[object Object]
my favorite thing about the slop era is when you get an LLM booster really mad and they reveal the tasks they’re doing that can’t be accomplished without AI and it’s all really basic text editing they never learned to do properly
Jun 24 at 11:28pmWeb
Show thread[object Object]14h ago

6 decades of complex text editing environments designed by programmers for programmers and yet no use found for any features besides tapping the arrow keys hundreds of times a second, reaching for the mouse, and waiting for the gaslighting machine to come change your diaper

the first AI bubble (1960-1990 roughly) was also full of grifters and run by the biggest assholes in computing at the time (they’d be beaten by remarkable recent innovations in assholes and grifting) but at least we got really good text editors out of the deal

the fuck does cursor even do. does it have a point other than shitting config files into repos? are there any good bits remaining in vscode or is it all just emacs as imagined by the JavaScript-brained rewritten for grift and exploitation reasons by a slopbot?

Show thread[object Object]14h ago
for fuck’s sake can our software carpenters finally insist that everyone should learn to use a god damn hammer
Show threadRoger BW 😷14h ago
@zzt Yeah but it would be the PHP hammer with a claw on each side of the head.
Show threadtoerror13h ago
@RogerBW @zzt As a former sometime PHP-data paramedic, I must say, I feel seen.
Show threadRoger BW 😷13h ago
@toerror @zzt The reference, if you don't know it, is to the classic rant https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
PHP: a fractal of bad design

(This article has been translated into Spanish (PDF, with some additions) by Jorge Amado Soria Ramirez — thanks!) Preface I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of technology I don’t like, and that’s really to be expected—programming is a hilariously young discipline, and none of us

Show threadtoerror13h ago
@RogerBW @zzt I used to forward that article to people. A good craftsperson knows their tools ;-)
Show threadI AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥13h ago
@zzt
I just use this auto hammer. It just keeps swinging, but I put up a sign that the future homeowner needs to check its work. It'll be fine.
Show threadarclight13h ago
@zzt [drops a copy of Programming Perl on the desk] "Learn how to solve problems."
Show threadEndlessMason13h ago

@arclight @zzt
> I had a problem, so I decided to use regexes and now I have two problems

There's no reason to believe that the original problem is among the two problem you are left with...

For example:

"I figured out how to mangle the text, now I just need to deploy the script and set up monitoring"

Show threadMoses Izumi13h ago
@zzt
a general purpose OS that doesn't come with a development toolchain should be viewed with the same level of distaste/suspicion as a home that doesn't have a kitchen
Show threadThe Penguin of Evil9h ago
@moses_izumi @zzt MSDOS started that particular rot going mainstream
Show threadWellsiteGeo49m ago

@moses_izumi @zzt I get the analogy, but I don't think it's particularly good.

The level of skill and knowledge involved in cooking adequately is far lower than that involved in developing a programme. I have done programming in the past - it saved my mortgage once. But I never particularly liked it. Much the same as cooking - I cook adequately because it's less horrible than eating out.

Show thread🤯Matera the Mad🤯13h ago
@zzt You know, of course, that then they'll constantly be asking which end of the nail....
Show threadEmelia/Emi13h ago

@zzt Honestly, aside from the bones being absolute shit, and microsoft fucking it up by being microsoft, vscode (pre-slop) is actually a pretty reasonable IDE design from 500 feet up if they didn't have a whole bunch of "oops you have malware now" footguns with the "extensions" system. (There are quite a few "extensions" that should be first-party modules, or be combined together as one extension. In what world would you want java support without a debugger?)

Splitting everything language-specific out into separate packages and "language servers" makes it a lot easier to avoid needing to reinvent the UI every time someone comes up with a new language or packaging system.

But being based on chrome of all fucking things? Yeah No. I've had so many performance issues relating to it being a "browser app" that it's genuinely surprising it's still "the best" free option...

(For my personal stuff, I prefer using gedit with a terminal, and just living without intellisense...)

Show threadJon11h ago

@zzt sometimes I feel a bit behind, using a text editor written in 1980 that has not evolved much since then. Except that it works.

Probably should add UTF-8 support some day, though.

Show threadMax1h ago
@zzt I almost got into a fist fight with a colleague over answering “Doesn’t it make you so much more productive?” with “Not really *that* much, I already knew how to use multi-cursor in VS Code and I already knew vim for when that wasn’t enough.”
Show threadFinFangFoomed1d ago

@zzt 80% of the time people describing what they have AI do just makes them sound like boomers that can't even open a pdf.

"I'm a coder... but cawanders and email are hawd..." /BabyVoice

Show threadmathew8h ago
@FinFangFoomed @zzt I recently saw a distro maintainer list the time-consuming tasks that they use an LLM for. One was to reformat a whitespace-separated list into a newline-separated list.
Show threadOzzelot 7h ago
@mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt strange, i could swear they teach sed in any linux 101 class
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EA7h ago
@ozzelot @mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt or tr if you’re not big on sed. Or Find and Replace in their graphical IDE…
Show threadFinFangFoomed7h ago
@c0dec0dec0de @ozzelot @mathew @zzt whoa whoa whoa guys. I don't have the token budget left to pay you guys for all these answers!
Show threadmx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)7h ago
@mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt we keep seeing actual linux system administrators going "me and claude are good at writing shell scripts" and we look at the scripts and theyre unilateral garbage full of puffery that can be replaced with two calls
Show threadschrotthaufen7h ago
@atax1a @mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt Every now and then I have to tell people I won’t merge their Ansible roles, or playbooks, because they’re just
```
- shell: foo
- shell: bar
etc
```
And then I have to hand hold them through writing proper Ansible to preserve my sanity. (I don’t mind teaching, but I’d rather they just ask me to do so.)
Those are presumably smart people! They all have at least a B.Sc. in CS, or infosec. (Yeah I know a degree says nothing about intelligence.)
Show threadF4GRX Sébastien7h ago
@atax1a @mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt i HATE that "claude" is more and more considered as a person they work with. It makes me puke every time. Thats fucking awful. It's a slop extruder as dumb as chatgpt. It was named on purpose by anthropic of course, which is why I hate that even more.
Show threadF4GRX Sébastien7h ago

@atax1a @mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt today a customer criticized the documentation delivery of my colleague as "verbose and hard to follow when a simple annotated drawing could have been much better"

Guess how they did the doc

IT MADE ME SO HAPPY

Show threadBrett Edmond Carlock7h ago
@mathew
@FinFangFoomed @zzt
I use CTRL+R in MousePad for that 🤣
Show threadarestelle1h ago
@mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt the rapidity with which people use these things to melt their own brains is impressive
Show threadrk: it’s hyphen-minus actually1h ago

@mathew @FinFangFoomed @zzt

People will literally boil the oceans to avoid learning awk.

Show threadDieu13h ago
@zzt I normally don't concern myself with such depravity, but this sounds fun! Do you have concrete examples?
Show threadÖlbaum5h ago

@hllizi @zzt “I’m trying to make chatgpt generate python classes for the OpenAI API from the Open API definition file.”

My dude, there are a hundred libraries that do this automatically without AI. That’s why Open API was created.

Show threadKen Franqueiro10h ago
@zzt I remember the first time I saw a bsky thread making salient points about LLMs where someone replied "yeah I only use it for code formatting" and ... excuse me what
Show thread[object Object]9h ago
@kgf no other option to format code other than the machine that takes as its inputs an entire internet worth of plagiarized content, enough power to take care of the needs of an entire country, and a begging pleading prompt, and outputs a catastrophic amount of pollution and code that notoriously isn’t formatted consistently
Show thread[object Object]9h ago
@kgf …god I just realized, there’s almost a 100% chance the LLM is just calling an existing formatter on its output, after burning down a rainforest to parse the prompt
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EA7h ago
@zzt @kgf if you’re lucky, if calls out
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EA7h ago
@zzt “I need to get a value out of json sometimes”
And you don’t want to use jq or write a little Python script to do it because?
Show thread[object Object]7h ago
@c0dec0dec0de trick question, nobody gets value out of json
Show threadOzzelot 7h ago
@zzt @c0dec0dec0de not even the goose?
Show thread[object Object]7h ago
@ozzelot @c0dec0dec0de it was the goose that created value and it is the goose that will destroy it
Show threadOzzelot 7h ago
@zzt @c0dec0dec0de Too long has Softbank forgotten the power of the goose
Show threadJohannes Hostert5h ago
@zzt @ozzelot @c0dec0dec0de the goose gave, and the goose has taken away; blessed be the name of the goose
Show threadOzzelot 5h ago
@jhostert
Everyone should have a goose that can make anything including more geese! I, Josef Goosa, will call it the PrusaGoose!
@zzt @c0dec0dec0de
Show threadOzzelot 5h ago
@jhostert
(a few generations later)
The cloaca is proprietary now, I blame Chinese geese
@zzt @c0dec0dec0de
Show threadCap Ybarra7h ago
@c0dec0dec0de @zzt writing a script is for nerds, i need something that only works sometimes and costs $1000 per run to feel anything
Show thread[object Object]7h ago
@cap_ybarra @c0dec0dec0de how could the nootropics and young blood transfusions crowd ever conceive of this
Show threadCap Ybarra7h ago
@zzt @c0dec0dec0de it would be in one of those books they have an llm summarize in one sentence
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EA5h ago
@cap_ybarra @zzt one of the lesser reasons that I want a fairer world is so that the people who hate the kind of work I do no longer feel compelled to do this work because it pays well. If you hate computers (all of the time and not just some of the time, let’s be real), you shouldn’t be (semi-forced to do) programming and doing ops.
Show threadCap Ybarra5h ago
@c0dec0dec0de @zzt 1000% this, hear hear
Show threadhaihappen7h ago
@zzt I encounter users that seem to feel really smart saying stuff like "claude is your friend for that". No it isn't, but making them understand is difficult. They told themself it "works", because it hasn't bitten them yet (imo).