Thanks for that! I need more of the good lines distilled. People miss that there’s a ton of legit philosophy in the show (I mean beyond the scenes where Chidi is directly teaching of course). It’s not just a side bit to use here and there where it helps the jokes or the narrative or whatever. I really fell in love with that, like not only was the show hilarious and FULL of interesting and likeable characters, they really made it kind of a class in (or “love letter” about?) the strengths/weaknesses/clashes to different approaches to existential philosophy.

And they did it in a way that wasn’t ham-fisted, ya know? If you already knew some, you’d pick up on it, if not, maybe you’d pick up a few tidbits here and there but otherwise, just a great show without any of that! That’s so hard to do well, idk, I’m just so impressed lol.

Oathbreaker’s Rheia is one of the most moving records I’ve ever heard, truly a masterpiece with no wasted moments, missteps, just basically flawless in my opinion. On the other side Deafheaven just hasn’t worked for me at all. Taste’s so fickle lol.

I’ll check out the third tho!

TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up

…so far :)

And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.

Life’s short, do weird stuff!

This record, a few by Neurosis, and one or two by Cult of Luna were such a vibe. We knew some knuckleheads who even started a joke ish band called Cult of Neurisis lol

Buddy, “Appalachian atmospheric black metal” is a weird combination of words I’ve never seen before and I’m stoked to give it a whirl. Praise Satan for keeping metal interesting.

Lol yeah, name became a wee bit unfortunate thanks to those angry rascals

Oh snap thanks for pointing this out! Been a long time and I haven’t kept up with ISIS, but their Panopticon was damn near genre-defining for me at the time.

I think we’re on the same page :)

I’m mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

My country can’t even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

I’m gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I’m bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad “types”. And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that’s, frankly, smart and “aware” enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain’t cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there’s another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they’ll be rewarded! And hey, isn’t the fact that they’ve been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they’re doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I’ll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I’m on the way up, finally.

And then that person says “YEESH managing this store is really hard, I’ve gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn’t seem to think this should be a struggle…”

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you’re coming from. And I’m sure we’d get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you’re saying and it never goes anywhere.

Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.

FWIW you’ve been level-headed throughout the thread and it does seem like a valid note to me. It’s not like, damning, as you’ve pointed out yourself, it doesn’t magically invalidate his work. But it does seem odd to me and I’m glad you pointed it out, and the response you’ve been getting seems weird and disproportionate.

That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

Awesome, thank you! This largely matches my own experience, I’ve found it (Claude in my case) most useful in areas where I’m weakest. I haven’t tried this scaffolding-via-comments approach though, it sounds cool.

Any experience with Cursor or other IDEs or agents? Was co-pilot a choice or just kinda a natural default?

Would you mind sharing a bit more about the workflow you’re describing? I’m on a “ask people how they’re using AI to help them dev” kick.

Sounds like you’re using an agent integrated with your IDE, would you be willing to give specifics? And you’re talking about writing some comments that describe some code you haven’t yet written, letting the AI take a stab at writing the code based on your comments, and then working from there? Did I get that right?

Happy for literally any elaboration you feel like giving :)

That graphic in the second link, holy shit

Completely agree! It’s SO much easier to lighten the mood and keep things upbeat and productive in an actual conversation vs. just text-based feedback. For example it makes it easy to throw in self-deprecating anecdotes of your own when discussing mistakes / needed changes, which can really help put juniors at ease. It’s just worlds better in >90% of scenarios.

Completely understand the frustration here. Mistakes happen, even competent people sincerely trying to do a good job can overlook things, etc. But if it’s a pattern of just copying and pasting code without really even trying to understand what it does, that’s a big problem that needs to be addressed. And frankly they should feel embarrassed if it happens more than once or twice.

OTOH, delivering criticism in a way that winds up productive for all involved is difficult at best, and the outcome depends on the junior as much as it does the senior. What good is being right if it ultimately just alienates you from your team? Tough situation for sure, and one of the many reasons it’s so important to hire carefully (which is itself a whole huge can of worms too!).

Can you simply ask them to walk through their submission line by line with you, explaining what it’s doing? If you’ve never asked that before it might come across as a strange request, but if you phrase it well it’s possible this causes them to notice their poor understanding without you ever seeming to point it out.