Beej Jorgensen

Solid win for those of you who like to wade through 200 AI slop titles before finding something good.

A cached version that hasn’t been overrun with AI slop, I imagine.

Python is a great place to start. I’d recommend learning the command line, too. And doing so in Unix–that’s the Terminal on a Mac, or install WSL on Windows–or install Linux on a computer if you want to go for it. LLMs are now a great resource on getting this stuff set up. Sometimes getting your work environment going is the hardest (and most annoying) part of getting started.

I’ve written a Python programming guide here, that’s kinda done: https://beej.us/guide/bgpython/ (free, no ads or tracking, hand-written).

But you can also use an LLM as a tutor. Tell it you’re trying to learn to program and it should teach, not just give straight-up solutions. Or “here’s my code that’s not working. Please hint at what I’m doing wrong, but don’t tell me.”

LLMs are a tremendous double-edged sword. They can completely nerf your brain if you just ask it for solutions, but they can also turbocharge your learning if you use them right. Tell yourself you’re not allowed to ask for the solution until you’ve struggled with the problem for at least an hour. The struggle is where the learning happens!

Don’t fool yourself into thinking reading code is enough. You have to write it painstakingly in order to understand it and improve. Once you have a working solution, look it over and consider if you can see ways to improve it. Once you’ve finished that, show it to an LLM and ask it if there are ways to improve it. Be critical of its response. For each suggestion, have an opinion about whether or not you like it, and have a rationale for that opinion. You might later find you’re wrong, but it’s the thinking critically that’s more important than being right or wrong.

It’s OK to feel ignorant. We all feel that way–and I’ve been coding for over 40 years. Just choose a direction out of the things you don’t know and start attacking. The field is vast and no one will ever learn it all in a lifetime. “The things I don’t know fill libraries.” “The expert has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

The only differentiator between experts and failures is the experts get their asses kicked over and over and over, and they keep on attacking. “Every success is a learning experience. Every failure is twice that.” “Lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible.”

And try to have fun. Revel in being in the midst of solving a problem without knowing the solution. Turn it around in your head, looking for a way in. Maybe you don’t solve it today. Maybe step away for a short walk and see if that knocks something free. Try to make it relaxing instead of stressful. There are problems I’ve been considering in my head for years–I don’t think I’ll ever code them up, but it’s fun to examine the problems and see what bubbles up.

Lastly, I’d throw this at your brain: systems are made up of an interconnection of black boxes, each with inputs and outputs. In Python, functions are one way to model these. Each box should ideally do one thing only. Think of them like lego building blocks. Each one is made from code to do its simple task, and then you use more code to wire them together to do a greater task. And (here’s the secret) that greater task is a new block box with inputs and outputs! Black boxes are full of other black boxes–it’s all fractal layers of abstraction!

mailbox.org looks interesting. My 15 GB of free Google space is almost full (of photos) and I refuse to give them any money… Then again, my membership at SDF includes Nextcloud… hmm.

That review may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, and continued employment.

Here come the Bobs.

There are some areas where I don’t want tokenmaxxing. Things like automotive and aircraft control systems. Computers that control rockets. Cryptography. You know, places like that.

While true, I’d rather see them protesting than not (as a consolation prize).

Change needs to happen. It’s just that we should design better platforms for everyone, rather than banning or restricting them for some.

Done! You just have to use them. The “tiny” players like Lemmy and Mastodon have millions of users.

We should hold platforms accountable for what they design and encourage them to make better experiences for everyone, rather than banning some people while creating a surveillance infrastructure that risks harming us all.

The #1 best way to do this is to not use the platform. GTFO and get onto non-algorithmic social media. Let them do their own thing on their own for as long as they want.

As for LLMs–the meth of computing–I don’t have an answer. People have to make an effort to engage their brains the hard way, or they’ll lose them. Suggestions (which people will have to decide on their own to follow):

• Read books
• Freewrite longhand on paper or journal on paper
• In cursive.
• Stare at a blank wall for 15 minutes
• Walk in nature
• Play sudoku-ish games
• Play card games
• Play video games
• Learn to program by hand
• Build things IRL
• Whatever works for you

One thing that gives me hope is that I’ve met a large number of young folks who are burned out on the shitshow the Internet has become. They’re taking creative writing classes and refusing to use LLMs. Hell ya.

I’ll readily admit FF has problems. But it’s most definitely MHO that Google is far, far more evil. It’s not clear why they fund FF other than the antitrust angle.

Which is great, for sure. But, additionally, I’m unwilling to go back to a single engine ecosystem, especially not one with Google’s hands on it. I still remember coding around IE6. 😅

Nostalgic AF. Honestly, though, uBO (desktop and mobile) is the killer feature of FF over Chrome. Haven’t touched Chrome in years.

The author is apparently aware that freedom of speech doesn’t imply freedom from consequence, and yet here we are again.

I’ll rephrase a bit–I do care when an author is putting emotional content into the writing. If they not attempting to do that, well, it’s probably not a story I’d read, either, because it would be boring. Even Jack London, who famously hated his job and was only in it for the money, wrote impressively emotional content from his human perspective.

Don’t really care, so long as there’s a human behind it.

Ship in the minimum amount of time possible, by any means, to be first to market. And this means poor design and smooshing together all kind of fat general-purpose frameworks and libraries to get something out the door.

Sure, it’s slow. Google’s landing page is 4 MB for a small graphic, a text form, and some buttons. But what are you going to do? Not use it? They won. They don’t have to fix shit.

And now with LLMs they can produce bloat faster than ever and pay even less attention to speed or quality.

“The goal was never quality software.”

Why are these protestors painting him in such a flattering light?

“To the rich, fines are fees.”

There’s a significant population who uses art to form a bond with the author’s humanity, transcending time and space. What was the artist feeling when they made this? What did they hope I would feel? Finding out that the artist doesn’t exist takes away half the work’s appeal instantly.

What did the bot feel when it made this? What did it hope I would feel?