Alfred M. Szmidt

@amszmidt
379 Followers
500 Following
7.4K Posts

software freedom or bust / lisp machine revolutionary / sauerpunk gnu hacker / wizard of zymurgy / professional curmudgeon

#LispM #LispMachine #GNU

WEBSITEhttps://tumbleweed.nu/~ams/
LM-3 (MIT CADR, Lisp Machine)https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/
@jcs Can confirm. @amszmidt
Gulf allies warn Trump they may yank tens of billions in US investments, leaving his “freaked out” team scrambling as the Strait of Hormuz chokes oil cash.

Trump admin 'freaked out' as I...
Trump admin 'freaked out' as Iran war threatens to pull plug on president's pet project

President Donald Trump and his associates are scared that the war in Iran is going to derail one of the president's proudest and most frequently-touted accomplishments since retaking office: the hundreds of billions, or trillions, of dollars he has supposedly secured for the United States in foreign...

Raw Story
@mjw 🥊 You're doing good work.

Pope Leo says aerial military strikes should be banned | Reuters (2026-03-23)

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/pope-leo-says-aerial-military-strikes-should-be-banned-2026-03-23/
———

>> Pope Leo sharply criticised aerial bombardments on Monday, saying they ​are indiscriminate and should be banned …

>> "After the ​tragic experiences of the 20th century, aerial bombings should ‌have ⁠been banned forever," he said. "Yet they still exist … this is not progress; it is regression!"

>> The pope has called repeatedly for ​a ceasefire in ​the ⁠Iran war. On Sunday he called the conflict a "scandal to the ​whole human family."

#NoToWar #PopeLeo

Quite a useless statement ... astounded that someone even spent time on this.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2026-anthropic-settlement

The FSF doesn't usually sue for copyright infringement, but when we do, we settle for freedom — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software

@nthcdr @bbatsov well put.

I believe it's a slippery slope: Once you start using AI assistance for coding, you soon become lazy. After a while (half a year? Two years?) you're in practice dependent on AI to do any coding. You cannot code without it. In the beginning, you review each line, are careful you understand, really understand the code AI writes. As time goes on, you let it slip, let it fly. The vibing colleagues and AI agents throws so many PRs at you that you can't possibly review each line. Onwards.

At one point, why bother to review the code at all? Why not have the AI write a bunch of tests and trust that that's good enough? How about vibing some AI agents to scrutiny the code from different angles (security, performance++)? That surely fixes the problem of the annoying feeling that humans should review and understand this, surely?

Then, later, you might ask: why does the language, libraries and frameworks matter if humans are never to understand or touch the code? Why not just go for foolang, since that works the best with AI agents?

My day as a coder consists of 10-30% coding. The rest are meetings, meetings, meetings, emails, reports, code reviews and meeting preparations. I wish AI would help me with the 70-90% of the non-coding work, so that I can do the fun bit. Instead, we're investing SO much money to solve the 10-30% part, so that we can spend that time reviewing the code the bot generated.

As with all challenges at work, I believe the key is to do what Beatles suggested and "get by with a little help from my friends":, i.e. focus on the people you work with and ensure you are in a place where you enjoy the company you're keeping.

Bugs eat on your garden while pesticides allow you to grow more and faster. At the expense of subtly poisoning fruits and degrading the environment.

@amszmidt

Technically, two things wrong: (1) using an LLM, and (2) the thing that made you think you needed an LLM.

If you need to use LLM.. your doing something wrong.
People that use “AI”, they will never make mistakes. It also means they will never learn…