dachris

they should point their AI swarm at quantum gravity now

(only half tongue-in-cheek)

Good point - in a way, if we get AGI, investors have financed the way to their potential undoing.

The term singularity is worn out, but the physics parallel is quite apt - a point where the known gears of economics stop working, and it's unknowable what's there until you get there.

C++ was complex already 15 years ago (template metaprogramming, anyone?).

Can't imagine what it must be nowadays.

It's even more important that time limit gives those in power a planned off-ramp.

The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.

On the same day, in Serbia, the long-term incumbent was defeated by a party/movement that has been founded only 2 years ago as a response to corruption issues. So change can happen.

On the one hand, yes. That's why possession of a starlink terminal can get you killed in Iran.

On the other hand, Ukrainians are finding out that someone else is in control of that starlink infra.

Seems like a false dichotomy, don't see how sacrificing jungle would get Brazil a top-tier semiconductor industry.

And I guess the native peoples living in the Amazon are not university leftists.

I'm not into Brazilian politics, the little I know seems to indicate that it's a choice between a rock and a hard place (both seem to have corruption allegations). The objective aspect I can judge is whom Trump strongly supports. US influence in South America is a pretty bloody chapter in history.

Kudos, that looks very good for a high school coding project (both visuals, and the code looks very well structured).

I feel like half of all software devs started out like this - coding their own game.

Crazy to imagine that no one will build their mental muscle like this anymore.

I sure learnt so much analytical thinking, debugging, problem solving and banging my head against a mental wall until the wall yielded through passion hobby projects like this. Wouldn't have been the same just saying "Claude, make [insert game here]".

I got into SWE because I like solving problems. I like solving problems using code. I also like solving problems using AI.

I have very mixed feelings.

- AI lets me plough through issues which previously would require debugging, troubleshooting, googling, stackoverflow

- my coding abilities are starting to atrophy

- not having to deal with low-level language quirks is nice (parameter differences of subString in C# vs Java).

- but I'm seeing the same as OP: when working on a team, the sense of ownership and community is gone. You have AI un-AI-speak for you to properly read the Jira ticket another dev created using AI. Pull requests are echo chambers between the AI used to create it, review bots, other devs using AI for PR reviews manually.

- there's little denying that we devs are feeding the very machine that will replace us

Doesn't bode well for all of us meatbags, actually. AI might now be better mathematicians (if that's even true for now). But if progress continues, it might be a better <your job here>, and even worse, wife, husband, parents. Black mirror territory.

Another pop culture reference: in the first book of the "The Three-Body Problem" trilogy by Liux Cixin, physicists get depressed by having their field of work blocked.

Pretty much the inverse situation, but also the same situation - having your field of expertise completely disrupted. Anyone would be troubled.

Expectations have also increased. Friend from a middle class family grew up with 4 siblings in a 75m2 apartment. You'd get raised eyebrows for that today.

Cheap food is still cheap. If some doomsday scenario ever comes along, I'll be forever sorry to not have stocked up on 6 years worth of calories that now cost less than a monthly salary. World market prices per metric ton: wheat like $300, rice $500.

But that's not mutually exclusive with absurd levels of wealth concentration.

Naively asked myself the same thing - how can the camera see through that clouded glass and the projector project through it?

I often say that everyone should be on a misery week once a year, where you live like our "ancestors".

I.e. like my grandparents, who grew up in the 1920s on a farm, only 1 heated room, privy outside, no running water, limited food options, hard work each day. As my granny used to say to anyone with nostalgia: no, things were definitely not better back then.

Misery week would greatly increase happiness for the rest of the year, add humility, and empathy with the less privileged.