Please wait...
VS Code makes me feel ... old.
When you move through source code that is managed with git, there is a spot on the bottom of the screen that indicates who last modified that line, and when.
I'm hitting lines that were modified decades ago -- 23, 25, years or more. Stuff that hasn't been touched since LoanShark wrote it in 1998, stuff that hasn't been touched since IO ERROR (RIP) wrote it in 1999 ... and even that doesn't cover the first ten years during which we didn't use version control.
There's "git log" ... and then there's "git blame" ... and then there's this. A constant on-screen reminder. Wow.
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
VS Code makes me feel ... old.
When you move through source code that is managed with git, there is a spot on the bottom of the screen that indicates who last modified that line, and when.
I'm hitting lines that were modified decades ago -- 23, 25, years or more. Stuff that hasn't been touched since LoanShark wrote it in 1998, stuff that hasn't been touched since IO ERROR (RIP) wrote it in 1999 ... and even that doesn't cover the first ten years during which we didn't use version control.
There's "git log" ... and then there's "git blame" ... and then there's this. A constant on-screen reminder. Wow.
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
lol
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
Ruby is another one of those im not fond of. At. All.
Python, for the win.
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/09/25/open_source_to_closed_doors/
doh
Not to make fun .. but 25 years ago..some of us were still diapers.
You were a diaper 25 years ago?
Cool. I was a chamois cloth.
Ruby is another one of those im not fond of. At. All.
It made a difference, and DHH is pretty awesome ... but it's not a language I would desire to write anything in.
I agree, Python for the win.
Here's your 100% True Fact of the day.
The phrase "We should rewrite <x> in Rust" literally translates to "I hate <x>, I hate you, and I'm a douchebag, and you should definitely punch me in the face as hard as you can because I deserve it."
I know its not for everyone, and no, it wont beat some of the HUGE commercial models, but Qwen's latest coder model is pretty decent a huge leap in quality from 2.5 , and amazingly its quite fast even on commodity CPUs.. easily 3x speed of other models its size. Not real sure how they pulled that off, but makes it quite usable as a local co-pilot code helper sort of thing.
A quantized version, will run you around 20g. No, not tiny, but not huge either.
Ya i know, i have been stepping away from this stuff for the most part, but i saw the news and all the praise, so i just had to look for myself.
LoL. when i was a kid we called that object orientated programming.. what is old is new again i guess. https://news.mit.edu/2025/mit-researchers-propose-new-model-for-legible-modular-software-1106
I wish I could code. Biden was right. But, as pointed out earlier - 8th grade drop out. Don't have the maths skills.
Subject: I hate that it's called "vibe coding"
Today I wrote the code to handle RFC6532 section 8.6: the addressbook-query REPORT semantics of CardDAV. And I did it in just a couple of hours, with some help from AI. Not just any AI either: Eddie the Shipboard Computer himself, Microsoft Copilot.
"But IG, how could you?!" you say. "Letting a Microsoft product touch your Magnum Opus?"
Yeah, I get it. All other things being equal, that's not how it would go.
But let's be real, here: Microsoft didn't write the brains behind Copilot.
OpenAI did. Microsoft just force-fed it to every corner of their universe.
And although they've tuned it to be a little bit over-eager (that's the Eddie reference) it has become my go-to AI site because they have a very generous free tier. No way am I paying for it: if I wanted to shell out I'd be paying Grok.
So yeah, Microsoft is giving me tools to help write a Microsoft competitor for free. Die, Bill, die.
Anyway, the real focus here is that tonight was a far better experience than anything I've asked a computer to help write or debug before. And the reason is pretty obvious: in this case I was able to give it a specific set of tasks, specific data formats, specific library functions to work with, and I dictated the data model. The ghost of Fred Brooks appeared in the sky and recited his famous quote about how if you define the data model clearly, the code will be obvious.
And that was the big win here. When your data model is so clear that the code "practically writes itself" ... THAT is where the code generator really shines. You can't just open up a window and say "write a carddav server" or "write a game" or any of the myths pushed by the horde of unemployed self-righteous asshats on LinkedIn claim it can do. You still have to design the thing.
You still have to come up with the data model. You still need to figure out how it all fits together and how it's going to work. After you've done the thinky part, and DEFINED it well enough, the computer can automate away the boring bits.
But that's what you should have been doing all along anyway.