I think it's mainly due to the introduction of C++11, C++14 and C++17, which _has_ rejuvenated the language, despite the criticism.
Discussions like this one tend to be sort of skewed, because opponents of an old technology, like C++, tend to be more vocal in their opinions. Likewise, proponents of a new technology, like Rust, also tend to be more vocal. It becomes sort of noisy. Behind the noise, though, I think the fact remains that C++ is still very solid, and probably even more so than it was just a few years ago.
One of the things he mentions in his book is to be judicious in editing your own texts, removing any words that do not add to the actual message that you're trying to get across. For instance, in the last sentence, I ought to have removed the word 'actual'.
I think some of this advice could probably apply to this article as well.
I think maybe it would be better if the application showed any erroneously typed characters, rather than the correct characters in red. Or, if it's possible, to show some sort of visual juxtaposition between the two.
Also, I think maybe the font size should be a little bit larger, at least for the text around the position where the cursor is, if not for the whole text. Otherwise, nice application!
You're probably right, if the main goal is to earn money. Still, it's also like telling Edison that he should quit looking for a commercially feasible design for an electric light bulb. We need both types of entrepreneurs and people, both the types who persevere in seeing an idea through, even if they're alone in thinking it's a good idea, and the types who "merely" improve on existing ideas and products.
I think it's interesting to look at his code. I have not worked on games myself, but I've understood that most big game studios write their own versions of STL containers, in order to have close control over each and every CPU cycle spent, and in order not to get burnt by changes in the STL, or by slight, or not so slight, variations in performance between different implementations of the STL.
I see that he does the same, keeping his own lightweight string class implementation, for instance, and also his own lightweight smart pointer implementations (Owned and Borrowed). I suspect that he also uses bare pointers and new for similar reasons.
It would be interesting to know if he thinks it is necessary, or if he could have used std::string, std::unique_ptr and std::make_unique instead in this framework.
Another possible trick is to focus on time slots, rather than the task itself. When I procrastinate, it's because the task itself appears too big, too complex (or maybe even too boring) to even start on. The trick, then, is to say to yourself that you're going to spend 4 hours working on it, rather than saying that you're going to complete it. Completing the task may seem overwhelming, for various reasons, but setting aside 4 hours to work on it is not overwhelming.
I think this has changed. People used to be very particular about how their apps looked on different native platforms, like you say. But I don't think it's like that anymore. People are more agnostic now, when it comes to how user interfaces look, because they've seen it all. Especially on the web, where there's really no rules, and where each new site and web app looks different. I believe this also carries over to native apps, and I think there's much more leeway now, for a user interface to look different from the native style, as long as it adheres to any of the general well established abstract principles for how user interface elements ought to behave.
He describes stories as 'relics'. Here's a direct quote from the book: “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”
The book is pretty good, well worth the read if you're only slightly interested in the topic!
A vaguely, but tangentially related fact, is that Stephen King actually considers the stories in his books as discovered, rather than invented. He talks about it in his book 'On Writing'. He considers the stories to be sort of preexisting things, and his job as a writer to unearth and discover them, rather than invent them. It's about his frame of mind while writing, I guess, but still.
Wired Magazine during the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 had something a bit magical about it, the way I remember it. You could sort of feel, while reading it, that it was a harbinger of great, great things to come, both from technology in general, and the fusion of personal computing and the internet in particular. It generally was a pleasure to read the magazine in those days.
I have at least one close relative that I believe qualifies as a narcissist. My personal conclusion is that it's sort of a trait that you're born with. I think it relates to a lacking ability to pick up on the subtle social cues that other people send out. Most people can read those signals pretty well, while others cannot. I think, if you cannot read the subtle signals that people are sending out, and if you cannot intuitively pick up on how other people feel, then neither can you respond or react to it in an adequate manner. These are my thoughts after dealing with the said type of personality for quite some years now.
If it's at all treatable, I'd suggest training yourself in picking up on the subtler types of social cues and signals that other people send out. Like Sheldon does in Big Bang Theory, even if that's a bit of a parody.
It reads a bit like, my brain is so fast that it's becoming a problem for me. A bit sheldonesque.
Anyway, when talking to crowds, I think the main thing is to always remember that it's a two way communication; you say something, the crowd reacts, and you move ahead, depending on how the crowd just reacted. Not word by word, exactly, but on overall. You need to sense whether the crowd is with you or not, only then can you know how to pace your presentation, and when to slow down or speed up.
Maybe it's worth a try, in order to advance science. But, generally, I think that text synthesis ultimately is one of those problems that we really cannot hope to solve before we've also solved the problem of creating full blown artificial general intelligence. When we have a system that actually understands both the world and the human beings in it, then we can probably also have a system capable of writing intelligent essays. Before that, we'd just be fiddling with different degrees of extremely stupid, I think.
I think it's very far off. You can see how this model drifts off into gibberish after only 3 or 4 words. It does not really understand the topic, even within a sentence, and much less within a whole paragraph.
For it to understand the topic throughout a whole essay, that would probably require it to have full general intelligence on par with humans. And that's very, very far into the future, still.
If Sergey Brin had told you back in 1998 that he planned to start Google, and to start indexing the web out of his garage, it would not have meant anything. Or if the Wright Brothers had confided in you that they planned to build a workable flying machine back in 1903, they would not have been running any great risk either.
What's valuable is having the vision, and the ability to connect all the little dots, and to see exactly _why_ something is a good proposition. Just hearing that something will be great usually won't help you a lot.
To quote Howard H. Aiken:
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."