3pm

Craft was premised on the idea that a good writing and composition matters because it would be easier to read and comprehend (sometimes accepted by orgs because it was sold as cheaper).

Now AI can read the code so the craft-leaning people would need to somehow sell it as 'fewer tokens will be spent on a well factored code' or 'well factored code reduces AI hallucinations'?

Now a Slinger (using your terminology) can just ask AI to make the code look 'craftier' - and that is the best case scenario.

In other words, they will not buy what we sell and if they will they can now produce the results for cheaper. Overlooking the devil in the details, as usual.

I think there were always two camps when it came to writing code, a strong bimodal distribution. People that care about the perceived code quality (aka the ‘craft’) and people who treat the code as a means to an end. At least I always felt this tension. And there is always an exception, and a person can shift between two camps during the same day. But would generally lean towards one. I know I do. And one is not better than the other, they could both be very smart and well meaning. And you need both for success in a for-profit business. It’s been discussed ad nauseam but one particular metaphor I like is Jesus Christ vs James Bond. James Bond would win most of the time. Most people tend to think like James Bond, and if they don’t, the organization strongly nudges them in this direction, promotions get decided and it becomes self reinforcing.

Now a new powerful tool shows up and I think it is time for the Jesus Christ camp to throw in the towel.

Requiring backward compatibility doesn't imply the code quality needs to be low. Nothing prevents them from improving their code base except the organization itself - the incentives, promotion driven development etc.

I agree somewhat, but it took me a bit to articulate to myself. It is nuanced.

Testing is what held everything together. They seem to have been taking it seriously and that alone was enough to keep a product of that scale (barely?) afloat. A success!?

But it sounds like every other good practice went out of the window. They are drowning in unimaginable amount of technical debt, ossified over decades. That, and the complaint about testing infra indicates to me that even their tests are a pile of sh*. He wasn't running them locally, so they were integration tests. Meaning that had there been a foundation of unit tests - they wouldn't need that many slow integration tests.

It sounds like they just brute forced all their problems with test farms. I'm almost sure they double down on AI - why make your code base better if AI can figure out how 100 flags can interact with each other.

> The issuing bank keeps 2%

Is this why the best cash back credit cards give 2%?

$700 premium for Duo compared to iPhone Pro Max 18. Exactly the price of iPad mini 256GB.

Duo screen: 7.6" vs iPad mini: 8.3". Duo will support Apple Pencil later. I wonder if many people with iPhone+iPad combination can now replace it with one device.

I guess annual income also hints at annual expenses which should be important for the study. There are people who constantly spend all they make, and probably score low on self assessed happiness. Also income != wage, can be passive.

I think for a study like this, a money-happiness correlation would need a more sophisticated definition of money, to account for peer pressure and spending.

For a given zip code - take p75 of pre-tax income, multiply by 50% - this would be a proxy of how much someone needs to spend per year to be comfortable with local cost of living and their peers. 50% takes taxes and savings out, call it spend/burn. Then someone's wealth could be a ratio of net-worth/burn. The higher the wealthier - people 25 and over essentially not needing to work, and people with < 3 are essentially in indentured servitude, even with high income. Control for age.

> What is the shape of the relationship between money and happiness, and what are its implications?

1. money != income.

2. Zip codes.

3. Age.

4. Social class.

a) 65 year old professor living in Woodside, CA, with a net worth of $250,000K

b) 35 year old HVAC business owner living in Fresno, CA, with a net worth of $2,000,000

First is poor, second is rich, but the study conflates both into the same bucket if they both make, say, $400K/yr