dagw

The same way most of us review our compiler generated code today (ie not at all). If it works it works, if doesn't we fix the higher level input and try again. I won't be surprised if in a few more generation the AI will skip the human readable code step and generate ASTs directly.

For what it's worth, that's the entrance Google maps brought me to when I asked for walking directions to the Louvre when I was in Paris last.

I did not mean to disparage the craft of writing, by being imprecise with my own writing. My base assumption was that it should be easy, but if it is this easy, why is everybody freaking out?

I can easily tell code written by a novice programmer naively 'vibe coding' an app from code written by an experienced developer using AI to help him. Can a history professor tell the difference between a purely AI essay from one written by someone who knows what they're talking about, and is assisted by AI to make the essay better?

It's not really an East-West thing. Downtown Sofia for example has much better public transportation than many 'secondary' and rural towns in Germany and France.

Sure, but chickens raised in a small-scale $20k coop probably don't taste better than the same chickens raised in an equally sized $2k, or even $200, coop.

Where in Europe are you? Because I've always found food ridiculously cheap in the US compared to the Europeans countries I've lived in or visited for an extended enough period of time that I had to regularly go food shopping (Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Switzerland). You can get 3 chickens, each 3 times the size of the chickens I'm used to, for what I pay for 2 chicken breasts. Many restaurants will give you a serving that could feed a family of 4 for what I might pay for starter back home.

While I don't disagree with you per se, it is also worth remembering that most super popular places are super popular for a reason, and there often is a good reason to see it for yourself. I was indifferent towards Eiffel Tower for example, until I actually was in Paris and climbed up it and got to really see and experience the scale and design and engineering that went into building it up close. Now I get why the Eiffel Tower is considered impressive.

Same with Venice. You can read about it and look at pictures, but until I walked up and down all the streets and alleyways, and went into the old buildings, I never really got what a truly interesting and unique piece of urban planning Venice really is, and what efforts must have gone into building and maintaining it. Now when I read about the history of Venice it comes alive in a much different way than before I visited.

Same story with Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame, St Peter’s Basilica, most of the major art museums etc. etc.

So as much as dislike 'tourist traps' I'm at the same time super glad that I've gotten a chance to visit most of the big ones, and don't regret the time I had to spend to do so.

My 12 year old entry level sedan does all of that no problem.

A car might be necessity, but spending more than say $15-20k max on a (second hand) car is a discretionary expenses for the vast majority of people doing so.

From both an economic and quality of life point of view, you are better driving your car until it starts to get slightly unreliable and then quickly trade it in for a slightly newer used car. Buy a 5-10 year old car, drive it for 5-10 years, then trade it in for a 5-10 years old car is probably pretty close to an optimal strategy.

Secondly Docker only solves a subset of problems. It's fine if you're developing a server that you will be deploying somewhere. It's inconvenient if you're developing an end user application, and it's completely useless if you're developing a library you want people to be able to install.

I disagree. Had uv not followed these standards and instead gone off and done their completely own thing, it could not function as a drop in replacement for pip and venv and wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as much traction. I can use uv personally to work on projects that officially have to support pip and venv and have it all be transparent.

Modern PHP using the latest tools and frameworks and modern PHP best practices isn't too bad a language. Far from my favourite, but quite decent.

'Legacy' PHP on the other hand can be a nightmare, especially if it's a system that has been around since the PHP4/5 days and still written in style of the time. I would definitely stay away from that.

As to resume impact, I wouldn't overthink the language. Most decent companies care much more about what you where doing, than what language you where doing it in. Building a cutting edge micro service setup that scaled and performed really well (in PHP) should easily count in your favour.

Do those people still exist in any significant number? 10 years ago every teenager wanted to get into programming, now I hardly see any. The only one of my teenage kids' friends who shows any interest in studying CS at university or working as a programmer is a bonafide computer nerd.

Those "core standards" that you talk about didn't spring fully formed from the earth. They came about from competition and beating out and replacing the old "core standards" that lots of people argued very strongly for should not ever be replaced. When I was starting out my career I was told by experienced people that I should not learn to rely on the GNU tool features, since they're far from ubiquitous and probably won't be installed on most systems I'll be working on.