skills such as file management, and system configuration, and using core tools such as word processes and image manipulation software.

Instead of dumping kids into the world of Google which is a for-profit mechanism that is inherently designed to get people to click on stuff as much as possible, we actually as software developers need to re-think EdTech and have it be learning first.

A shiny new tool to extract data from users and convert that into $

This is exactly what I was thinking. I'm always trying to have fewer third-party dependencies in my codebase no matter how tiny, especially if it's solving problems that already have platform/system native solutions.

Those are my thoughts exactly. No metrics. It seems like an ad for some AI product to governments. Also, while cutting emissions is a good thing, wouldn't it be good to sell how this will make people's commutes more pleasant and generate some interest other than emissions control?

It depends on what needs to be built. If the regulators 'like' what needs to be built it'll pop up fast, look at the wind turbine expansion in Europe and parts of the USA. In terms of material input that dwarves what building one nuclear power plant or blast furnace requires.

The sooner social media becomes unpopular the better.

This takes me back to the Geo Cities days, but with prompts! Pretty neat.

I think we need to re-think the fundamental reasons for why we use computing technology. There was a time where computers were mainly used to assist humans in handling complex, tedious tasks. Specifically, tasks rooted in computation and organization of data.

Today people expect, because they have been sold the idea that computers should do everything from drawing for them to fulfilling their social needs as a human.

I think it's time to step back and really think about what the role of computers should be and how we as humans use computers.

I remember when using the Internet and digital media were in their early stages. Compared to today there was a very small segment of the population doing those things. You were underground if you were playing video games on the Internet.

Most computers lived in offices doing what they did best: office work.

Maybe we've gone too far in the wrong direction.

For example:

"Let's do wind turbines to generate clean electricity!"

The wind turbine manufacturing and decommissioning processes are hugely inefficient, not to mention the negative impacts wind turbines have during their operational period. Regardless of these findings large areas of land in North America and Europe are littered with wind turbines. Oh while we're at it lets shut down all the nuclear power plants because we're scared of them.

"Hey, this whole green energy thing has been a total disaster. Regardless, let's start setting arbitrary deadlines on which we want to eliminate gas powered cars and replace them with electric cars that rely on our disastrous green energy rollout!"

The push to widespread electric car usage is ignoring major infrastructure short comings in many places where the push is happening.

It's almost like the people in charge of this stuff are a bunch of idealistic nitwits who are risking plunging us into the dark ages.

Doubtful. People either don't care or are too lazy to shift. Also, I think it's safe to assume ISP's are going to be wrapped in on this too.

Is that a "formula"? Or does this happen in some cases where certain factors indicate that hiring at reduced salary for a similar but less experienced worker will yield the same results?

If you have an employee in the company for 20 years and they haven't grown or shown any desire to grow, but has gladly taken raises and promotions; that employee has kind of worked against their own best interests.

If you have a department that has been inflated for a period of time due to temporary need, be it because the need was there or because of 'trends in the industry' a re-org may need to happen to free up resources.

I'm not going to come at this with so much cynicism out of the gate. Most managers and business leaders aren't the meme of the evil top hat monocle man trying to punch down, especially in the professional industry.

First, thing I would consider is mentality. I'm a developer and there are times where I just shut it down after the shift and force myself to forget about work. Shut it off and just start doing other activities.

Second, slow down on work related projects and activities. Sometimes I just stop thinking about or working on programming related side projects for a week or so to cleanse the palette.

I still do it. There are many Americans who still do it daily. There's a certain charm and feel to walking down a commercial street in a small town instead of walking through a fluorescent lit generic corporate branded super store. Online shopping is inevitable. There are products you just don't find in local shops anymore. I think a good example of that is Radio Shack. When I was a kid, that's where you went for you electronics needs as a hobbyist. There were even a few locally owned electronics shops in the area. Now you get that off of Amazon.

The intellectual labor of thinking about an essay, drafting it, editing, and revising it is much higher than strategically re-typing a ChatGPT output. One requires experience, knowledge, understanding and creativity, the other one requires basic functioning of motor skills and senses.

You could program a robot to re-type the ChatGPT output into a different word processor and feed it parameters to make the duration between keystrokes and backspaces fluctuate over time. You could even have it stop, come back later, copy and paste sections and re-organize as it moves through and end up with the final essay from ChatGPT.

I work remote, and we talk about this topic among the team from time to time. One thing I always add to the conversation is the importance of simulating a work day. I wake up 30 minutes before work and get ready. I raise my desk and work standing the first 4.5 hours every day. I greet the team in work chat on the dot, and begin working on tasks for the day.

Being successful at remote work as a developer and creative is using the right tools when it comes to collaboration. This means having a good A/V setup that doesn't need regular futzing with to work. Know your OS's sound and camera settings. Know your team tools inside and out. Another thing that I work on daily is better written communication skills, specifically, better commit message, taking that extra 5 minutes to write up a concise PR.

Screen capture is another tool I regularly use, and have refined my skills in. I often screenshot things and add drawn and text annotations to highlight important information and supplement with a chat message. That can often help solve problems much faster. I have us all using more digital whiteboarding tools. We're learning what too much or too little Kanban board granularity is. Adjusting workflows both in project management and remote communication is super important. Finding the inefficiencies and efficiencies requires a lot of open-mindedness and humility.

We had an employee who wasn't finding success in remote work and I realized a lot of his struggles were with not knowing how to use core desktop publishing and digital communication tools. He was from the save it on your hard drive and email-it-to-me generation. He missed standing at the coffee machine and chatting. He didn't care to learn advanced features of the Google Suite, or get OBS up and running. Those factors combined didn't help him succeed in remote work. It was unfortunate to see.

One thing that can be done to positively influence opponents of remote work, in your organization or in the industry in general is emphasizing the importance of core modern computer literacy. I think that being a highly productive remote employee requires one to develop and maintain a high degree of core computer literacy (using office productivity tools, communication software, and managing A/V hardware).

I've made several "Bob's Restaurant" websites for clients. Early on I thought just that. "This can be statically implemented using the core web technologies HTML and CSS" - It wowed the client visually at first and they signed off on the product agreeing that the simple site was enough for them. Then the client wanted their Facebook, Google Maps, and Instagram integrated throughout the site over time. Now the site has JavaScript in its stack and external code running on it via APIs.

Early on the client wanted to make changes to the menu, and have a feed of events from their Google calendar. I implemented a Google Calendar feed script. Enter the world of dates in JS and learning how to use OAuth to hook into their feed. The client was getting confused as to why all this work had to be done for such simple little features and there was extra cost associated, and at the same time requested that they can CRUD menu items. I told them we need a CMS for that. They didn't like hearing the was more time and cost associated. By this time the statically implemented, elegantly designed Home | Menu | About site delivered the purpose of a visual mockup rather than a website that will help the business retain and add growth.

It could be said that this story is one of not planning and getting the spec right with the client, which in part is true. The part that was wrong is that the site could be this simple CSS HTML static site when in fact, even for a small business lacked the features and flexibility needed. Initially, the client and I decided that we would have me make the changes and updates to the static food and drink menu pages. This turned out to be very inefficient for both parties. Small businesses often don't want to pay hourly rates to have minor updates done on their website, which was the case because I don't work for free.

In the end the HTML/CSS site had a CMS, Database, and multiple external services. I learned from this moving forward and came up with the right stack for the scale of business I work with. However, in the late 2010's I noticed more small businesses opting into products like Squarespace and Wix, and selling clients with certain small businesses (nick nack shops and local bars restaurants) on custom site builds was getting harder.

Back to the original post. I get the point of the blog was to make a statement against unneeded complexity. Sure, however, it's important to remember that the work of producing digital products is inherently technical and complex. Developers should strive to be a smart programmer and spend time picking the right tools for the job.

I wish our governments would spend time and effort to educated and try to dissuade people from ingesting toxic chemicals in the first place. Maybe use their power to influence positive change by encouraging healthier living.

Think about this from a business finance perspective. Companies have since the early 1900's built an economy around working in offices. Car manufacturers, car service and maintenance businesses, food service companies, commercial real-estate companies and oil and gas companies and many other sectors all have a stake in this game.

Then you have internal forces at play too. HR managers, and department managers don't look so useful when the majority of people never interact in real life. No matter how optimistic we look at the human condition, people have the desire to exercise power and control over others. With people working remote exercising power and control is harder. Additionally, you still have gen-x and boomers working, especially in management who have a different idea of work culture than millennials and gen-z. To the older generations working on-site is the only justifiable way to work. To them the notion of being at home for work is not real work.

There also appears to be a camp of management types who have seen evidence confirming that remote work doesn't work. They are going to stick to their position because they have evidence to support. I recently heard similar sentiments to Musk's take on remote work from Tim Pool, and a manager at my job. They are convinced that meaningful work can only happen in person.

So between those three main factors: Money, power, and bias of evidence the pitch for remote work being an environmental initiative gets drowned out. Really, makes you wonder if environmentalism is really that important for the business leadership class.

I personally believe work from home can be an amazing option for white collar work and for the right person. As a UI developer I love it. I don't get distracted by office stuff and get good flow often. I'm and expert at using online communication tools and desktop publishing tools so I can communicate my ideas and thoughts coherently remotely. However, I've seen some people not be able to manage themselves or have the skills to work from home.

For anyone who has been involved with web UI design and development since the 1990's this is a throwback.