deterministic

... which is why it is usually faster for me to just write the code myself :-)

However ChatGPT is really helpful doing sysadmin style tasks on Linux.

It matches my experience using AI developing software. It is a super useful tool but also really crap at doing anything outside of its training data. There is zero real understanding or thinking going on behind the curtain.

> I think free will exists just because we can imagine a math object into being that is neither caused nor random.

You can absolutely be deterministic and still believe you have free will.

And yet another view:

Mathematics is an abstract game of symbols and rules invented by humans. It has nothing to do with reality. However it is quite useful for modelling our understanding of reality.

Mathematics is a game of symbols and rules.

Each of the "ordered field", "inital R-algebra" etc. are the names of a set of rules and constraints. That's all it is. So you need to know those sets of rules to make sense of it. It has nothing to do with brain size or IQ :)

In other words, you define a new thing by simply enumerating the rules constraining it. As in: A Duck is a thing that Quacks, Flies, Swims and ... Where Quacks etc. is defined somewhere else.

Nobody knows how to manufacture a pencil. Thousands (millions?) of people and companies are involved world wide and nobody knows how to do every step of the process, from mining and foresting to transport, logistics, accounting etc.

That's the beauty of specialization.

The same goes for software.

You don't need to understand how the whole system works.

What you need to understand is the API's in-between the sub-systems.

Another way to put it is that the architecture is the API's.

You can in principle throw away and re-implement the sub-system for a specific API without understanding the rest of the system.

I am saying in principle because in practice API's are typically under-specified leaving out important side effects.

I am not a big fan of that kind of UI. You have to move your mouse all the way top left and then all the way bottom right. It's the worst possible distance-to-move you can come up with. Always always minimize distance-to-move with it comes to designing good UI's.

Completely agree. However I do get some productivity boost by using ChatGPT as an improved Google search able to customize the answer to what I need.

If you are interested in this then I recommend checking out the Mojo language.

Win32 is the platform to use on Microsoft Windows. Everything else is built on top of it. So it will (a) work (b) be there forever.

It's interesting that some of the most successful programming languages (Turbo Pascal, C++, Delphi, Typescript) were designed by people born in Denmark.

I work with Linux every day at work writing large scale server applications.

However I choose Windows at home. It is just a much better user experience for me.

Also, Ubuntu often break badly when I try to upgrade. So I only do it as a last ditch effort when something breaks and I can't fix it. I never have that issue with Windows. It just works.

Not to mention that my favourite games are Windows only.

How detailed are the specs? Is it basically pseudo code? Can you please give an example of a spec point?

I used to develop for the N64 and I can confirm that it is true. It is crazy how much faster the CPU is compared with not-in-cache RAM access.

Optimizing for RAM access instead of CPU instruction speed can make your code magnitudes faster.

I have used custom code generators at work for 25+ years.

The generators typically generates about 90% of the code I need to write a biz app. Leaving the most important code to me: the biz logic.

No AI. Just code that takes a (simple) declarative spec file and generates Typescript/C++/Java/... code.

I am also using AI's daily. However the code generators are still generating more productivity for me than AI's ever have.

I am perfectly happy with Windows 10 and want to throw my work Linux PC out the nearest window almost every day because of Linux package dependency hell.

I work on different application and are pretty much forced to setup a specific Linux VM for each one to not have package dependency problems.

I never had that problem developing on Windows.

I work on Linux every day and wish it was Windows. Linux is package dependency hell. Switching to working on a different application I am often forced to setup a new VM to even build it without breaking other apps I am working on. I never had that problem on Windows.

It is unreasonable to expect that a tool built for proving correctness (a very hard problem) somehow should also be able to simulate performance and everything else somebody might need.

A hammer is great for certain things but I don't expect it to make good coffee. I use other tools for that. However that doesn't make hammers deficient.

Removing X from a distribution, and making it hard to switch from Wayland to X, makes things really difficult for developers such as myself who is maintaining 30+ year old X applications.

Thanks. That sounds like a similar situation to me. I am mid 50s.

Yeah I might have to accept that it is what it is. It is hard though.

Yep I have seen an optician and an eye doctor. And I did a head/eye scan as well. Apparently my eye is otherwise perfectly fine and healthy.

I have friends in the games industry. Stunningly bad and arrogant leadership seems to be the norm.

Make a random dude (it is usually a dude) a manager in a games company and suddenly he thinks he is a brilliant game designer with all the right answers overruling more experienced people.

Until the game flops and he is fired (or not if a good friend of the CEO).

Rince and repeat until bankruptcy.

"more affordable" but still very expensive.

90% of the code I commit is code generated. No AI required.

The problem is not generating worlds. The problem is generating interesting worlds.

There are no solutions when it comes to types. Just trade-offs. And your values/experience decides which trade-offs you prefer.

Rust is destined to become as complicated as C++.

You are spot on. Most developers have no clue how powerful servers are nowadays.