A related question: should the officers who made the call to shoot proudly wear the medals they're going to get for this action? Do we think anyone will be ashamed to wear a medal for sinking an unarmed ship full of navy band members 2000 miles from combat on a diplomatic mission?
This right here is the dream!
Great software engineers don't build code, they build understanding and then communicate that understanding throughout the organization, including by formalizing it in computer programs. Orgs start to die when too much understanding doesn't get shared across multiple people.
But understanding business problems at that level is much much harder than banging out 200,000 lines of code. We are human and even pre AI, it was tough to convince management that more code wasn't better, that the sheer volume of code we had was a liability.
The things I'm proudest of in my career are when I was able to come up with a model, a way of thinking about a problem, that made solving it very straightforward and clear. Those models lead to programs that were short and easy to understand and easy to debug or extend!
2. Working on very large poorly structured code bases is miserable. You can't keep enough of the context in your head at once. The difference between low quality code and excellent code is volume: great engineers solve the problem but writing 1% of the code so you can fit it in your head.
1. People obsess about writing code but code is read many more times than it is written. Every time you have to debug it or extend it or add a new feature or improve performance, you're reading it over and over! Reading low quality code is so draining and LLMs allow you to make tons of it!
Thanks for including the bit about the august leader -- it is amazing how much propaganda seeps into our media.
Back during the global war on terror days, there was pressure to clap if you believe fairies are real, clap or Tinkerbell is gonna die. I.e., they kept implying that media scrutiny was gonna make the Iraq war fail. It feels like we're heading to similar madness.
Did you see oxide's rfd on ai tools? They basically say that using LLMs for code gen is probably ok but using it to write design docs is absolutely forbidden and your post here reminds me of that wild distinction.
Steve Yegge talks about folks using multiple $200 per month accounts to do similar things to gastown including one friend who is burning $4400 per month.
I'm so glad we've got AI to help us understand the world. CC @davidgerard.co.uk
Actually, we get to be enraged at the people destroying our industry and the environment and whole professions. Calling them morons is generous considering what they've taken from us.
Hold up, do people in DC really believe that the IDF is more powerful than the US military? For real?
This whole mode of interaction feels very codependent. Biden can't ever enforce any consequences because Biden can't enforce any boundaries with the Israelis period and is thus constantly surprised that the Israelis act as he would not.
I'm honestly confused about what the difference you're highlighting is. Substack's leaders made an editorial choice to direct their money and their users' attention to Nazis. There's no reason to believe that decision was driven by profit. Why should I believe their ideology differs from gab?
Have you read IBM and the Holocaust? Your description of substack makes it sound like the best and the brightest tech luminaries that you hang with there are mostly people who in the 40s would've gotten medals from Hitler like Watson did. They don't have any strong objections to Nazis after all.
...substack is a lot smaller and easier to avoid than Google.
You can certainly make an argument that your business simply necessitates hanging out in a Nazi bar. I'd believe you if you said it. But we should at least acknowledge how depraved that is.
I deleted my Instagram account a few years ago. I don't participate in any Google social networks and while I have many criticisms of Google, I don't think they're doing Nazi stuff like this: www.techpolicy.press/substack-fou...
So yeah, no ethical consumption under capitalism, but...
I wonder how often the answer is "because we can't explain the discrepancy" or even "because we can't explain without resorting to antisemitism". I know more than most folks about political science and Southwest Asia and I struggle to make simple explanations for this phenomena.
Charity's post to which I responded was specifically about substack and how all the big tech folks are active there.
I was talking about substack and participating in a social space that actively funds Nazis.
Look, if you want to hang out in Nazi spaces because your friends and customers are there, by all means, do that! But don't be surprised that other folks take note.
Eh, are you asking me to decide your ethical lines for you?
Is there anything you wouldn't do to get business?
Some Nazi bars have great food and amazing music.
It really feels like this technology puts lead paint chips in people's coffee....
This guy is a well known software engineer from Google. He already should know how to code which makes this all the more shocking.
I love that he associates with this slimeball and even defended him at disbarment proceedings. Birds of a feather flock together. www.huffpost.com/entry/marc-r...
We're executing billions of precise arithmetic instructions in order to make an LLM incorrectly evaluate 13*13. Complete madness!
x.com/yuntiandeng/...
Some days that's hot yoga or rock climbing or weightlifting or acrobat class (I live near Boston and can hook you up if you want) or kayaking but it is stuff that makes me feel happy and loved. And yeah I'm a power athlete not an endurance athlete and I'm ok with that.
I grew up thinking that the only way to be healthy and active was to be a runner and that was really unhelpful because I hate running. My life got better when I decided that exercise should be fun. Now I exercise all the time and I don't have to force myself.
