molteanu

I did. I did think I enjoyed the craft.

Maybe I enjoyed the compliments, the stars, the glory, the God status I always imagined will come my way but never did. Except burnout. That did come my way.

A good question.

I've only found one answer to the "creative work" struggle now, after code writing as an art seems to have died.

Start to write. Or continue to write. Or consider writing as the place to explore and develop your ideas. They're just words. There is even more freedom there to create. Not restricted by a compiler. Not restricted by the shape of the final product. Words can be written anywhere. Sometimes on a paper, even. On my phone while strolling and ideas pop up.

Give it a go!

I donno, read thee classics! They're classics for a reason. You can't go wrong with them. You'll certainly not like them all, but find your niche, there's plenty to choose from. There's plenty of history, philosophy and politics books out there for the non-fiction category, too! Those are not quite self-help in the way we understand most non-fiction, but the ideas in them are far-reaching, some even eternal. For the later, Philosophize This (youtube podcast) is a great help! Enjoy!

> I think nearly exclusively in terms of what can be done in reality

This is the only sane approach.

That's a very good point.

The OP is "quite weak at JavaScript" but their AI "vastly improved the quality of the extension." Like, my dude, how can you tell? Does the code look polished, it looks smart, the tests pass, or what?! How can you come forward and be the judge of something you're not an expert in?

I mean, at this point, I'm beginning to be skeptical about half the content posted online. Anybody can come up with any damn story and make it credible. Just the other day I found out about reddit engagement bots, and I've seen some in the wild myself.

I'm waiting for the internet bubble to burst already so we can all go back to our normal lives, where we've left it 20 years or so ago.

Oh, damn!

I bet 2027 will be the year when writing code by hand will be (re)discovered.

Hopefully.

I thought this was Hacker News! How come dumping Windows for Linux in the year 2026 makes the headlines?

I got this wild idea a short while ago and your comment helped cement it: probably one of the reasons why languages like Lisp are not "successful" has something to do with the impressability factor? If the people with money (and the decision) do not understand the tech or are not able to even fake that understanding, will they bet their money on it?

If one would really be interested in these kind of things, I'm pretty sure one would be interested in other great resources, like the one mentioned.

If one would really be interested in classical music or philosophy one would sure not miss the (other) giants in the field instead of concentrating on just one or two.

There's the mistery.

I never understood the appeal of Feynman and these Lectures. It has been a constant topic for years around here.

For example, the Electricity and Magnetism book by Purcell is phenomenal but it is hardly ever mentioned. To quote wikipedia,

Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally written by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, this book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by the National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. In 1999, it was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.

Something mysterious is going on here.

Previous discussion,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45730366

Where I'm pretty sure that the definition of "successful" that you have in mind is one given by America itself.

Oh, there's even an Emacs' package to configure your programmable keyboard with elisp! [1]

Full disclosure: I've made that!

[1] https://github.com/mihaiolteanu/mugur

Yes, I can. I get deevid as a first result occupying the whole screen (on mobile) as it lists the sub-links, too (one of them being a sub-link to the "AI kissing generator")

Then comes PixVerse, a sponsored result for a google play app.

Then difuss.me.

Then comes midjourney.

Just curious how these lines work out,

"People who log workouts are 2x more likely to stick to their routine and make gains, No social feeds, no distractions, just results. $1.99/month vs $9.99 competitors."

For me it would be a no-go, just from the 2x (unfounded?!) affirmation and how this is cheaper that (all?!) of the competitors. Do people actually like this kind of motivationals, so to speak?

Concrats! :)

"Choice" is a big word here. It would imply "we've weighted the alternatives, the pros and cons, we've tested and measured different strategies and implementations and we came out with this conclusion: [...]." You know, like science and engineering.

While oftentimes what happens is is "oh, this thing seems to be working. And it looks easy. Great! Moving on.."

Of course this whole "it will make your more productive" marketing s** is absurd! How can we know? Living on the Moon will make you 27% happier! How do you know that? Has anyone done it in the past? Is there data to back that up? How would you measure happiness? How do we measure productivity, for that matter? That one is still a mystery. But it doesn't matter that we don't know how to, we'll just make it 2x better. That's absurd!

I remember from the days when watching TV. There were these preposterous commercials saying "23% more efficient than other toothpastes" or "33% less dandruff than a regular shampoo" or shit like that. How do you know what products do I use? How do you measure that? What skin type? No. It is just better. Trust us.

I mean, the financial backing in this sector is staggering. We know that already. It's a fact. There are also numbers. Billions if not trillions of them. What does Joe The Developer think all this kind of money goes to? Some of them, and not a small part, goes into marketing. Unless Joe still believes in the "build it and they will come" fake motto. Whomever has a stake in this will back it up, marketing it like crazy. Assume victory even in defeat as the old guy says. I was laughing hard one day when I saw Ilya Sutskever, laptop in hand, strolling the parks for a green meadow to work, develop ground-breaking ideas to save humanity! That's just marketing.

Liked your post. I don't think it matters (that much) that your native language is not English. We don't want to sound all the same by using AI to fix our grammar (ok, maybe this one, yes) or the awkward twists of sentences. Sometimes AI fixes them too good, leaving little room for some poetry into it.

One big issue I haven't seen addressed in these types of critiques: equating business with humanity.

To elaborate: if a CEO or Happy Worker Joe uses AI to write his Excel Sheets and Typist Jane codes their yet another website in less than two hours without coding knowledge (I know! It's amazing!), does that mean we're loosing our sense of self, or whatever?

Well, if it does, equating human with business has already done that a long time ago. Why complaining now? Only because AI is accelerating it?

If it doesn't, there are plenty of other areas outside work when one can actually be human.

What's the reason behind them abandoning the project, so to speak? Why didn't they continue developing it themselves?