bpev

I like that flower vase. It looks like a radish.

ngl tbh I think that was my favorite FE game, so I'm glad if they make it easier for people to play

haven't died once yet!

Is their app big? fwiw on desktop, I just use their config with wireguard app, and that works quite well for me.

Mmm it sounds like you're using it in a very different way to me; by the time I'm using an LLM, I generally have way more than a general feel for what I'm looking for. People rag on ai for being a "fancy autocomplete", but that's literally what I like to use it for. I'll feed it a detailed spec for what I need, give it a skeleton function with type definitions, and tell the ai to fill it in. It generally fills in basic functions pretty well with that level of definition (ymmv depending on the scope of the function).

This lets me focus more on the code design/structure and validation, while the ai handles a decent amount of grunt work. And if it does a bad job, I would have written the spec and skeleton anyways, so it's more like bonus if it works. It's also very good at imitation, so it can help to avoid double-work with similar functionalities.

Kind of shortened/naive example of how I use:

/* Example of another db update function within the app */
/* UnifiedEventUpdate and UnifiedEvent type definitions */

Help me fill in this function

/// Updates event properties, and children:
///   - If `event.updated` is newer than existing, update as normal
///   - If `event.updated` is older than existing, error
///   - If no `event.updated` is provided, assume updated to be now()
/// For updating Content(s):
///   - If `content.id` exists, update the existing content
///   - If `content.id` does not exist, create a new content
///   - If an existing content isn't present, delete the content
pub fn update_event(
    conn: &mut Conn,
    event: UnifiedEventUpdate,
) -> Result<UnifiedEvent, Error> {

100%. As a solo dev who used to work corporate, I compare it to having a jr engineer who completes every task instantly. If you give it something well-documented and not too complex, it'll be perfect. If you give it something more complex or newer tech, it could work, but may have some mistakes or unadvised shortcuts.

I've also found it pretty good for when a dependency I'm evaluating has shit documentation. Not always correct, but sometimes it'll spit out some apis I didn't notice.

Edit: Oh also I should mention, I've found TDD is pretty good with ai. Since I'm building the tests anyways, it can often give the ai a good description of what you're looking for, and save some time.

Mmmm kind of? I wouldn't categorize most comments as describing "extremely weird" reasons, though. Code will generally explain the "how", while comments can describe the "why". For example, think of an enum with ViewSize "mini" and "full". It might be nice to have a comment to briefly summarize what ViewSize is meant to represent, and maybe link to a spec. Basically, a comment here will connect the intention with the implementation.

A more inline-comment example of this might be if there's a slightly nuanced case that you want to be very clear about, ala maybe a Javascript true/false/null case, where you might be checking === false, and specifically don't want someone to refactor it into a falsy check. Kind of contrived example , but that sort of thing. This is probably more the "extremely weird" comment you're talking about; almost just a warning that this might not be what you think it is.

The other common use-case I find good for comments is for summarizing the goals/purpose of a complex function. This is mostly for future people who might utilize this function, and don't want to read through a bunch of code, just to remember the nuances of what it's supposed to do. For example, a "sortEvents" function, you may want to summarize the business requirements of the sort at the top. Although, this kind of thing may be different depending on how documentation is stored.

Reminds me, Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" book had a section about his interesting observation that pro hockey players' birthdays are skewed to the earlier months of the year. He attributed that to a kind of butterfly effect:

1. Youth hockey leagues set league cutoffs by age, and mostly all start at the same time.
2. The early month kids are slightly older, bigger, and stronger
3. Since they are better at the very beginning, they get more playing time, more encouragement, maybe visit more "all-star" events, where they might get extra coaching, etc.
4. eventually those kids actually just become better, because they had a better environment to grow.

I mean idk how accurate this exact instance is, but I feel it's a good thought experiment in thinking of how seemingly insignificant parts of the environment (like when in the year all the youth hockey leagues start) can impact whatever talent is. The whole nature vs nurture thing.

My only thing I know about Salon is that at one point, they had a piece about how depressing it was to live in a hacker house, and I was like "wait. I lived in this exact apartment". I remembered the Pinterest guy who lived in the closet. That was slightly surreal.

Oh nonono don't worry about me! I'm just exaggerating and making up a dramatic story. Started writing and got carried away a little bit 😂. Luckily for me, I was always on good teams. But I did work in big companies long enough that I've definitely seen variations of this kind of thing play out.

Anyone got store recs for non-english books? Or that mostly just gonna vary a ton by language?