yuye

>But I always tell them I'd rather they write in broken English to communicate their own ideas. I want to hear what they have to say, directly from their brain. I don't have issues with parsing bad english. Usually its straight and to the point.

I work in FAANG at a non-US office, and this is what I tell my colleagues. I always get pushback: "They're too shy to speak English".

They'll often write messages in their native language, then ask AI to translate.

This is in a developed country, by the way. Engineers working for a US-based company refusing to speak English while getting paid handsomely.

>avoiding chronic stress

If I only knew how

I always bring up the example of how the atomic nucleus is taught:

Elementary school: Stuff is actually made out of tiny little balls you can't see.

Middle school: Those tiny little balls are actually atoms, they consist of a positively charged core of protons/neutrons with negatively charged electrons flying around it. An atom is the smallest thing matter is made of. (Rutherford model)

High school: Those electrons don't just fly around, they actually orbit within specific energy levels. Also they're not really particles, but waves, but also particles, all at the same time. Also subatomic particles exist. (Bohr model)

University: "Electron orbits" are actually orbitals defined by the wavefunction of those electrons, like probability distributions. (Quantum Mechanics)

>now i do the same but cant do more than yell at the LLM to do better.

Don't forget to add "Make no mistakes" to the prompt

Always love reading Derek Lowe's writings. One thing confused me, though:

>These authors find that it has potent activity against the ion channel TRPM8, and that goes for other 7-nitro compounds in this series as well.

But later states

>For one thing, the other benzodiazepines aren’t much use; clonazepam really stands out on its own.

Wouldn't another 7-nitro compound also work? Flunitrazepam/Rohypnol, for example? A little bit of research shows it actually might[1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13426060/

>what it is that is considered valuable.

I fear we humans are on the losing end of that reconsideration.

>"huh this is actually 90% what I would have written"

The last 10% is always the hardest part, though

>What is windows actually good at?

The only reason for me still running Windows is for games.

But even that is changing rapidly nowadays.

I'm still on Win10, even though it's EOL. I should upgrade, and if I do, I'll upgrade to some Linux distro, not Win11.

Who knows? I'm an engineer, not a psychic.

>Strongly recommend Outer Wilds. Falling into the black hole the first time was one of my most scared moments in gaming. I was totally panicking lol

The Outer Wilds is one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time. I would love to forget all about that game to just experience it again from scratch.

>because one is tired of typing

I consider typing to be secondary to software engineering, but I do concede that for those cases that typing really is the bottleneck, LLMs can certainly be of value.

Those cases are rare, though.

That I disagree with, though. First of all, Go is a garbage collected language, so can't be compared to C.

C is a language that is able to target basically every platform under the sun. It's versatile: User-space applications, kernel modules, and embedded firmware applications with an RTOS or even running on bare metal.

LLMs can produce basic C code, but (still) struggle with more specialized tasks.

They can be incredibly useful for skimming through long datasheet PDFs, but it's still up to the engineer to actually make sure the code it produces is actually good.

You're right, but that doesn't mean those assembly programmers are suddenly forced to write React.

Being an expert at assembly probably means you're an expert in low level programming. We still have a need for those people, because they'll probably also be able to write C/C++/Rust/Zig/etc very competently.

I consider myself pretty competent in C(And C++ to some degree), and I have a pretty good understanding of how computers work on a lower level, but if you ask me to write React UI components, I probably wouldn't fare well. I understand Javascript/Typescript, sure, but I'm just not familiar with the best practices of modern day frontend engineering.

>My big problem is that nobody is working on truly innovative programming languages anymore.

How many languages are truly innovative? I'd say the most recent example is Rust, as you mentioned, being innovative with its borrow checker, but what other recent languages really are?

Many modern languages are not innovative, but just add quality of life features. A good example is Kotlin: Just another JVM language, nothing revolutionary, but I enjoy writing it over Java.

>It goes against the programmer's ego, but the way forward is by adding more restrictions. The people complaining about the borrow checker in Rust just don't get it. If you want programming to improve, you will have to give up the ability to write every conceivable program.

I agree and also disagree. The "ability to write every conceivable program" also means writing programs that are faulty. Maybe that's your point, in which case I don't consider it a bad thing to limit the ability to do so.

A language like C let's you fuck around and find out. It's powerful and "easy". As the saying goes, it gives you a gun and doesn't stop you from shooting yourself in the foot.

>It's like an old ASM programmer telling himself that his obscure assembly knowledge will surely still give him great advantages as he is forced to switch to React.js development.

The engineers that are truly skilled in writing pure assembly wouldn't be forced to switch to React. The existence of higher level languages doesn't mean lower level languages are useless.

>Software engineers feeling down should think about software designed to track medication administration, or validate their tax calculations, or to decide whether to flag you for a CIFAS marker, or whatever, and then imagine the generic "fuck it, that'll do" type vibecoder-level-engineer handling the code.

That makes me feel even more down, because I know this will happen.

"Can websites please stop the trend of giving error messages that are like "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!" And just give me a fucking error code so I can try and fix it"[0]

[0] https://x.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594

You mean the same company that allowed CDs/DVDs/USB drives to automatically run binaries by simply adding autorun.inf?

>But what I find increasingly common is that I run into these kinds of frictions even when I do behave as a normie.

Often, this friction is on purpose. A good example is how websites show the cookie banner:

The least friction will be to disable tracking cookies, and showing an unobtrusive banner asking the user to opt-in. Very few sites do this.

Showing a screen-blocking pop-up where users get to "accept all" or "deny all" adds friction.

The worst is when a site shows that pop-up but removes "deny all", instead forcing the user to reject all cookies one by one.

I think it's the most commonly used dark pattern out there.

If it forces me to sign in, I'm not trying it.

The same goes for telephony.

I reject all phone calls by default, unless I'm expecting a call.

It's only considered "godlike" by those satisfied with mediocrity

>Now you can do something with your time besides writing pointless one-off doo-dads.

This is such a disgusting statement that goes against the very core of what open-source stands for. If even only one person got some use out of what they made, it is not pointless by definition.

This has been the standard for a long time.

What surprises me is that they're not even putting in the effort to hide it anymore.

Compilers and AI are not the same.

>2. There's a strong superposition of "things are bad" and "we are still the best";

These can be reconciled by good old xenophobia: "Yes, things are horrible, but the way they do it is worse because it is not the way we do it"

>There’s a general sense that Germany is a prosperous, influential country. The reason for that must be that things are done correctly in Germany.

I'm from the Netherlands(also not living there anymore) and I recognize this arrogance there, too.

And at the same time, almost paradoxically, the Netherlands has an inferiority complex.

>AI

Assorted Imaginaries?

>Could you describe your usual workflows and usage patterns with AI?

I don't. I'm not a gambling man, and I respect my fellow engineers to not inundate them with slop.

>Since programming is still my passion I think it's worthwhile as I can experiment and create a lot of stuff with little effort

Yes, driving is my passion, which is why I've hired a private driver to do it for me.