In my macro economy classes, it has been repeatedly "proved" that having less population is beneficial for the wealthy. My inner conspiracy theorist is 100% sure that the whole LGBTOMGWTFBBQ propaganda is mostly there because THEY decided that promoting anything other than a traditional family, which known to be the most children-friendly, will make them richer in the end. My inner skeptic is unsure, but acknowledges that the conspiracy theorist has a point.

which qualities should a programming language / platform have so that it can benefit more from LLM-based tools?

I asked ChatGPT and here is how it ranked TIOBE's top 20:

Top tier -- AI-friendly (9 - 10/10)
These languages get the biggest immediate productivity boost from AI: large corpora, great tooling/IDEs, REPLs or declarative style, and stable ecosystems.
* Python (TIOBE #1) -- huge training corpus, ML ecosystem, REPL + notebooks -> excellent NL-> code and copilots.
* JavaScript (TIOBE #6) -- massive web ecosystem, short idiomatic snippets that LLMs do well at.
* C# (TIOBE #5) -- Roslyn + mature tooling give strong static-analysis signals for safe code generation and refactors.
* SQL (TIOBE #12) -- declarative queries map exceptionally well from natural language; high precision generation.

Strong tier -- Very good fit (7 - 8.9/10)
Large ecosystems and/or excellent tooling -- AI helps a lot, but either low-level detail or domain specifics require caution.
* Java (TIOBE #4) -- huge corpus + static typing reliable refactors, test generation; boilerplate can be an issue.
* C++ (TIOBE #2) -- massive codebase; templates and patterns help, but low-level UB and build/ABI complexity reduce autonomous use.
* C (TIOBE #3) -- plentiful examples, but pointer/UB and platform specifics make fully automatic changes risky.
* Go (TIOBE #8) -- simple, opinionated style and gofmt = AI produces readable, idiomatic code reliably.
* Rust (TIOBE #18) -- excellent compiler diagnostics let AI produce correct-by-construction fixes; steeper semantics but very promising.

Mid tier -- Useful but with caveats (5.5 - 6.9/10)
AI helps productivity (snippets, prototyping, migration), but domain-specific tooling, legacy idioms, or small corpora limit scope.
* Visual Basic (TIOBE #7) -- large legacy base and lots of examples; useful for migrations and automation but inconsistent modern tooling.
* Perl (TIOBE #9) -- expressive one-liners & CPAN help, but varied idioms make safe generation harder.
* Delphi / Object Pascal (TIOBE #10) -- legacy GUIs and embedded uses -- AI aids porting and snippets.
* PHP (TIOBE #15) -- huge web examples/frameworks; dynamic quirks can trip up blind generation.
* R (TIOBE #14) -- great for data tasks; AI helps plotting/analysis code but less so for large engineering systems.
* MATLAB (TIOBE #16) -- numeric/algorithm prototyping benefits from AI, smaller ecosystem for broader tooling.

Lower tier -- Niche / harder for LLMs (3.5 - 5.4/10)
Specialized domains, niche audiences, or small indexed corpora reduce immediate AI impact.
* Fortran (TIOBE #11) -- legacy scientific code -- good for modernization tasks but limited general tooling.
* Ada (TIOBE #13) -- safety-critical focus and niche community; compiler checks help, but corpus is small.
* Kotlin (TIOBE #19) -- modern language with good IDEs, but smaller training footprint vs the biggest languages.
* Scratch (TIOBE #17) -- educational/block language: AI can create lesson content, but not much production automation.

Legacy / very low-benefit tier (0 - 3.0/10)
Very context-sensitive, architecture-specific or educational-only languages where generic LLM assistance is least useful.
* Assembly language (TIOBE #20) -- highly architecture- and context-specific; AI can suggest patterns but needs deep hardware context.

would you agree with the LLM's "logic"?

I get that part, it's always worked this way. But using layoffs to meet targets only really started a couple of years ago (at least in this cycle), and it wasn’t just Microsoft -- it happened across the IT sector. The recent advances in AI alone don't explain the scale of these layoffs. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that shareholders have become more demanding. They may not micromanage layoffs directly, but they can easily look at some metrics and say, "Looks like there’s too much fat there, so go and trim it." Whether those metrics are accurate or not, I have no idea.

So what does this have to do with the executives? They are doing what board told them to do. If board told them "we need to cash out immediately because a financial crash is coming", that's what happens. It's not like only Microsoft is affected by this.

Banal or not, Candy Crush Saga is a fantastically profitable game. If what you describe as drek is what customers like and are willing to pay for, why would it be surprising that someone is happy to provide?

As for the layoffs, it appears that the general trend is to remove the money from businesses and into the hands of the wealth managers, possibly in anticipation of the coming financial crash. And King most certainly does have fat to lose, from various SVPs of Talking to Other SVPs to copywriters that have become as obsolete as typists in the age of laser printers. Sic transit..

this is only true about public companies or at least companies with a board breathing down their neck and making them hit profit targets.

Valve doesn't have to, it's basically a Gabe's hobby project at this stage. the fine FT folks don't understand businesses-turned-hobby-projects, they only understand making more money from money. funny innit

I think there should be even more than that. Users should be clearly notified that "data is being collected and transmitted", similar to how phones indicate that the microphone or camera is active. There should also be a way for users to see exactly what data is being sent, and the option to stop or opt out whenever they have a right to, which is often the case.

Think about it from a product perspective.

The more users who can easily understand your UI, the more likely they are to use your product successfully -- or to put it more bluntly, to give you money. And guess what? Users with lower computer literacy or reduced cognitive ability also have money to spend. In fact, for most products, there are a lot more of them than there are of the self-styled power users “willing to take the time to learn something”.

Whether catering to the latter group -- by building extra interfaces, power features, or complex workflows -- makes financial sense, depends entirely on the product. If your user base is unsophisticated or their use cases are simple, building extra bells and whistles is just wasted effort.

Sure, some people slap the "inclusivity" label on all this and try to turn it into a moral crusade. But in most cases, it's just business.

And the counter-argument -- that “everything is so dumbed down now,” that society is addicted to “instant gratification”-- is pure elitism. It’s the same tired “I’m smarter than everyone else, why don’t they build things for me?” whining. Well, until society for some odd reason starts mass-producing geniuses, you’re a minority -- and in most markets, that means you’ll be ignored. It’s not that different from the LGBTOMGWTFBBQ crowd expecting bespoke accommodations because they believe they’re uniquely special. Sorry, but from a business standpoint, you're just not worth it.

there is value in preserving the past intact, but that's going to be less and less practical for many use cases as we're moving closer and closer to the internet of the infinite automated monkeys (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FInfinite_monkey_theorem)

so I would disagree about relevant. important, sure

that seems to be a fairly low bar. it's trivial to tinker with a gpt to make it emulate smalltalk, because smalltalk by its very definition is trivially codified.

whether or not customers actually want that experience, and especially if they consider this option an improvement, remains to be seen. my guess is they would, to some degree.

(the interesting corollary to this that as communications with robots because commonplace and cheap, meatbag experience, with all its faults and imperfections, is going to become a premium.. but that's a story for another discussion topic)

it's true that it's one of the reasons though. picture this:

it's the spring of 2020, the new reality is setting in, the shutdowns are starting.. and the online spending skyrockets. (a similar thing, on a smaller scale, already happened back in 2008). now, the BRILLIANT investors are looking at these numbers and are like shutupandtakemymoney.png. most games have a production cycle from 12 to 18 months.. so by the times the games made with these investments are out, guess what? there are no shutdowns anymore and people return to normalcy. brilliant?

force feeding of the woke agenda didn't help either, which might or might not apply to a particular developer/publisher, but certainly did impact the industry as a whole.

but one of the biggest reasons is actually TIKTOK. if you have a choice between spending time playing a game and likely paying for it or mindlessly browsing videos for free, which one you would pick? this is likely a much more serious threat the video gaming industry is currently facing than the other two. it currently only impacts the youngest audience, but if this trend continues, as these folks grow up, they will not have a habit of spending in online games. so we expect a bit of a slowdown in the market.

it's not going anywhere of course, people will always play games, and if you make a good game people will still play it and happily pay for it. as it stands right now, there won't be a lot of external cash inflow and the studios will have to rely on existing revenue streams for R&D.

you reminded me of this joke. an excited CEO rushes into the room and exclaims hey everybody! with these new tools our productivity twice as high! employees are like, oh great, do we get to be paid twice as much now? do we get to work half hours now? does our product cost half as much now? the CEO is like oh actually this means half of you are getting sacked very soon.

disclaimer: I have an MBA degree, but I'm not evil

my company exists for 10+ years and it's been fairly consistently the case that candidates that did not demonstrate good understanding of algorithms would later struggle in the position. and I'm not asking anyone trivia; that would test the candidate's capacity for memorizing such, which isn't really a very useful skill -- I'm asking simple problem solving questions. after all, if someone isn't capable of coming up with a relatively simple algorithm on the spot, are they really a programmer?

the analogy I would like to use is working out: you go to the gym because you want to be healthier and stronger, not necessarily because your job is literally unloading trucks or because you are a powerlifter. there simply isn't a better way of gauging your ability at programming than problem solving -- not because you would be doing this as your actual job.

for our studios in two different countries divided by the Atlantic ocean; job descriptions are practically the same, and pay is slightly above market rates. interviewed roughly 150 people so far since last May, which resulted in 6 hires. vast majority of applicants have 1-2 years of full-time work experience.

so the weird observation is that on the east side candidates are on average better at computer science fundamentals but their command of the engine we're using is often lacking. okay, so they are smart and we can train them a bit on the engine part. guess what, we're very happy with their performance now.

to the west of the pond, however, the candidates are often excellent at the engine knowledge but simple algorithms questions frequently throw a "deer in headlights stare" exception. "I'm going to use Google of course!" (while looking somewhat insulted) occurs at least 20% of the time. "I'm a VR developer, why are you asking this?"... wtf is a VR developer? is that kind of like a piano player who only knows how to use the first three white keys in the second octave? yet someone has hired these people before and paid them money for working with them and not the other way round (ok that was a bit harsh but you get the idea). after all this time, we still have vacancies in that office...

not to sound too arrogant, but maybe, just maybe, the issue is that for many people, actual ability of their skillset to add value to a business is close to zero, and demand for those skillsets is finally now where it should be, instead of crazy as before.

or maybe it's just our sample bias. go figure

>cloud servers
>60m in the air
I see what you did there