_proofs

this is the ideal but does not appear to really be the practice -- regardless of whether you're applying direct or not.

where does the condescension come from? the loftiness/lording over people who "just don't get it", that clearly comes across in your communication?

this is a really non-productive comment. you have an opportunity to teach and share knowledge but instead you hoard and condescend, and rant about your implied superiority.

if so many programmers don't understand -- what's more productive: this comment, or helping "most programmers" to get it, and understand?

this sounds like the modern, more privileged version of the coal mine's "company shop", and all the dependencies that industry created as "nice gestures" to their employees just to keep them around and on-site as much as possible.

Delve was also an addition to PoE, which I imagine had its own spike in google searches relative to that word.

just because something can generate an output for you, does not make a need for discernment and application obsolete.

like another commenter, i do not have a lot of faith, that people who do not have at minimum: fundamental fluency in programming (even with a dash of general software architecture and practices).

there is no "push button generate and glueing components together in a way that can survive at scale and be maintainable" without knowing what the output means, and implies with respect to integration(s).

however, those with the fluency, domain, and experience, will thrive, and continue thriving.

HN is absolutely social media, it's just attempting to blend aggregator with online forum.

you can network, dm, and users who post frequently are often recognized here.

you can doom-scroll as much as anywhere else whether it be in the feed or in the comments (so long as you don't have a bias towards different mediums like video).

and also while it might not meet your criteria for social media algorithmically or otherwise, an algorithm is not necessary for someone to engage with the internet in unhealthy ways. the surface area for emotional damage is just different. and that doesn't imply HN is some special place where the only users engaging here are "emotionally well" in both their engagement/usage, and in their personal.

and speaking as someone intimately familiar with relevant behaviors and presentations, the algorithm exerts influence and exploits, but it is ultimately not the RCA -- it's just like a drug dependency for someone with maladaptive coping mechanisms -- the drug isn't "the problem", it's a symptom, and the "drug dealer" is taking advantage of it.

side-thought:

it always makes me wonder if people manufacturing and distributing what i see as a "need" for social media, while employing HOOKED marketing dopamine strategies to establish said need in its users, ever ask themselves: is this a net-good? should i be doing more with my life? is this harmful?

imagine being a demonstrably great mind and seemingly great person, but working somewhere like FB or IG or TikTok and applying every ounce of your intelligence to maximize user engagement.

i am not sure i see a use case where that precondition is anything but mandatory (and at least a requirement in app space for the related data), if youre intending on making practical use of the algo.

if theres a risk that your input is unstable in ordering, then reaching for bsearch seems like a "premature optimization", and youd be better off with a straightforward linear scan until requirements (or your kanguage of choice's bst/heap/rbt equivalent), or data is preprocessed upstream in a way that makes sense for the contexts wanting to use it.

fair point, and i think i can appreciate more where you are coming from now.

however i do not think the alternatives need to be proposed at this moment in time because right now, the discussion is about holding people who intentionally reframe and misuse words accountable for their "double-speak" given the term's precedent.

conventionally, and by historical collective understanding, it is not open source.

i get you are attempting to highlight AI perhaps means this should be a definition reconsidered, but the irony here is the message itself is distorted due to the conflation, hence why consistency in language to me seems self-evident as a net good.

there is most certainly a difference between naturally occurring (which our brains reeeally support in terms of language development and symbolic communication), and manufactured (and therefore pushing for a word, or more aptly, a perspective's adoption).

i'd rather words manifest through a common need to reach mutual understanding as a means to relate to one another and this world, rather than having someone who stands to benefit from the change in definition, tell me what it means, and then expect me to just "agree", while they campaign around that and pretend it's the established definition (and not actually their own revised version).

it'd be one thing if people who were throwing the term around so loosely would be transparent: "Hey, we know this isn't historically what everyone means by OSS, but... that's OSS your OSS this is OSS, everything is OSS

instead a lot of these narratives are standing on the shoulders of the original definition and context of what it means to be OSS, and therefore the pedigree, implications (and whatever else for PR spin/influence), and simultaneously diluting what it means in the process as the definition gets further and further obfuscated by those influencing the change, and its pedigree is relied on as a distraction away from what is being done, or actually said.

you are wildly conflating the difference between a naturally occurring evolution in a word's usage and meaning (ie: slang becomes canon becomes slang cycle), and intentionally misusing an existing, established meaning, and then pushing for that misuse (and misunderstanding) to become canon.

one is pragmatic, ergonomic, and motivated by advancing relationships between communicating persons in a naturally occurring way because the common denominator is a quick race to mutual understanding.

the other is manufactured, and not motivated by relation and advancing communication, but by how the shift in understanding benefits the one pushing for it, and often involves telling people how to think but is doing it through subversion.

could not have said it more succinctly, imo.

i'm inclined to believe Orwell would have disagreed with OP, and would be asking himself -- why is there such a distinct push by those who benefit from the reframing, to reframe what Open Source means (compared to its already established meaning).

imo, this is patently not what Orwell documented and criticized via narrative example, and certainly was not what i took as his position on the evolution of naturally occurring languages, in the alluded to book -- he is a writer, and i imagine no doubt understands the importance of language and shared associations, and what it means for a language to naturally evolve its vernacular (accepted, common, or developing) -- through usage, or otherwise.

Orwell highlighted and warned against the consequences of people in influential positions of power intentionally distorting the collective associations with their new, updated versions of existing words, campaigning around those distortions, and intentionally reframing associations over time such that, the associations are polarizing and obfuscated, motivated by manipulation to benefit a select few, not motivated by advancing communication -- it certainly was not an example of society and its language naturally evolving "definitions" through usage.

and the novel wasn't a criticism against slang, or association/vernacular changing/evolving over time throughout collective use, nor was it a stance on requiring fixed, permanent, unwavering definitions -- it only emphasized how important it is to have consistent meaning.

he just wanted to encourage people to be skeptical of those pushing for the "different" or updated meaning of words, that clearly had a well-defined context, and association, previously -- why are they so dedicated and determined to "push" for a new meaning to get accepted, when there is a previously established and well accepted meaning already.

that doesn't sound natural to me, that sounds manufactured.

idk man intentionally adding a "truth" bias indirectly denies a lot of human existence and experiences -- it is inherently invalidating, and i am not totally sure just how much of it is good for intellectual pursuit (and also in reaching improved, collective understandings).

this is not me saying there's zero benefit to moderated dialogues, but what's better for overall intellectual pursuits? a dialogue that's inviting, or one that always coldly and dismissively rejects all opposing beliefs or understandings?

i have recently learned, that dialogues seem to benefit from communication and spaces that are supportive and empathetic in their approach to first understanding differences in reality and experiences, before entering discussions on truth and objective realities, and therefore confronting and challenging, and at times overcoming what are limiting beliefs -- from the irrational to the rational.

there's empiricism around this as well (SET: a framework for communicating with people who have vastly different experiences than you, including those labeled "delusional") -- it frames Support and Empathy as the necessary foundations in any dialogue, before one can discuss the difference in each party's Truth.

i'm not so sure the whole categorically "you have less right to sit at this table because i've judged your experience as non-real, and therefore less relevant) is compassionate communication, nor productive when systematically, algorithmically applied.

as someone who suffers similar experiences, especially ocd related to nail-biting and rumination/adhd rabbit-holes, something i've adopted is a shift in attitude: i decided a while ago i was going to stop punishing or shaming myself for what my brain finds interesting or worth pursuing (ie: the "rabbit-hole", the fixation, the current dopamine drip).

most of the time my rabbit holes are pragmatic and related to a hobby, skill, or educational/learning.

but sometimes the rabbit holes are escapism -- and instead of telling myself this is wasted time, i've tried to develop a more cooperative relationship w my feelings and my brain --the brain, the body, perhaps the "spirit" was in need of rest, and it recuperates in ways that generally are creature comforts (maybe reading or Netflix binges or video games and chess or sleeping for me, YMMV w.r.t. "meaningless" activities).

this has mitigated a lot of the existential dread i previously would experience, especially in how i relate to perceived "wasted time".

obviously this is my experience and i do not mean to imply the above anecdote as being a prescriptive change, but the existential dilemmas i'd find myself in due to whatever neuro divergence i demonstrate, have gotten a lot less frequent, and i find myself enjoying these experiences, and therefore appreciating my rabbit-holes more and more over time. or rather, appreciating my brain, and my experiences overall.

i've tried the preventative and/or tried fighting "against the current", so to speak, and it always left me exhausted, depressed, despairing, lamenting, and floating back the way i came, so i kinda said fuck it, built myself a raft that i strengthen over time, and just navigate the waters as they come.

edit: i realize i drifted away from the original topic -- i've had the opposite experience with the internet. while it has contributed to me consuming otherwise "meaningless" content from time to time for no other reason than wanting to be a couch potate, i have benefitted from the ease of access to information in such a crazy fucking way, especially with platforms like youtube (and forums, or aggregators) -- i mean we effectively have libraries in various forms and abstractions at our fingertips. yes it means accessible vectors for distraction, but man -- it's single-handedly the one tool my life has benefitted the most from using -- and that includes some of the listed pursuits involving networking, relationship building/socializing, my career, my "real-world" interests and experiences, good, bad, and everything in between.

i'd say reddit is a pretty great example, twitter, even instagram or facebook comments, where bot generated traffic and comments are a norm.

you have plenty of bot or "AI/LLM" generated content, that is consumed -- up to and including things like "news".

as for the comment about movies, i'm confused -- CGI has been a thing for a long time, and "AI" has been used to convey aging or how a person might look given some conditions, on screen, as well as a whole host of things.

while this might not be an LLM, it is certainly computer generated, predictive, and artificially generated.

holy fuck can we please stop letting circumstances be the excuse we continuously fall back on, when enabling and reinforcing behavior with long-term impact and consequences.

imagine all of the times in history where this type of enabling of behavior reached an extreme, and now ask yourself where do you draw the line.

are you really asking me to enjoy the growing consequences of corporate overreach in the name of data, and all the sketchy ass, unethical, and invasive work all these foreign engineers are getting paid ridiculous salaries to propogate, and feel good about being held hostage because said engineers.. don't have a home.

so we are supposed to enable them to wreck mine (ours)?

you mean the same woman who has campaigned against, fear-mongered the risks of encryption vs. authority, and rallied for full control over software implementation(s) used by the public (and available to law enforcement/government et. al)?

while she has admirable sympathies and even consistent policy, she has clearly demonstrated she's not opposed to pushing an agenda she does not understand.

i feel it is worth pointing out, as another commenter highlighted, language and even symbolic more abstract languages, bring about fluency if you've practiced "speaking and writing" it enough.

i think native speakers hardly "think" about the steps necessary to form a grammatically correct expression, and most of the time just "know".

fluency is not the same as lacking an internal framework for interpreting or thinking in terms of, symbols.

this is actually a fantastic comment and as someone who thinks more visually, was greatly appreciated. thank you.

if i'm trying to practice problem solving, why would i feed my problem into something that's going to spit out -- in the best case -- suggestions depending on the completed-ness of my input, and worse case: a proposed solution.

if i'm trying to practice handwriting -- why would i use a type writer, or word processor?

i am not sure how using a machine to do the work you're trying to practice makes you better at that practice, since it's doing the.. mechanics.. for you.

as another commenter pointed out i feel there is a distinction between programmer vs. software engineer just as there is a distinction between writing and say, novelist.

i understand the notion of practicing, and getting better at an evolved workflow for producing results -- but we're practicing foundational skills, not trying to reduce everything simply to achieving results by any means necessary.

i feel that producing results without understanding is a short-sighted investment, and not exactly the point of AoC imo.

herb has a talk where he describes its rationale.

it is known as sticky syntax in relation to auto (but specifically when the type on the rhs is explicitly declared and not abstracted away with a function signature)

it removes narrowing, inference, while keeping benefits of auto related to inits etc.

it's a way of telling the compiler we want this type moving forward and adheres to the convention of right-to-left reading w.r.t. resource allocation semantics C++ programmers are often accustomed to.

while i appreciate the comment about games, i think it is worth considering the relationship between creativity and ego, and what happens when you take yourself, and your ideas, too seriously.

john gleese has a great take on creativity which i believe to be a fair criticism of what happens when you take yourself too seriously in business.

this is a strange take for me to read -- i've written quite a decent amount of lua, and it is the first language i used to learn (zero programming experience prior)

when i eventually got exposed to python (but more heavily C/C++, and even some lisp/pascal) and came back to lua, i was grateful lua did not inundate me with parens/primitives/modules/data-structures/grammars, and found the flexibility of the interpreter and also what lua tables present as a unified primitive for multiple container types to be so nice and accessible for getting right to flow-state.

i did not have to look up another API and read about a set of semantics provided with a desired module, i just needed to know 1. what i want to achieve and 2. a single API: the lua table

its small std library is performant and easy on the cognitive load, and then it plays so nicely with other languages and environments.

have you written much lua?

this feels like a straw-man to deflect away from the actual point.

i really wish your message met my standards, so i am just going to put my fingers in my ears until it does.

..hyperbole aside..

semantics are important, but only when definitions need to be clear.

anything else is just darma battles for the sake of darma battles, and avoiding the discussion.

"comply or else -- no matter what."

i hate that i see these kinds of authoritarian, victim-blaming takes when it comes to the implicit "establishing law and order" -- you did not deserve to die, but allow me to imply you deserved to die (because of your transgressions).

the cognitive dissonance is so real this almost reads like satire.

if you're on android materialistic is p good.

there is an inherent social contract w.r.t. freedom and the societal notion of collective liberty -- freedom provides agency to both good and bad actors.

a free society implicitly accepts this as a risk-reward in order to maximize freedom, therefore a social contract.

and the social contract boils down to a government's obligation to secure its citizens (dependent on the boundaries of the implied social contract and what its participants agree to), and whether or not the balance between security and freedom is agreeable for parties involved.

constantly advocating for more security, at all costs, in order to stop "the bad guy", and then presenting a straw man to rhetorically justify it by asking: how else do we stop the bad guys, is authoritarian, anti-freedom, and patronizing.

freedom has an inherent risk of, well, freedom.

law was a construct designed for accountability, not deterrence, nor prevention because its [modern] philosophical (post french revolution) motivation is centered around optimizing for freedom (ie: political liberalism) and recognizing that actors will act -- it just attempts to add the checks and balance idea which attempts to ensure (that is, uphold a social contract), that bad actors are held accountable for their (free) actions.

you'll never be able to magically "legislate" away bad actors, but you can certainly attempt to "control" them, which presents a very, very large slippery slope of positive and negative definitions, and nuances around objective suspicion and other faculties used for discernment w.r.t. bad actors -- all of which directly violate the philosophical (US) notion of innocence until proven guilty, and very much so move away from any kind of scale where freedom is (attempted to be) balanced.

if you want freedom, you can't just erode the social norms built on foundations of trust, agency, and liberty in order to prevent bad actors from acting freely -- what you're calling for is not a free society by definition, because it seeks to mitigate and or prevent agency before it happens (reminds me of Minorty Report), which is restrictive and anti-thetical to freedom.

freedom comes at a price. freedom is (not) slavery, and i have no interest in participating in a social contract that binds me to chains through freedom risk-averse framings of governance.

while i feel as if i largely understand what you're pointing out, i kinda want to offer my own speculation as a SWE who is very guilty in thinking in terms of sequence diagrams (and also more formal UML) -- sometimes UML is so fucking bogged down with (impl) details, i am just over here going "i don't give a shit about the (impl) details, i just want to know the abstract concept(s), and logical flows, and focus on necessary system interactions" -- bc i can (and should at this stage) worry about (impl) details later.

i prefer to reason about a system and component relationships using, say, a single word as representation, instead of glaring at one or many inheritance directionals, interface details, and other "field" information, which is usually conveyed in a UML node.

i do not think the lack of formalism is a degradation -- we work with abstractions after-all, so it makes sense to further leverage that fact and express things simply, at a high-level, and straight-forwardly -- you can pack a lot into a single word.

of course as the nature of any tool, there is a time and a place for its application. but i don't think it is fair to call it a degradation.

"the things that you love should be the things that you do, and the things that you do should be the things that you love."

-r. b.

i politely disagree. as another commenter pointed out it depends on the size and overall subreddit visibility.

you can find visible and recognized posters just like you would any online forum in smaller subreddits centered around a thing like writing, programming, music.

check out r/zen for example where there is absolutely an infamous user: ewk and quite a few other regs who engage him in healthy (and perhaps.. toxic, depending on your worldview) discussion(s).

i paid for sync moons ago and have used it exclusively to browse reddit, even going so far as to resign myself to android to use it (and also to use Materialistic) because of how much i favor the experience, configurability, and UX -- it is infinitely better than any app i have tried. admittedly i might be an outlier as i have no interest in browsing on desktop and very much prefer to reddit on mobile.

this is a sad day for me as it likely means my reddit usage will drop to almost zero.

R. I. fucking P.