someone watching you code in a google doc

I’ve had nightmares less terrifying than this

This is an excellent explanation of hashing, and the interactive animations make it very enjoyable and easy to follow.

I absolutely agree. But:

• sometimes you need to modify existing code and you can’t add the types necessary without a giant refactoring
• you can’t express units with types in:
  • JSON/YAML object keys
  • XML tag or attribute names
  • environment variable names
  • CLI switch names
  • database column names
  • HTTP query parameters
  • programming languages without a strong type system

Obviously as a Hungarian I have a soft spot for Hungarian notation :) But in these cases I think it’s warranted.

I understand what you mean, and I even agree with it, but just to be a little pedantic, variable names are code, or at least they are more code than comments or docs.

But yes, encoding units into the type system is a much better solution. It doesn’t work however for config options, environment variables or CLI switches.

IIRC F# even has built-in support for units.

I’m sure it’s a nice client but I don’t understand why so many GUI projects have no screenshots in their READMEs. It would be great if I could immediately see if I like it without installing it.

EDIT: thanks for adding the screenshot to your post! It looks awesome!

This is pretty awesome and it shows how far .NET has come in recent years.

This looks like a fantastic resource, thank you for sharing it! Saved.

I use ChatGPT (with GPT-4) all the time for coding. I’ve developed a feel for the maximum complexity it can handle and I break down bigger problems into smaller subtasks and ask it to write code for them (usually one function at a time, after a detailed explanation of the context in the beginning). I need to review and test everything it produces thoroughly but it’s worth it. Sometimes it helps me complete tasks that would have otherwise taken a day to complete in 1-2 hours.

I also have Copilot installed but it isn’t as useful as ChatGPT. It’s nice to get a smart completion sometimes. I’m even in the Copilot Chat beta which uses GPT-4 and I find it inferior to ChatGPT with GPT-4.

I never touch GPT-3.5 anymore. It hallucinates too much and the quality of the output is very unpredictable. I guess most people who say AI is useless for coding haven’t tried GPT-4 yet.

Oh, and something else. In my experience, the quality of the output depends a LOT on the prompt. If you give a clear, detailed description of the problem, and try to express your intent instead of the specifics of the implementation, it usually performs very well. I’ve seen some people at work write the worst, sloppiest prompts and then complain how useless ChatGPT was.

You’re right, they also have to prove their counterarguments, and those who don’t do it are often bad programmers. But I’ve also experienced the same with some actually brilliant people.

That may be part of it but I’ve also observed it among fellow programmers.

You give your opinion about something and your coworker has a smug, arrogant knee-jerk reaction based on some cargo-cult belief without actually thinking about the details of the problem. Then you need to walk them through why what you said is not what they meant step-by-step, and while it may be wrong it is still a valid opinion. If you succeed, they completely change and become cooperative, and you can have an actually useful discussion. But you have to be super patient, like when taming an irritated feral cat that wants to scratch you. If you’re good, the cat becomes cuddly and cute.

This works but I’m extremely tired of having to perform this dance with 60% of the new coders I meet.