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abootstrapper

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I love this insight, but mailman might not be the best example if you recall the origins of the phrase, “going postal.”

I didn’t buy the hype of any of those things, but I believe AI is a going to change everything much like the introduction of the internet. People are dismissing AI because its code is not bug free, completely dismissing the fact that it generates PRs in minutes from a poorly written text prompt. As if that’s not impressive. In fact if you put a human engineer on the receiving end of the same prompt with the same context as what we’re sending to the LLM, I doubt they could produce code half as good in 10x the time. It’s science fiction coming true, and it’s only going to continue to improve.

ChatGPT 4 is amazing! I use it when I’m blocked to get unstuck. I don’t need perfectly functioning code, just something to get my gears turning. I use it to review my own code. It often has pretty good suggestions, or can validate my approach. And I use it to sketch out unit tests for me. I still have fill in pieces, but it’s absolutely improved my output. It’s like having an egoless programming partner. Yeah, it makes mistakes, but I treat the AI like a programming buddy, not a flawless code wizard. It doesn’t solve problems for me, but we come to solutions together.

Because when you use phrases like “just simply” [do something actually hard], your stakeholders read that and say things like, “why did this take a whole sprint to implement? You said you just had to [do something hard].” There’s no reason to downplay the difficulty of your and your team’s work.

Further, we’re adults, as you say, so let’s be adults and take the time to consider our readers position and how our writing might be interpreted. You’re doing no one any favors by refusing to be empathetic.

Basically for some random reason, the thought pops into your head just how disastrous it would be if you failed at this thing you're being asked to do. Then your consciousness inevitably becomes obsessed with this thought and it's all you can think about. You start panicking

This happens to me all the time! You’ve described it so succinctly. How do you cope?

With most issues American’s be like, “it is my right to shit in the stream and you can’t stop me with your preference for clean water. Go further up stream if you want clean water.” And pretty soon the whole river is full of shit, or covid, or lead, or CO2, or enormous death vehicles, or whatever, it’s a metaphor.

So yeah, I’d like to force my “preference” of having people cease shitting in the stream. Their actions are not taking place in a vacuum and they’re affecting other people negatively.

I worked a programming job out of college for 4 years. Then I quit and did some of this and that for 14 years. Just got my 2nd full time programming job at 40 years old. I’m sharing this to let you know it’s possible and you’re still young.