When I log into AWS there is a big graph saying "Cost savings" and offers all the different ways to save money.

The idea that AWS is abusive seems a bit much to me. There is Amazon Lightsail for people who prefer pay-monthly upfront costs.

Have you tried to use this feature? From my experience it’s typically reserved instances that provide discounts for longer contracts. It feels a lot like cable TV to me. I think the interface is difficult to use but am able to get what I want from the CLI and some scripts I have aliased.

I love using AI to code, as it saves me a lot of boring and repetitive typing.

I only commit code that is roughly the same as I would have written anyway.

It feels as good for developer ergonomics as the move away from CRT monitors.

I think I’m lucky that I never enjoyed programming, I enjoyed thinking about problems. That makes AI coding great, because I’m good enough at programming that I can describe what I want easily to an LLM, and I can judge the results very well for myself. I read and understand each line so I know I’m not committing crap.

I feel similarly. I wanted to develop software, I didn’t want to “program”. I want my code to fix problems, I want the end result to feel great to use, I want it to be able to fix problems and feel great a year from now, too.

I want to be better month after month, I want to be able to discover new areas.

Using AI tools makes sense to me. It’s important that you don’t believe everything the hype men are telling on Twitter, but it would also be a mistake to believe there is nothing valuable in this technology.

Just how much boilerplate have people been putting up with for this to be an oft cited advantage of LLM usage? I know boilerplate has to exist somewhere, but I've been labouring these past couple decades under the assumption that boilerplate should be rare and to be avoided.

> It feels as good for developer ergonomics as the move away from CRT monitors.

I kind of think CRT monitors were much better for developer ergonomics than LCD because of the tendency to set modern monitors much deeper into the desk and have to lean forward to see them. CRTs forced you to sit with better posture

I've used a dynamically typed language extensively. I don't think they are suited for anything but small scripts.

Refactoring is a nightmare, as as types don't exist, the compiler can't help you if you try to access a property that doesn't exist.

I think generally people have realised this, and there are attempts to retrofit types onto dynamically typed languages.

To "realize" that it would have to be true. The longer I've stuck with untyped Python the more I've preferred it, and the more I've seen people tie themselves in knots trying to make the annotations do impossible (or at least difficult) things. (It also takes away bandwidth for metaprogramming with the annotations.)

It bugs me that there are two kinds of languages. Parameters and variables could be typed optionally in a dynamic language; either error in the compiler or at runtime; otherwise you just haven’t made any type errors while you coded and the code is fine either way.

This is what gradual typing (such as TypeScript, or the use of Python annotations for type-checking) accomplishes. The issue is that it basically always is bolted on after the fact. I have faith that we aren't at the end of PL history, and won't be surprised if the next generation of languages integrate gradual typing more thoughtfully.

The problem with these two languages is that the runtime type system is completely different (and much weaker) than the compile time one; so that the only way to be safe is to statically type the whole program.

CL has a pretty anemic type system, but at least it does gradual without having to resort to this.

JavaScript caught on because it was the best casual language. They've been trying to weigh it down ever since with their endless workgroup functionality and build processes. If we get a next generation casual language, it'll have to come from some individual who wants it to happen.

No, JavaScript caught on because at the time it was the only game in town for writing web front-ends, and then people wanted it to run on the server side so that they could share code and training between front end and back end.

It's not enough to just be first. It would have been replaced by now if it wasn't fit for purpose. Otherwise we might as well not bother to critique anything.

I used gtk2, it was ok, but I preferred Ubuntu's Unity interface when it came out.

Gnome 3 seems similar to Unity nowadays, and it is pretty good.

I find it much easier to use than Windows or Mac, which is credit to the engineers who work on it.

Do you run the models locally?

No local model for me manages to get function calling right.

Are you using LangGraph tool nodes? I run very small, non-RLHF instruction models with maybe a 2% failure rate on response format matching tool definition. I would also guess you do not have your orchestration and pipe configured correctly.

Doubtful it is anything to do with simplicity.

Python's success is explained by it being the language of choice for AI.

Python has been massive since the 2000s. When AI rolled around, it was already there, a bunch of people knew it, and it was Good Enough (tm).

I think its the other way around. Python became the language of choice for AI because it was already popular. Lots of things made it popular: use for systems management scripts, web apps (Django, especially), then numerical stuff,...

I think the reason is that it is easy to learn enough to get things done, but it is very flexible, very readable, and once the ecosystem started gaining momentum (which it clearly had by the time of the XKCD cartoon) that became an advantage too.

"Turkey" is what most English people would use, which makes it the defacto official name, despite what the UN might say.

Most English people aren't even able to type ü on a keyboard.

FPTP forces coalitions to form before the vote, as otherwise they never get power.

In alternative systems, you vote and then coalitions jostle to form a majority afterwards.

Do you have any information e.g. blog posts on this pattern?

It reminds me of the proposal to shake hands at the end of Goldeneye:

> Miyamoto, with a series of suggestions for the game. “One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input. The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/26/goldeneye...

One of my favorite childhood video games is 8 Eyes for the NES - after beating each boss, the player character sits down with them at a table, and a little skeleton butler walks over and serves them tea. The little scene plays over and over and over, you and the defeated bad guy, sitting at the table, sipping tea, while a skeleton wanders over and offers a periodic refill.

I always thought that was nice.