hyperthesis

I think thought is different; but I also see no barrier to strong AI. Jobs might be the least of our problems at that point.

leftpad

To be really fair, there are levels of programming. The easiest level is traditionally vulnerable to automation. There's a lot of "accidental complexity" (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet), e.g. ffmpeg, git; even in recalling syntax and idiom of an infrequently used tool, e.g. bash, jq.

Once upon a time, developers had to pore over manpages, paper textbooks, or memorize it. Then came google. Next, stackexchange. And now GPT-4 - which is kind of a search engine plus rudimentary synthesis.

But let's be clear. This is low-hanging fruit. It's a poor substitute for actual thought. And surely we are safe.

Aren't most DEs not solvable analytically? i.e. only a tiny subset are neatly solvable - like precisely manufactured puzzles. In general, for any real problem you encounter "in the wild", numerical methods are the only way to find solutions (which are approximate).

DE theory is still useful for designing frameworks within which numerical methods can operate.

At least, that's my understanding.

costs != damages

> limit damage of big brain developer early in project by giving them thing like UML diagram

Ah so this is the purpose of UML!

> but grug must to grug be true

If we Idefine* mathematics as proving statements, then Elements is the first text we know of.

If we define mathematics as, e.g. counting, it is much older.

(It's interesting that mathematics is commonly thought of today by most people as to do with numbers, yet Elements is geometry.)

When LLMs are good enough, they will do the science of understanding LLMs for us. And all other decisions.

but consider the standard used for water grid 'hardening': 1-in-100-year flood

  I used to *enjoy* doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to *play* with it.  I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.

https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/kilcup.1/262/feynman.html

Greater uptake -> more data -> better AI

If anything is going to be based on how good the tech is, it's this.

The feedback-evaluation of you also must be evaluated.

When explanations include superfluous detail, I find it very confusing. Like Chekhov's gun, I keep trying to fit it into the plot but it doesn't fit.

My super power is a terrible memory. So I have to understand things in order to remember them (aka a cognitive compression). I can't just learn things like normal people.

Agree it's closer but still an instance.

I think if you're engaged with what you do, you will learn and develop more than if not.

OTOH there seems to be a developmental window for some specific skills, e.g. phoneme acquisition 6-12 months; (human) language acquisition < 7 years.

Maybe not change you, but become mistaken as to who you are.

But who is anyone, anyway? How do you know? Is the old advice is profound or meaningless:

  Temet Nosce

Feynman on the turn-adapting bit https://youtube.com/watch?v=y7h4OtFDnYE

For their pick() example:

  jq -n '{"a": 1, "b": {"c": 2, "d": 3}, "e": 4} | pick(.a, .b.c, .x)

wouldn't a more jq-y syntax be:

  | {a, b.c, x}

(which fails on the 'b.c' term)

There's a spectrum of difficulty (of problems, not just within them as you note). Low code helps the low end.

I'm surprised TFA implies spreadsheets aren't still dominant.

Yeah, I think "mettle" here is like a sword and shield and the ability to use them (read and understand scientific literature, and able to do so, self-directed, for years).

But whether a person does use them, and for what, is entirely due to the person themselves.

When you owe the bank enough money, and you can't pay... you don't have a problem. The bank has a problem.

They're normal.

When our first ancestor stood upright, a right angle was formed with the ground.

A hand axe, a knapped stone lashed at right angles to a branch.

Some say fire or dogs are humanity's first and greatest inventions - but we only domesticated those.

I say weaving: an extraordinary crossing of threads at right angles that magically support each other, clothing that is the biblical coming-or-age of human-kind, fabric that drapes organically (and is still used today, even as threads become artificial), rope, leaves for shelter, even decorating hair.

And it directly lead to the single greatest invention of our time, that binds all things together: gaffer tape.

Here's my working for that problem.

Because it's a puzzle, it will be in the form sqrt(x^2), so the answer will be x.

The only perfect square I know for this level that could match is (a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b. With b=1, the first term needs to be in the form a^2 + 2a or a(a+2).

I had no intutition for what this could be, then noticed it needs to be close to a perfect square itself, and this closest to this would be the two inner factors times the two outer factors (for it to work out neatly). Writing as binomils for ease of calculation:

  ((1000+0)(1000+3))   ((1000+1)(1000+2))
  (1,000,000 + 3000)   (1,000,000 + 3000 + 2)

This is the form sought! (with a=1,000,000 + 3000). It works because 0+3=1+2. So we have

  sqrt( (1,000,000 + 3000) + 1)^2 ) = 1,000,000+3000+1 = 1,003,001

A recent example (https://youtube.com/watch?v=KwIFM5cwMF4): calculate

  sqrt( (1000)(1001)(1002)(1003) +1 )

It's been an engaging way to refresh the basics, and practice them. It's also a nicely paced drip-feed, and has answers for when I get stuck.

Like high-school math problems, they are manufactured puzzles (i.e. with a neat solution), which narrows the search space and tells you if you are on the right track. But unlike those, these have 2-3 tricks, so you get no feedback after the first step. It seems a bit like NP-complexity: hard to find the method; easy to check.

I'm sure there are many math olympians here on HN (and winners), who would find these unchallenging. Speaking for myself, I can do most in my head, and most of the remainder on paper - when I need their answer is when I learn the most.

A maybe-criticism: the answers are very clear, but they don't say why those steps were chosen. To me, the channel is more like a slightly-cleverer peer, rather than a super-genius master. Sometimes I find a better method, and it becomes a springboard for related ideas. And all that might well be better for learning.

A big problem is you lose all the case law that interprets the law. Like discarding two centuries of bug reports and patches.

At the same time, laws have been codified (i.e. the case law rewritten coherently, combining all the patches combined), such as the Uniform Commercial Code.

World's greatest detective? Independently wealthy?

You clearly are more informed than me, but my experience was from randomly reading pages. Maybe I got lucky. Though I recall one page with long lists of ancestry, x begat y - similar to a telephone book as you mention.

java will continue for 28 years; c much longer; and when both are long gone, lisp and fortran will still be here.

Every page of the KJB seems to have a phrase that has entered the language (e.g. give up the ghost) - though I can't be sure that those phrases weren't already popular and merely recorded.