qubitcoder

That said, there is literally no comparison between the iPhone camera and the RAW photos captured on a modern full-frame mirrorless camera like my Nikon Z6III or Z9. I can’t mount a 180-600mm telephoto lens to an iPhone, or a 24-120mm, or use a teleconverter. Nor can I instantly swing an iPhone and capture a bird or aircraft flying by at high speed and instantly lock and track focus in 3D, capture 30 RAW images per second at 45MP (or 120 JPEGs per second), all while controlling aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Physics is a thing. The large sensor size and lenses (that can make a Mac Studio seem cheap by comparison) serve a purpose. Try capturing even a remotely similar image on an iPhone in low light, and especially RAW, and you’ll be sitting there waiting seconds or more for a single image. Professional lenses can easily contain 25 individual lens elements that move in conjunction as groups for autofocus, zoom, motion stabilization, etc. They’re state-of-the-art modern marvels that make an iPhone’s subject detection pale by compare. Examples: I can lock on immediately to a small bird’s eye 300 feet away with a square tracking the tiny eye precisely, and continue tracking. The same applies to pets, people, vehicles, and more with AI detection.

You can handhold a low-light shot at 1/15s to capture a waterfall with motion blur and continue shooting, with the camera optimizing the stabilization around the focus point—that’s the sensor and lens working in conjunction for real-time stabilization for standard shots, or “sports mode” for rapidly panning horizontally or vertically.

There’s a reason pro-grade cameras exist and people use them. See Simon D’entrement, Steve Perry, and many others on YouTube for examples.

For most people, it doesn’t matter. They can happily shoot still images and even amazingly high-quality video these days. But dismissing the differences is wildly misleading. These cameras require memory cards that cost half as much or more than the latest iPhone, and for good reason [1].

With everything, there are trade offs. An iPhone fits in my pocket. A Nikon Z8 and 800mm lens and associated gear is a beast. Different tools, different job.

The books, while geared toward Nikon cameras, are generally applicable. And packed with high-quality illustrations and an almost obsessive uber-nerd level of detail. He’s very much an engineer and photographer. When he says “complete guide”, he means it.

The section on image sensors, read-outs, and ISO/dual gain/S&R, etc. is particularly interesting—-and should be baseline knowledge for anyone who’s seriously interested in photography.

Having summarized results appear immediately with links to the sources is preferable to opening multiple tabs and sifting through low-quality content and clickbait.

Many real-world problems aren't as simple as "type some keywords" and get relevant results. AI excels as a "rubber duck", i.e., a tool to explore possible solutions, troubleshoot issues, discover new approaches, etc.

Yes, LLMs are useful for junior developers. But for experienced developers, they're more valuable.

It's a tool, just like search engines.

Airplanes are also a tool. Would you limit your travel to destinations within walking distance? Or avoid checking the weather because forecasts use Bayesian probability (and some mix of machine learning)? Or avoid power tools because they deny the freedom of doing things the hard way?

One can imagine that when early humans began wearing clothing to keep warm, there were naysayers who preferred to stay cold.

The most creative people I know are using AI to further their creativity. Example: storytelling, world building, voice models, game development, artwork, assistants that mimic their personality, helping loved ones enjoy a better quality of life as they age, smart home automations to help their grandmother, text-to-speech for the visually impaired or those who have trouble reading, custom voice commands, and so on.

Should I tell my mom to turn off Siri and avoid highlighting text and tapping "Speak" because it uses AI under the hood? I think not.

They embrace it, just like creative people have always done.

I switched to Doom Emacs a couple of years ago. It's well-maintained with regular updates, fantastic language support, and lightning fast. The CLI tooling is also nice (i.e., you can run 'doom upgrade' to update everything, or 'doom doctor' if you encounter an issue).

It's the closest equivalent to VS Code in terms of working out of the box. Not to mention the advantages of Emacs with Vim keybindings. There is a learning curve, but the GitHub documentation is excellent.

Adding support for Ruby on Rails development, for example, is as simple as uncommenting '(ruby +rails +lsp)' line in the '~/.config/init.el' file, and then running 'doom sync'. There's a long list of supported languages and tooling [0].

Musk was heavily involved in the engineering efforts at SpaceX. NASA struggled to keep up with his continual and extremely detailed stream of questions regarding engineering choices, with an obsessive and relentless focus on blueprints.

The list of engineering achievements and innovations (often unorthodox) is too long to list in a comment, but I highly recommend the book The Space Barons by Christian Davenport [0]. It's a fantastic read.