liftsh

A notoriously hard class and one of my favorite ones. Stefano Ermon was a great instructor.

To the contrary, the tools already make a material difference. I wrote 10k lines of code in the last 3 weeks--maybe 60% of that was generated by ChatGPT. Sure, I could have done it myself, but if it wasn't for AI my hands would have literally fallen off.

Instead of painstakingly reviewing the output of AI, just write a bunch of tests. It's something you would do regardless.

This is a good perspective, but I'm not sure I fully agree. I wonder if it's just that the nature of work, the nature of "what pays well," has changed.

Sure, my grandparents had a nice house, but they also worked the mines (literally). Would I say that the work they do is less effort than making $200k+ sitting in bed writing some code, while drinking Starbucks?

If you don't adapt to the times, you're going to have a bad time no matter what era you are in.

Yeah, good point--when I said new wasn't always better, I was just talking about the case where the new tech solves a problem, but it's not the one you have.

Like choosing GraphQL just because it's new, even if your data doesn't have the structure for it.

Will have to disagree with you on Scala for several reasons I won't go into here--but the point was just that, in order to make these arguments in the first place, you need to do your research. Seems commonsense, but surprisingly many people don't do it (including younger me).

Reminds me of Resources from Scala. I keep seeing features being carried over from language to language--I wonder if we'll eventually reach convergence where all languages, perhaps within several broad groups like OOP vs FP, look the same with minor syntactical differences.

And the thing that links those two groups of people is their desire for things. Never was religious, but this core point of Buddhism (from an ELI5, admittedly) really resonated with me. Wanting fewer things indeed seems to makes you happier.

Expectations are important and are missing from the equation here. Not everyone needs children, a fat pension or a large house to be fulfilled. It is also perfectly fine to be with the same group of people, have the same routines and the same hobbies for your entire life.

The less you want, the fewer milestones you need to hit.

I used to think my dad was boring because he never really wanted to do anything. Worked the same mid-level job for 30+ years, had no friends--just took care of us. A couple years back he passed away, smile on his face. Told me he did everything he ever wanted. Told me not to work so hard.

I think about this all the time whenever I'm stressed about claiming my "ownership in society."

Hmm...is this really surprising to anyone? Yes, I'd like the purpose of a tech company to be to "make developers heroes," but in a capitalist society, companies exist to make money. I'm not saying I like it, but that's just the way it is.

I think developers have been treated extremely well--justifiably, I might add, given the profit some of these tech companies are making--but at the same time developers expect things from their companies that no one else would. Could you imagine your local barista complaining that Starbucks isn't giving them a free gym, free meals, transportation expense reimbursements, and making them heroes?

Again, I'm not saying I like it.

New is not always better, but many times it is. We see this for example in programming languages, where newer ones incorporate the best features of their predecessors.

I think there are two things to be wary of: 1) Selecting a new technology just because it's hot, and 2) Refusing to consider new technology because the old stuff "just works." A good engineer looks at the requirements and selects the best tool to solve the problem while weighing the costs and benefits. Sometimes that's microservices. Sometimes it's monoliths. Granted, I don't know anything about the developers or business problems at that company, but to say that Scala microservices are just bad without justification doesn't sit right with me. It's all situational.

If an engineer comes to me and asks to use something like Scala, he'd better know all the upsides AND downsides (e.g. effect and streaming abstractions, ease of long-term maintenance, referential transparency, vs learning curve, hire-ability, 100 different ways of doing things, etc).