if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.

In fairness, it can be expensive to stock the holy water necessary to fend off the demons that inhabit all printers.

I text my friends. I assume that everyone else just thinks I died.

The move between seeing “your brother in law took the kids to the zoo” to “your brother in law liked this trash article” was such a jarring transition.

It was awful.

“Oh, look. He’s a little bit racist. Now I get to know that. Thanks Facebook.”

Exactly! If I’m not clutching the mute button for dear life, an I really having a relaxing movie night?

Yes. It’s been a few years since I countered a video game that didn’t have separate volume sliders for dialog, for music, and for all others sounds.

I’ll wait and see if they can add some AI to it. But if they can, I’ll invest my entire life savings.

Yes. Web apps existed before JavaScript.

Yes. That’s what AI actually adds - plausible deniability.

Could just be a misclick. There are some weird and/or pathetic folks around here, but there’s also just many with huge thumbs.

My estimate of the average “missed the upvote button and didn’t notice” is maybe one in 40.

My partner and I used to use location sharing pretty much 100% of the time. We just felt better knowing we could find each other.

But today, we do not, because the trust is shattered.

Google just cannot be trusted with our locations.

We need to get scientific about this.

Relevant XKCD: The Difference

Relevant XKCD: The Difference

“Hospitality/ Nevada”

I see we’re still playing along with that euphemism. Haha.

Yes. I’m not sure what else has gone on, but NAFTA and the US China Relations Act sweaping all of the manufacturing out of the country could account for the whole change between the two maps.

I agree. But I mean, WordPress and SquareSpace already did that for about 98% of web traffic. It was a big part of the .Com Boom and Bust.

But we keep coming up with new stuff to build web software for, and there’s still plenty of web developer jobs. And there’s still so so many many shit websites.

Today’s AI can only remix, not do the new stuff. Maybe it’ll get good enough to tackle the novel new stuff, someday. I doubt I’ll live to see it, if it happens.

The root of my crankiness is: If we’re about to no longer need developers, I should be seeing widespread websites whose search, cart and checkout actually work correctly every time.

The snake oil salesmen are bragging that the era of carpentry has ended, from on top of a wooden stage that is falling to pieces with each step.

I would say, it can only get better, but it can really go both ways from here.

why do you guys always just move the goalposts?

“Vibe coding” has a pretty specific definition, which includes not understanding the code. So writing tests, or correcting the code both disqualify a piece of work from being technically “vibe coded”.

“yes”, “no”, and “ship” is hilarious.

Knowing it (well, appearing to, by regurgitating the average) better than many developers, pretty soon. A huge number of us know disturbingly little about how computers actually work. (Edit: Sorry, I’m being needlessly unkind to a bunch of us, since as Snoogums said, the current stuff doesn’t actually know anything at all, yet.)

Knowing it better than top developers is a science fiction fantasy singularity daydream.

And even Heinlein’s and Asimov’s post singularity fiction novels acknowledged that there would likely be roles for expert humans.

But for how much longer?

How much longer will we need people who understand how things work?

I imagine that Brennan Lee Mulligan walks a fine line as a public figure.

He still plays D&D often enough to (seemingly) not alienate people at Wizards whose work helped launch his career.

But he also plays significant amounts of other games, including some that I think are Indie developers, like Kids on Bikes.

I’m sure he’s aware of the issues and concerns in the community around D&D under Wizards - and probably shares many of those same concerns, as a fellow player and DM.

But, yes, the idea that Brennan secretly hates anything sounds pretty silly. Brennan has been pretty direct with his epic rants about things he really hates.