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Comment My productivity is up 5x. At least. (Score 2) 123

I use AI regularly, at least once or twice a week. It's a real productivity boost. It's completely replaced searching for me. It's basically an API expert I can talk to and get answers from in 20 seconds. Good stuff.

Example: I'm working on a bad code base of a legacy application. The backend is quite a mess which I don't really like to touch, so I push a lot of my new logic into our Postgres DB. I don't really like SQL and anything beyond one or two joins I'd usually avoid. With progbuddy AI I'm doing triggers, procedures, functions, variables, etc. in SQL like a champ, sometimes 30 lines or more. Getting this good in SQL would take me at least a year of systematic practice.

The AI still does some mistakes or talks nonsense, but I catch those mistakes easily because that much I do know about SQL and coding in general. I'm the sole programmer in a company of 70 people and still manage to get off work at 5 o'clock whilst doing everything on my own.

So, yeah, AI definitely is a sold productivity boost for me and my work.

Comment I'm glad I did performing arts. (Score 1) 121

I'm your type A 80ies computer kid and have been programming since my teens, starting out with Sharps Basic and Opcode on a portable pocket computer (called "handheld computer" back then). However, I didn't study CS but did a performing arts diploma with 5 years of full-time training instead, because my creative streak was stronger. Performing arts sure did help me with my career. Giving presentations and talking in public is no sweat for me whatsoever and it sure does help with office politics having stood on stage in front of an audience and done complex choreographies.

I made my money in the last 25 years doing professional software development and digital design work because art doesn't pay, but given todays rapid pace of innovation I am now really glad I went the path of some obscure stage-craft. I know where ever I go it will still be very helpful in gaining traction in that field. And, curiously enough, I am way better at presenting myself than my job peers with academic degrees which in turn has helped build a big project portfolio that often outbids simple degrees when I apply for senior positions these days.

Bottom line: Should AI really come for us, performing arts is actually a way better deal than CS, or so it might turn out to be. Good for me, I guess.

Comment A DNS redo is waaaay overdue ... (Score 1) 37

... as is a redo of the Web itself. We need decoupled namecoin/blockchain bases DNS combined with some WebFS-style offline capable thing. Perhaps even a redo of HTML and Web renderers themselves, they are a historically grown mess. Most of the Web and E-Mail (over 90%) these days is just trackers, scam and juck-ridden garbage.

Comment Too expensive. (Score 1) 74

Current gen consoles are too damn expensive to appeal to their usual customer base. When a portable premium tablet with 16+GB of RAM and .5 TB of storage costs less than a meager video-game console that isn't portable and requires a screen to be useful, then the console market has clearly painted itself into a corner. I have no pity for either PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo at this point.

Make consoles affordable again, then sales will go up again. It's that simple. Meanwhile, I'm glad that at least Xbox is backwards compatible meaning I'm still doing quite very fine with my last gen XBox One X still chugging along and delivering excellent entertainment at fluid framerates with 1080p, which is more than enough for me. It's interesting to see that the refurbished One X still sells for 250 Euros these days. IMHO it hits the sweet-spot of what a console should cost today.

Comment Not just entry level. (Score 2) 113

As a senior webdev in the agency space for the better part of 2.5 decades I can attest that the hiring process has been absolute shite for at least 20 years now. However, last year it was notably bad. I'm an experienced senior webdev with an impressive project portfolio, a very fine-tuned and optimized CV reviewed by professional career and job application advisors (highly recommended!) and a very solid personal branding (I know a thing or two about marketing and branding) with a professionally run and maintained weblog that has been going on for more than 20 years now. If you Google my name it comes up at spot #1 and comes with a solid and professional presentation.

But last summer it was notably tedious to get a new gig, even for someone as seasoned and experienced as me. I took my salary demands down 20k, applied for 60+ targeted, custom worded and spot on applications where I checked every box listed, less than 10 reactions of any kind, roughly 5 actual interviews, 4 of which with 30+ year old HR dimwitts (albeit somewhat professionally cordial) 2 of which went anywhere with one being one of the shoddiest of low-end crappy in-house web agency teams I've seen in a looong time. In short: It was total carnage.

The last one was a singular webdev staff position in a 70+ lawyer law firm which I'm at right now. I haven't written an single line of code that was mentioned in the job description (a classic thing as many of you may know) but instead was booked on a one-man product development army for an existing shitty bug-ridden jamstack application that was originally designed and built by a dev on crack, or so it seems. The job is OK, I have seniors who know a thing or two about IT and keep our internal customers off my back, the work is chill and I have 80% remote but there is no way in hell I would've gotten this gig without deciders knowing the difference between front- and backend, with solid amounts of luck and chance and yet again HR staying out of the mix.

It was bad back in 2001 after the dot bomb and in 2008, but this time it felt extra challenging.

It must be a total shit-show for some n00b coming straight from college, especially with AI and the global economic downturn we're running in to. I definitely would recommend to any young guy today to steer clear of coding and other IT work and learn a trade. That way one can still remain somewhat relevant even if AI and the bots take over.

Comment This is good. And not about teenagers. (Score 4, Insightful) 92

Commercial "social media" shouldn't exist in the first place. This will force teenagers to learn about computers, networks, pseudonyms, IRC and self-hosted forums. That can't be a bad thing.

These laws aren't about teenagers anyway. Like a 15 year old me would care if commercial social media is off limits to me. I'd have a spoof account up and running in 5 minutes of the law taking effect. This is about the authorities being able to fine social media giants for bazillions if they chose to target teens. Good stuff. The sooner these corps vanish again and get replaced by citizen run networks, the better.

Comment Yet another Fluxbox / Windowmaker? (Score 1) 23

We certainly do _not_ have a lack of Windowmanagers in the open source world. And the presentation looks suspiciously like yet another WM. Does it have decent defaults and clipboard management that isn't a complete mess and/or broken? Does it have a proper feature complete file and font manager? What about icon management? Those would be my number one distinctions between a simple WM and a DE. And I seriously doubt that this is one delivers on those accounts.

Notch up half-assed FOSS WM #531 I guess. Yes?

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