don’t skip over the “glorified” part either – people were playing with these same ideas with Usenet bots back in the ’80s: Mark V. Shaney

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, Al Sweigart (2020)

as one pundit mentioned, our current generation of AI is just “glorified predictive text” – it doesn’t know how to program, it does know huge sets of probabilities of else coming after elif coming after if

so … Xed vs Zed?

SICP

A/UX

it keeps saying “42” …

• practical – (as @small44 mentions) build apps for yourself
• fun – build a game
• theory – do one of the coding challenges – Advent of Code, Project Euler, Codewars, Basic Computer Games, …
• starting out – Learn X in Y Minutes
• examples – Rosetta Code

(have heard a similar argument about Python – there’s no killer app and it’s not the best, but it’s good enough and just keeps going)

• reinforcing others’ comments – “define the lifestyle you want”
• do you really want to move up to management? – not just social skills, management requires both a different skillset and mindset – there’s no shame staying on the technical/development/engineering side of things
• in your off-time, try out stuff and find what feels most comfortable
  • backend? – there can be more focus on interoperability over performance, plenty of companies trying to get their web frontends working with enterprise backends that they’re never planning on upgrading – ex. there’s still a huge call for COBOL programmers
  • embedded? – between maker communities and self-hosting communities, there’s a big hobbyist community sitting outside the corporate sphere – ex. programming microcontollers/SBCs in C, MicroPython, PicoRuby, Forth/Factor, …
  • 8-bit? – tools, programs, and games for virtual consoles (uxn, Pico8, TIC-80), chiptunes and tracker music (keeping the legacy of Amiga MODs alive)
  • Android? – pick up some Go or Dart/Flutter skills (one of the current maintainers of Dart, Bob Nystrom, has put out Game Programming Patterns and Crafting Interpreters and likes programming roguelikes)

• abuse in the US workplace is (generally) not openly visible in ways you expect
• and yet, sexual abuse is still extremely prevalent in all industries
• US companies can impose a MASSIVE chilling effect just by having your healthcare tied to your employment
• mental abuse can be subtle (a form of psychological warfare) with something as simple as “we’re like a family here” or “you wouldn’t want to let down the team, would you?”
• the first episode of Zom 100 gave a really good example of how far the mental abuse can escalate – between overwork, lack of sleep, verbal abuse, bad diet, you no longer have time to step back and think, you become completely dependent on someone else telling you what to do, you no longer have the strength of will to even contemplate saying “No”

remember that “2 weeks notice” is a kindness you’re giving them, it’s not a requirement and companies will never show you that kindness when they fire you

and at some point in the future, the possibility of upgrading from Ruby to Crystal …

[JT] Why I left Rust (back in May)

stumbled across Machine Logic this morning

UFPLisp

by those same criteria, the perfect programming language was created 4 years earlier – was PL/1 any improvement over LISP?

(do (What) (you mean))
(has Lisp (and (its downsides) (its upsides)))

[Lisp would be a VSO language]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)

well … we all know the perfect programming language was created way back in 1960

start with a game?