ssutch3

We've only used it through API - but you're right, now API supports xhigh for 4.5-4.7.

It did not. xhigh is new to grok.

I'm saying my site and everything on it is written manually.

Yeah, TFA's point is that the basic/inexpensive camera in the hands of an unskilled user can be higher quality than an equivalent iPhone camera shot. In my opinion from the example shots used this is definitely the case. Camera phone distortion is pretty bad (you have to stand back further from your subject offset this, use a higher res setting, and crop in) and the processing has gotten out of hand in recent years to the point where it starts making photos look worse and worse.

We called em LAN parties

It's going to depend heavily on what you're doing. If you're doing common tasks in popular languages, and not using cutting edge library features, the tools are pretty good at automating a large amount of the code production. Just make sure the context/instruction file (i.e. claude.md) and codebase are set up to properly constrict the bot and you can get away with a lot.

If you're not doing tasks that are statistically common in the training data however you're not going to have a great experience. That being said, very little in software is "novel" anymore so you might be surprised.

AI coding tools aren't equally effective across all software domains or languages. They're going to be the "best" (relative to their own ability distribution) in the "fat middle" of software engineering where they have the most training data. Popular tasks in popular languages and popular libraries (web dev in React, for example). You're probably out of luck if your task is writing netcode for a game engine, for instance.

I am retiring from tech after 20 years and embarking on a new career which requires intensive schooling. As a high school and college drop out, I will need to learn how to study again, and want to be as efficient as possible so that I may still spend ample time with my family. Any tips greatly appreciated!

I think maybe the idea is you can choose your experience based on what's best for you, if the system is built that way.