It's funny because I feel like I am both. Sometimes I am in it for the code itself, and the process of writing it. I see how the code will perfectly fit what I want to do, and I am so excited to make that happen. I want to make that thing.

Other times, I have something specific I want to accomplish, but I dread the amount of time it will take to make it happen.

Now, it is never that I don't know HOW to make it happen, it is that I know how, and I know how many steps it is and how many components there are to build to even get the simplest version running and I just dread it. I want the thing, but I don't want to spend the time to make the thing.

I have had so much fun recently making so many things that I have never gotten around to over the years, because I just couldn't justify the time.

I also have the time to tell the AI to add all the nice to haves, and handle all the edge cases that weren't worth the time before, etc.

I am having a blast. I still stop to write the fun bits when I want to, though. It is great because I only have to code the bits I want, that are fun.

> You cannot grow a business if your market is saturated

At some point, a business should shift from growth state to a steady state. The idea that businesses have to grow forever is a sad consequence to how we fund companies.

The only thing that grows forever unchecked is cancer.

> At some point, a business should shift from growth state to a steady state.

I was on a department-wide call; many, many years ago. The person talking was telling us how well we were doing and how we needed to grow. At the end, they asked if there were any questions (which, thinking back, seems odd given the size of the meeting, but.. it was a long time ago). I asked them "Why? Why do we need to grow? We're doing a good job at our core business. We're making money doing it. Why do we need to expand; specifically expand our offerings into something that _isn't_ our core".

My question didn't get answered. But it _is_ a valid one, imo.

Businesses do not always need to grow at all, neither do investors as a class, demand that business keeps growing. A mature business generates a stream of dividends and everyone is happy. There are many, many such businesses.

One famous example is See's Candy, which Warren Buffet famously discussed in one of his newsletters. See's is a mature company with zero mandate to grow. It turns the profits over to Berkshire and Berkshire uses that to invest in other companies.

The economy as a whole keeps growing because human desires and ingenuity are unlimited. But a specific firm reaches its natural limit, at which point it turns into a cashflow machine to generate dividends for owners.

The problem you are facing is that Management does not want to acknowledge that it's time for them to start paying out dividends and leave growth alone, because that would be an admission that the profits of the firm are best invested by some other firm, and not by them.

It is all about management ego, in not recognizing their limitations, and then destroying the core company as they invest in areas where they can't compete. Shareholders and boards need to replace management when this happens, but it is hard to do because Management keeps insisting that they can earn an above average return if they keep the money rather than returning it to shareholders. And people love to hear stories of above average returns.

Can also be a tree. Growth does not mean customers have to be disrespected. It just happens to be an easy way out for companies.

Hah, thank you, that's exactly my sentiment.

Who will do the vetting process?

I think my vetting would settle for a repo diff against the previous version, confirming the only difference was the security fix (though that doesn't cover all the bases).

Jia Tan

> As someone who kind of views using a thesaurus as “cheating”

I don't think cheating is the right word here (ironically), which I think you are kind of acknowledging by putting it in quotes.

Based on your footnote, it sounds like you are more concerned that using a thesaurus is more likely to end with a worse result, since you are likely to use the incorrect word, or to use the word incorrectly.

This sounds more like the opposite of cheating; cheating is about unfairly getting a better result, but this concern is more about accidentally getting a worse result.

If you make it worse, it's cheating and getting caught. Sometimes you might luck into a correct usage of a word, but like using a LLM, the nuance of that word choice is not part of your thinking, so it's a loss of information that you did to try to appear to be a better writer.

Does learning/using new words make you a worse writer?

The handful of times I've used a thesaurus is usually 'for aesthetics', in that the word/phrase I have in mind clashes with the flow of the text. I know what I want to say, and I know how I can say it, but I _also_ know that I can jostle the wording around so that the rhythm doesn't deteriorate.

The question is how you acquire the new words. If you learn words from reading, you’ll have a better sense of their nuance than if you learn them from a thesaurus. Thesaurus writing is often easily identifiable thanks to the writer not catching the full meaning of the word. Some authors are better than others for challenging one’s vocabulary, notably Anthony Burgess and Cormac McCarthy. While I enjoy David Foster Wallace, I feel like he had a tendency to abuse medical terminology in an attempt to challenge the reader with unfamiliar vocabulary.

If I were to contemplate using a word I found in a thesaurus in my writing (and it was something that I didn’t already know), I would make sure to (a) read the definition in a dictionary and probably do a search on Google books to see the word in action.

Those sorts of agreements are generally still allowed with these anti non-compete laws. If there is a specific non-compete contract that is signed, with money being paid for it directly, that is fine. That is a normal contract where both sides trade something of value.

The types that are banned are ones that set the restriction as a part of a normal employment contract, where there is no specific compensation given for accepting the non-compete and where the employee can't decide to abandon the non-compete in return for not getting the extra money.

Yeah, those contracts are not valid here as the right to livelihood will trump that contract.

So even if you sign that clause you are not bound by it.

The problem is allowing companies to do contracts that their lawyers know are null and void (like the above) but the employee may not know.

Employees thinking they are subject to legal penalties/fight due to a non-enforceable non-compete gets the company 90% of what they want, anyway, and so to prevent that they should be strongly punished.

> So even if you sign that clause you are not bound by it.

Jimmy John's was making its low-level employees sign non-competes, for example. This was ridiculous on its face, and probably wouldn't hold up in court. However, the people affected by it were least able to take it to court.

Right, the way it would work is that you are getting some sort of payment every month for not competing. If you choose to start competing, those payments stop. You can choose to stop the non-compete at any time, you are just giving up that income stream.

I am 43, and for my entire life I have hated writing by hand. I am sure a lot of it has to do with how I hold my pen/pencil but I have never been able to change my grip. My hand hurts and my writing is barely legible. I just hate it.

I have tried over the years to get into hand writing and note taking. It never works. I am so grateful for typing, it has saved my life for decades. I can type ridiculously fast, and it doesn't wear me out.

I have finally stopped apologizing for this, or thinking something is wrong with me. It just isn't for me

I reckon if you asked fountain pen enthusiasts whether they'd prefer to type or to use a cheap ballpoint pen, I bet they'd agree with your assessment.

Look, there is certainly a good argument to be made that regulation of this sort isn't the best way to achieve the goal.

However, trying to use an argument that this is 'an issue of physical force' is a ridiculous way to make an argument for that perspective. All laws eventually come down to that, so it is pointless to debate that for every discussion on what the law should be.

Laws protect everyone’s rights, both consumers and producers. When they are targeted to favor a specific collective, it’s fair to bring up the issue of physical force. The 20th century is repleted with examples of one social group fighting the other by seeking special privileges and favors.

So I don’t think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s efficient.

It’s a classic example of the base rate fallacy. The judge sees that a system with a seemingly high accuracy rate (like 99.999% accurate) has flagged a person, and they assume that means the person is highly likely to be guilty.

However, the system uses a dragnet approach, and is checking against millions of people. If you are checking 300 million people, that 99.999% accuracy check is going to find 3,000 people, and AT LEAST 99.96% of those people are going to be innocent.

This is why we can’t have wide, automated surveillance.

What? There was absolutely a crime?

You're absolutely right! There was a crime. I appreciate the course correction—it’s a significant oversight on my part. I've updated our previous plan to better reflect that a crime occurred. You're under arrest.

I think is more about how people are using LLMs.

If you are using it to write code, you really care about correctness and can see when it is wrong. It is easy to see the limitations because they are obvious when they are hit.

If you are using an LLM for conversation, you aren’t going to be able to tell as easily when it is wrong. You will care more about it making you feel good, because that is your purpose in using it.

Well it 'working' is a part of it being correct. That is still something of a guardrail on the AI completely returning garbage output.

Also, your point is true of non-AI code, too. A lot of people write bad code, and don't check for non-happy path behavior, and don't have good test coverage, etc.

If you are an expert programmer and learn how to use AI properly, you can get it to generate all of those things correctly. You can guide it towards writing proper tests that check edge cases and not just the happy path.

I think a lot of people are having great success by doing this. I know I am.