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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • I have a coworker who is essentially building a custom program in Sheets using AppScript, and has been using CGPT/Gemini the whole way.

    While this person has a basic grasp of the fundamentals, there’s a lot of missing information that gets filled in by the bots. Ultimately after enough fiddling, it will spit out usable code that works how it’s supposed to, but honestly it ends up taking significantly longer to guide the bot into making just the right solution for a given problem. Not to mention the code is just a mess - even though it works there’s no real consistency since it’s built across prompts.

    I’m confident that in this case and likely in plenty of other cases like it, the amount of time it takes to learn how to ask the bot the right questions in totality would be better spent just reading the documentation for whatever language is being used. At that point it might be worth it to spit out simple code that can be easily debugged.

    Ultimately, it just feels like you’re offloading complexity from one layer to the next, and in so doing quickly acquiring tech debt.






  • Unfortunately it’s burned into my memory one way or another, yet it still blends into the surrounding years.

    One of my best friends moved out of state and we went to Colorado to send him off, I got back and my dad was sick (not COVID at least), he passed away exactly a week before my birthday. The next month I went on a trip to Vegas through work (I was encouraged to keep the plan despite the circumstances… Ultimately it was a positive experience overall).

    A remarkable year personally in good ways and bad, but another stone in the stream of upheavals in recent years overall.




  • A little bit of cultural linguistics going on really. Even though the texts are also calling OOP gay and queer, and doing so with the same amount of vitriol as with the f-slur, they aren’t recognized as emotionally charged in the same way. All the other cursing is not hate speech per se as it’s not directly targeting any immutable characteristics.






  • I don’t think it’s just a feeling of futility - it’s true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it’s true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).

    Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.