r_lee

> Okay but you're stacking your unsubstantiated belief based on a sample of just you against an entire field of research where people have dedicated their lives, so maybe you can understand why some people take it personally when you just call it BS off the cuff?

No, I usually don't understand why people take it personally if it's not directed towards anyone, but I do understand why it would come off as demeaning, so for that I apologize.

However it was not to the degree where this guy's response was warranted at all. Not one bit.

> You're the one convinced you're right no matter what. No. I never said I was right. I've literally multiple times said that it is MY opinion, and my view point, and that I'm simply saying what I think.

Okay, decades of research and whatnot, so is the conclusion that Snap is perfect for what it's intended and that there is no room for criticism or opposing views against it? Would I have to do decades of research in order to say anything about Snap? That would basically mean it's immune from criticism. We can say the same things about SAP for example.

again, I was replying to this comment:

> I don't love graphical programming environments like this and Scratch and I can't quite put my finger on why I find them so unattractive. > A big part of it is that you can, to some degree, learn programming from this. But you absolutely *cannot learn software engineering* from this.

I am not saying that it doesn't fill a niche, it's literally what I've already said, but I said that it doesn't mean that it is widely applicable, which is *totally fine*

> Have you actually examined if this is true or do you just feel that it is true? Yes, my experience was this. I never said it was for everyone, and you obviously know that, there's no way something will work for absolutely everyone

and I also haven't met basically anyone who learnt programming with Scratch or etc., it was mostly though playing around with real stuff in primitive ways and learning how things work until they became familiar.

I don't understand. There are a few people here who said they learnt programming through scratch, and that's great. However, I'm giving my own subjective experience and my thoughts as to why imo this is not as effective as some might claim, and especially for actually learning programming, not just gaining interest (which would be a small niche)

I think it's totally fine to give your own views, opinions and beliefs on a HN post subject, and I believe that progress happens through people communicating their own ideas and beliefs about things, from which others can then gain new perspectives outside of their own.

I also think it's very much against the hacker spirit to simply shut down everything because there isn't decades of research behind an argument.

You can discard all my beliefs and arguments here and that's totally fine. If they spark some idea or some theory, that's even better. Or if it's something you can relate to and go "oh so it's not just me!" that's also cool. Like how I felt with the original reply.

> so instead they've been in legal limbo for 2 decades.

aka in prison for 2 decades. funny, isn't it?

I honestly believe they're letting this happen to keep the hype up. It's basically free marketing, and they get a bunch of discussion and news articles about how dangerous and capable their models are and how they should be the only ones playing the game and other labs should be regulated away (how convenient...)

I'm not sure what caused him to lash out at me like that, I thought I was being pretty reasonable (albeit very casual with terms like BS), I even made sure to say multiple times that it was my opinions and views, and that maybe I just don't "get it".

Here's my reply with links to my past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49671123

I understand that some consider Elon a Nazi but I don't consider that a common belief, so I don't know why I'd need to support that belief in order to talk about this Snap language and others, like Scratch.

You need to cool down.

I replied to this comment:

> I don't love graphical programming environments like this and Scratch and I can't quite put my finger on why I find them so unattractive. > A big part of it is that you can, to some degree, learn programming from this. But you absolutely cannot learn software engineering from this.

And you then showed off some embroidery stuff and things that I explained that in my own opinion, are not connected to real world software engineering/programming, and seem to serve Snap rather than things that you'd actually use in the field.

That's my opinion and I'm allowed to have my own. Otherwise all I could say is that you're right and its awesome. Right?

And here you are attacking me with things like:

"but it's a waste of your time, because his comments have no value. Have you looked at any of those valuable links I did post yet, or did you just get stuck in the worthless rabbithole of his posting history?"

"dead boot licking comments don't deserved to be linked or repeated"

Because apparently I'm not allowed to have my own opinions of blocky visual programming languages. A bit fascist isn't it?

Anyhow

"I attended Snap!Con in Barcelona, played around with TurtleStitch myself, and still have and cherish the cool textile artifacts (and also cool friends) I made.

And the TurtleStitch presentation included live streaming video of students of diverse genders and cultures and ages enthusiastically showing off and talking about the beautiful physical objects they designed, programmed, made, presented to their parents and the conference, and are rightfully proud of, and discuss what they learned from the experience."

Okay, how does this disprove my point that its more about making machined embroidery accessible vs. learning CS concepts?

And who would attend Snap!Con unless they were part of that community working on the ecosystem or deeply involved with it?

You're projecting that I'm arguing in bad faith, but clearly that's you here, I can't really engage with you properly when your replies are full of things like:

" In a nutshell or TL;DR for someone unwilling to put in the time and effort to learn or even consider evidence, and who talks about promoting curiosity but is incurious yourself, and who performatively refuses to recognize an obvious Nazi salute and feels compelled to repeatedly defend and praise Elon Musk after he does it twice in a row on international television: it's all about Constructionist Education, not promoting or showing off a product, or selling computer controlled embroidery machines, Arduinos, and robots, or even a cynical huckster perennially promising full self driving cars and trips to Mars."

I visited all the links you provided and still arrived in the same conclusion.

and you're saying I'm incurious. Can you just stop lying and spreading lies about me? And when have I praised Musk?

If you're so emotionally attached to this 'language' that you feel the need to dig up "dirt" on me from my post history and spread lies and tell others that I'm some kind of fascist, maybe you should reevaluate your life choices. I wouldn't get this mad over someone criticizing Go or Rust etc.

And it proves that you're unable to take criticism of your language since you're convinced that no matter what, you're right and that with you posting some conference talk links, others should become convinced that it's a super relevant language.

And with regards to Constructionism, from my understanding, the main point seems to be to use existing knowledge to acquire more knowledge, CS/programming in this case.

From the Wikipedia page:

"The following five strategies make problem-based learning more effective:

1. The learning activities should be related to a larger task. The larger task is important because it allows students to see that the activities can be applied to many aspects of life and, as a result, students are more likely to find the activities they are doing useful."

This is exactly my criticism. With Snap / etc. the larger task is just a demo or something inside Snap. maybe controlling some robot, okay.

But it's not something you'd see in the real world, it can't be "applied to many aspects of life" in the context of CS, it's mostly constrained to Snap and its environment.

My belief is that learning is done best when there is a connection to something real, not just a simulation or an exercise. With Snap, it inevitably is kind of just a demo. Whereas with real languages you can get close to how things are done for real, which serve as a motivator and invoke curiosity.

Again, if it's your opinion that Snap is successful and that's why people are using it to learn to code, then that's fine. I haven't seen that happen yet and I believe there are reasons as to why I haven't seen that happen.

And since I'm here in good faith (unlike you) I will provide links to my Nazi comments as per your accusations:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589879 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49590610 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589966

btw, I have literally criticized the wealth of Musk in HN before and how it's unsustainable, same with the AI datacenter buildout and financial consolidation that's happening right now.

Considering your vast experience and knowledge, I find your conduct pretty embarrassing here.

I guess I just can't relate to it, because I was fascinated with the computing itself, not just getting from A to B as quickly as possible

so it wasn't the project that was the motivation, it was figuring out how to do it for real, and getting closer to expertise in programming

for example the TurtleStitch, I don't know how to say this exactly, but to me it doesn't strike as something that'd interest people who want to get into programming, but is more like a way to showcase how to do machined embroidery in an accessible way

I might be totally wrong, but my problem seems to be that a lot of this is just about showing off the capabilities of Snap, but it's not really something I would've engaged with for example?

like almost as if the ecosystem simply serves to show off Snap and thus misses the mark?

like Snap doesn't really provide a way to understand how stuff is actually done except for maybe simple logic. So I don't see how it'd be very useful for e.g. learning CS when it's not really something you'd see in the real world, i.e. you're learning a learning platform and some basic concepts

I guess my point is like, if it's not really something that's used in the real world, unlike say JS or Python, why use it instead of getting up to speed in a real language?

again, it could be that I simply don't get it, or that I'm not the target audience, but I feel like there's a reason why these haven't really taken off, and IMO there's no reason why they would need to, because they serve a very specific niche

yes,

in short, people/entities with websites employ bots to click and interact with the Google Ads on their website to generate fake ad revenue.

and the person running the ad campaign is billed for those fake interactions.

I'm guessing app ads are heavily botted because they're more costly vs. a simple ad that lands you on a website (edit: I was wrong, see reply by OP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665323)

from someone who can remember how they even got into programming:

it's because this is BS and just a toy, it's got no connection to the real world.

from the angle of someone trying to make some toy to teach programming, maybe in their head it's like: oh this is so simple and easy it should work perfectly for teaching

but from my experience, most of my learning came from "whats this?" "how do i make a thing like this?"

this doesn't provide a way to accomplish that or to promote curiosity

I think same applies to basic CS courses teaching bits and bytes, it's not really useful to know what bits and bytes are if you don't understand what they're even used for or why you should know what they are

however, this is just my subjective point of view, maybe it differs for others.

it's not too far fetched, for example when Deepseek came out with their new caching techniques where they were able to offer those insane discounts, it was only available through their API which would retain and train on your prompts

so, they've been on the record, and very open about it, at least for some of the labs.

I don't think that "label" even applies if they're posting such content

it's not your own if you pass it onto an LLM

then it's just LLM writings prompted by you

how do I know which part is made up by the LLM or it's own interpretation or it's own opinion etc?

how can there be any value if I have to scrutinize every single word and decide whether it's truly what you intended to write or if it's mangling things, or if it's all just made up for engagement?

now THAT is a load-bearing simulation

I guess it's just become a term for ADHD-like or popularly believed to be ADHD behavior.

what?

why can't I then migrate to the US or whatever country I wanna go to?

there's clearly been a problem with migrants, why did no party address these issues?

if you could make them powerless by just addressing the issue, why have no parties done that? why hand power to the AfD?

"it's our most powerful X ever" - every Apple event ever

Apple is not an AI company, Mistral is. it's not really a fair comparison

huh? that's literally the context of this thread.

how did you conclude that Elon wasn't mentioned?

Curious.

I think it's also that Elon is such an easy target as he's terminally online and always replies/retweets weird and controversial stuff

so all these social justice warriors pick the easiest target and point to some tweet/image and say "Nazi!" thinking they've done some great servitude to humanity and can now feel great about themselves.

kind of like using paper straws and patting yourself in the back

wow, the Taylor swift one is way worse

sure that I can disagree with, there definitely are people like that, there's billions of us after all

but I'm pretty sure he was referencing Elon there, as in there's no such thing as him doing such a salute

but hey, I can't even see the original post because it was flagged, like mine is now. so that's great.

downvoting is expected, like on Reddit, but flagging comments like yours, that's a first for me

if people are so convinced that you and Elon are both super Nazis or something then why not show everyone what vile things you've typed here (iirc it was just "it was not a nazi salute." or something like that)

so I found

1. "you have said the actual truth" reply to some guy about the great replacement thing or mass migration? which was then followed up with an apology and he said it was one of the most foolish things he's ever done.

2. said George soros hates humanity

3. compared Trudeau to a Adolf Hitler

4. some WW2 photo with a Wehrmaht soldier with a caption as a meme

5. mocking those who called him a nazi by saying stuff like "bet you did Nazi that coming"

considering all the other kinds of things he's done and posted on Twitter, I'm not convinced he's an evil nazi yet

I'm not really on either side that much but I just don't understand this overreaction, it's literally fascism, silencing the opposition

and censoring others by painting them as nazis/Hitler

iirc your comments weren't even making any big statements, just giving out your simple opinions without even invoking any political beliefs

IMO whoever is doing that should get their flagging abilities taken away.

Elon did?

but... then people can't constantly pretend they're smarter by telling others I.e. "the kids" what the original meanings are :(

"Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2026-85046 exists in the wild."

there are many vulns that are sitting idle waiting to be chained like this. plus in some cases adjacent bugs can be found once you find a bug like this.

I forgot HN doesn't believe in contracts. sorry.

from what I remember, they also don't pay it all out at once but rather over time where the payments stop if the bug gets patched.

I don't understand why you're being so cocky here? this is how many 0 click exploits are sourced

these people were simply handed money and power to not do anything about it

I blame governments for not providing a way for whistleblowers to put the companies in a bind to actually do something

the best way to stop these is to force them to do something, not have them voluntarily admit wrongdoing etc.

it's like the whole "well the other ones are doing it too!" which can only be solved with aggressive regulation.

I don't think even today this stuff is being taken seriously enough.