Could I still code the same way? Maybe. Probably, if I really put my mind to it.
The problem, what scares me, is the feeling of emptiness it leaves me with. Before, writing code brought me joy. Today, when I write code that I am not allowed to automate it just feels like a chore. It's a bit like how once you get used to a powerful IDE, writing code in, say, Notepad, becomes a chore.
It also means that my brain really, really wants to forget the basics. Why write:
api.users.forEach(({ id:u, name, contact:{ email, phone="—" }, roles:[r,...rs], active, meta:{ ...m } = {} }, i, a) => console.log({ u, name, email, phone, role:r, others:rs, active, metaKeys:Object.keys(m), index:i, total:a.length }));
When I could just right-click in the IDE and type "loop through users". Heck, I even asked an LLM to generate that example because I didn't feel like thinking, let alone typing that line.
That's what scares me the most.
For now? I still remember how to code. But coding makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, because my brain knows it can offload this task.
It was the same when Google Maps took over. Before, I was able to find my way around my city, go to the next town over and find a place just from the address. Now? I can’t do it anymore.
Before, I could memorize dozens of phone numbers. Now, I can't do that anymore.
Soon, I'm afraid I won't be able to write code anymore.
This brings me back to when the internet was full of sites like this. Small artful projects that had no goal but to teach us a tidbit about a niche topic, just because someone cared enough to share it. The internet felt smaller and more intimate than it does now in this era of social media. Bookmarked, will without a doubt explore every inch of that site.
They are referring to Huy Fong's Sriracha sauce. It's the one that took the market by storm. Even in small towns where the "Asian" section was practically empty, you could see the red bottle with the green cap. It even escaped the small corner of the grocery store to be displayed next to Heinz ketchup. For many, it was their first experience with hot sauce, apart from Tabasco.
The high school my friend's kids attend installed CO2 sensors during the pandemic as an indirect way to measure airflow.
It turned out the building had been sealed extremely tightly to keep out the winter cold and because it is old, it does not have a proper HVAC system.
They discovered that CO2 levels stayed around 1200 ppm throughout the entire winter, sometimes even higher. This had likely been the case for decades.
It is a school in a small, low‑income town. I cannot help wondering how many kids were labeled as underperforming when they were actually struggling with the effects of chronically elevated CO2 levels.
mynoise's Cafe Restaurant generator got me through years of working in a noisy open office. Can't recommend it enough. I put the cutlery noises on mute though.
The recent show Mrs. Davis also has a similar concept in which an AI would send random workers with messages to the protagonists, unbeknownst to the workers.
I don't have an answer to that, I just want to highlight how blurred the line is between what the community tolerates and what it doesn't. There is a thread with a similar discussion, but somehow the one that comes from fiction didn't trigger the same reaction as this article, which deals with science: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068015
Could it be that you unconsciously prefer serif fonts to sans serif fonts? Sans serif fonts are preferred by people with dyslexia, for example.
Another thing that comes to mind is high contrast in stroke thickness, thick vertical strokes and thin horizontal or curved strokes. This is reminiscent of engravings and calligraphy, but can be difficult to read on a screen, especially when the font size is small. Anti-aliasing options can also affect this and lead to even greater differences between letters than expected.
This would be interesting. I was gifted a Kindle with backlighting recently after my old first generation one broke. The backlight is useless to me because it shines blue, so I just use a candle.
Since you are referencing 42, let me draw from another piece of literature to respond.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
It's not the machines themselves that are inherently tyrannical, it's the human will to dominate now supercharge by technology.
LLM hallucinations aside, unregulated artificial intelligence for mental health therapy is a very slippery slope. We cannot allow, say, advertisers and brands to have access to the mind of our most vulnerables so directly.
I have been circling doing this for the same reason, any recommendation or tutorials?