strawhatguy

True and I agree.

But I'll just say there's a reason why the phone app icon on smartphone is of a receiver, when fewer people have even seen one, and how it works is a bit different, despite the goal being the same.

We understand the new by comparisons to the existing.

64KiB is all anyone needs, wasn’t it?

Please. Yes the pricing sucks, but that means more capacity to build more computers will develop. It will equalize at some point. Crashing the data center boom in a vain attempt to get a cheaper pc is a) short-sighted and selfish and b) counterproductive, bans on data centers would almost guarantee permanent high prices, or lower performing parts.

Higher prices now pays for buildout of facilities which lowers prices later.

So they are

bluetooth audio is probably all one needs for phone <-> car integration. but carplay/android auto are sadly really popular. So already, your phone can connect in two different ways, just over bluetooth, with cars today. And car companies have to support both. Plus the car must show something on the screen when a phone isn't there, and the rear-view camera isn't on, at the very least on test drives/ showroom displays.

I don't know. On balance, the reality is cars are better overall nowadays, but every aspect of our life has gotten more complicated, including cars.

If you had the option of no screen at all, no rear-view camera, and with physical switches, would you? If this Slate truck gets released, that's the closest, but it's still required to have a rear-view camera/screen sadly.

Pretty much this. The less software on the car, the fewer problems.

It's practically impossible to test every permutation of code against every system. Maybe AI can help, but practically it'll just mean the software gets more complicated, with more features. And to top it all off, more and more features get regulated, so they have to be there. The rear-view camera requirement in particular, since you need a screen to see the output. And if you have a screen... well it's an already paid cost, so, might as well display other things too.

We should kill the reg.

It's one of the reasons the US military is so good. As a soldier, you know they will come for you, behind enemy lines, so you can fight like hell, knowing that your fellows have your back.

The gains in morale can not be underestimated.

Yes it's quite the blend!

There's probably a case for both. Core logic might benefit from hard types deep in the bowels of unchanging engine.

The real world often changes though, and more often than not the code has to adapt, regardless of how elegant are systems are designed.

I actually wonder about his conclusion that 50 years hence English will be unrecognizable.

There will be changes of course. Yet we are also more connected than ever, whereas the next town over would be a whole day trip in the past. The separation allows for more divergence.

Well, maybe if we get to Mars, differences might crop up again.

In fairness , Dickens is quite dry. My mind would wonder off.

In some sense, it's better these days, competition has led to care for the reader that probably didn't exist as much then, since so few people can read.

The alternative is one type, with many functions that can operate on that type.

Like how clojure basically uses maps everywhere and the whole standard library allows you to manipulate them in various ways.

The main problem with the many type approach is several same it worse similar types, all incompatible.

Iterating often is not helpful for stable systems over time.

I like go's library it's got pretty much everything needed out of the box for web server development. Backwards compatibility is important too.

But open source didn't do the Linux model. It did the GitHub model of open to anyone.

If anything the heirarchy of trust the Linux model uses will be more important now.

Possibly, but AIs might shift to more curated content, which has it's own dangers I suppose.

There are definitely challenges, but I've been around long enough now that we'll adapt, and muddle through.

The trouble will come from humans' reaction to the changes, less from the changes themselves

God please no. Do not involve government in this. That's a terrible terrible idea, and would do the opposite of intended.

It could push back more, true. Although it's role in pair programming is the driver, you are the navigator. I often begin a session with exploring and asking it questions of the code as I would a junior developer.

Saves this old man from typing anyway.

If all software could be as good as sqlite, I would not care how they do open source

Yes; yet... I thought the efficiency per compute has to do more with the nm process shrinking the die than anything else. That and power use is divided by so many more instructions per second

Actually, I wonder how they measured the 'speed' of coding, maybe I missed it. But if developers can spend more time thinking about the larger problems, that may be a cause of the slowdown. I guess it remains to be seen if the code quality or feature set improves.

Speaking just for myself, AI has allowed me to start doing projects that seemed daunting at first, as it automates much of the tedious act of actually typing code from the keyboard, and keeps me at a higher level.

But yes, I usually constrain my plans to one function, or one feature. Too much and it goes haywire.

I think a side benefit is that I think more about the problem itself, rather than the mechanisms of coding.

Yep, I can't trust software that has shone clear instructions to produce incorrect results, like Gemini did with it's image generation famously.

If nothing else, it means Gemini's team has priorities other than the results. Necessarily that means they will lag behind others who have clearer focus

Then the only way for Google to get ahead is to help promote regulation of AI to do what they're already doing. I know it's coming cuz regulators can't help themselves, but No thanks.

Okay. If you’re being vague, you get vague results.

Golang and Claude have worked well for me, on existing production codebases, because I tell it precisely what I want and it does it.

I’ve never found generic “find performance issues” just by reading the code helpful.

Write specifications, give it freedom to implement, and it can surprise you.

Hell once it thought of how to backfill existing data with the change I was making, completely unasked. And I’m like that’s awesome

You could fix versions, and probably should. However willful disregard of prior interfaces encourages developers code to follow suit.

It’s not like Clojure or Common Lisp, where a decades old software still runs, mostly unmodified, the same today, any changes mainly being code written for a different environment or even compiler implementation. This is largely because they take breaking user code way more seriously. Alot of code written in these languages seem to have similar timelessness too. Software can be “done”.

All I know is that claude code is pretty dang good, grok's nice for searching info, and Google's Gemini hasn't really been in my workflow at all. Neither chatgpt, beyond when it first came out.

Maybe I'm odd, but a Google search is even rare (usually use duck duck go) so I don't know, Google may have problems on it's hands. Possible anyway.

Spending is the issue. That money is spent on something, and it isn't (all) teaching either.

The chart in the link below shows employee vs students headcounts over 6 years. Even though student rolls went down almost all employment in the school system went up. Do we really need a +22% increase in Student Support Services when there are fewer students? Even teachers (only?) went up by 2.8% according to this (and again, students went down)? And why would librarians of all positions seem to be the ones whose positions were cut?

Basically, 'education' is nothing more than a jobs program for the politically connected, as clearly the focus is not on kids. And education is safe, because it's hard to argue against it, even if you're not talking about actual teachers.

Honestly I would expect if funding were cut, and particularly the admin, support, 'paraprofessional', and other non-teaching staff were fired, you'd find those test scores approach the pre-pandemic levels.

Will that happen? Of course not. These are politically connected people after all. We should all be angry.

https://x.com/johnfaig/status/2019108852365656477?s=20

Including Steve Yegge, is Gas Town orchestrator of LLMs is... wild. And complicated.

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

Edison Motors up in Canada is interesting, in the truck space.

Diesel EREV semis, and heavy-duty pickup modifications. Sounds like they're running into overregulation issues though.

This is how China gets ahead, because the West is dumb and thinks regulation helps. They've already dominated drones (since it's effectively illegal if not actually illegal in the States to make them), seems the same will happen with EVs.

EVs, as part of the world economy, aren't emissions-free either. Just at the tailpipe (or lack thereof). Rare-earth mining is very energy-intensive.

Every 5 years, there's a better battery in development 5 years hence. So I'm a bit skeptical that just a better battery would exclude hybrids. Any battery improvement would improve PHEV and EREV vehicles also, and they'd retain their advantage over straight EVs in range.

The advantages of these hybrids is a) using multiple fuels - has all of the main 80%-of-trips-local on electric range advantage of EVs, combined with an extended range of gas (and those gas engines run at optimum rpm, so they're more efficient too) and b) easier on the battery supply chain; they don't need as large batteries; batteries have more uses than just EVs, making all such products cheaper, including EREVs

The real disadvantage is the higher complexity, although EREVs do still get rid of the transmission gearing and other driveline components.

And of course, EREVs are probably the only solution for trucks and off-road vehicles. Edison Motors's diesel EREV for full trucks seems way more promising than Tesla's Semi (if Canada could stop over-regulating their startups, that is).