In the good old days of 2011 when I started to learn C++ "for real" I did it using learncpp.com, google and "support" from freenode's #c++ where truly masterful wizards would help me with the most inane questions. I don't think anything I've ever found has come close to freenode's level of "support".

In the old days where we didn't depend on services and everything was local even if you needed something truly arcane if you knew where to ask you could find a niche expert willing to help out or at least that's how I remember it. Nowadays if you have a problem with a service you literally are shit out of luck because there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it, you can't debug it, you can't hack it, NOTHING.

I truly miss those days. Programming forums from the turn of the millennium were very exciting places. I still have my account on Linux Forums from 2004, but it seems the rest are long gone. And no one will ever convince me that Discord is an adequate replacement for IRC.

well if your solution is to eat beans with 3/4 meals and I STILL need to social distance for a few months while I acclimate then that's not really the best solution now is it?

Yeah, you don’t run a marathon on your first run. You ramp up the intake slowly as your body adapts, like anything. If you are unlucky, this takes a long time or never happens because you rolled a bad microbiome. But for most people, this works fine.

In my case or a lot of people's cases.. I eat beans to save money and if I have to save money now.. months of adaptation isn't gonna cut it

I'd guess you might get more prosocial results by ramping up slowly. Start eating beans twice a day, but start with very small portions.

> I'd rather live in a country without a million cameras

Are you talking about the US or China? https://deflock.org/

China at least banned the use of facial recognition in public spaces by their supreme court in 2021 (and then further strengthened the ban in 2024 and also got the PIPL).

If you're thinking of the "social credit" system please know that that's just an online meme. China's credit score system is not even nationalized and not nearly as invasive as the US's credit score system, which can sometimes determine whether or not someone is allowed to buy a house.

Besides their own credit score system, the other thing that sometimes gets labelled the "social credit system" was an attempt they had to track the behavior of business leaders and elected politicians. Basically anyone who holds social power but not the common person. This also never really took off and was not ever nationalized/centralized.

> I'd rather live in a country without a million cameras that automatically fine me for crossing the street illegally

Agreed, but there again, the democracies have surveillance capitalism, it's not exactly like we're not being tracked.

You let Trump and all the tech-bro shitheads win with that attitude unfortunately. Democracy is an ongoing battle.

Same where I'm from, it's in pill / capsule form

that could make a for a nice blog / gist

Arrogance / hubris. Some people even if they know it's rigged will believe they know which side the insiders are on

I suspect it means it's LLM generated without it being checked

Maybe to get a real breakthrough we have to make programming languages / tools better suited for LLM strengths not fuss so much about making it write code we like. What we need is correct code not nice looking code.

> programming languages / tools better suited for LLM strengths

The bitter lesson is that the best languages / tools are the ones for which the most quality training data exists, and that's pretty much necessarily the same languages / tools most commonly used by humans.

> Correct code not nice looking code

"Nice looking" is subjective, but simple, clear, readable code is just as important as ever for projects to be long-term successful. Arguably even more so. The aphorism about code being read much more often than it's written applies to LLMs "reading" code as well. They can go over the complexity cliff very fast. Just look at OpenClaw.

>> simple, clear, readable code is just as important as ever for projects to be long-term successful

Is it though? I'm a long-time code purist, but I am beginning to wonder about the assumptions underlying our vocation.

I guess it's hard to tell until we see more long-term AI-generated project, but many of the ones we have so far (OpenClaw and OpenCode for instance) are well-known for their stability issues, and it seems "even more AI" is not about to fix that.

If you can’t validate the code, you can’t tell if it’s correct.

No?

That's literally the thing they suggested to move away from. That is just an issue when using tools designed for us.

Make them write in formal verification languages and we only have to understand the types.

To be clear, I don't think this is a good idea, at least not yet, but we do not have to always understand the code.

Lean might be a step in that direction.

Yes yes

Let it write a black box no human understands. Give the means of production away.

I have never met an uncreative kid, and studies show kids tend to be more open and creative. But I have to admit I haven't met and interacted with that many average kids, so there maybe some that aren't creative, but a majority are.

Sure and all the same, most people just don't have it.