I don't have anything against JS, it's fine for manipulating webpages client side because it's the only standard option (fine, WASM, but realistically). Where I draw (drew?) the line is "let's run it on the server too!". That was a terrible idea. Then someone decided, hey, don't code that, use an npm that you have never read or validated. That was the terrible idea amongst terrible ideas. Now they've reached the apex of idea terribleness by letting LLMs write code that is never read, using npms that are never validated, on a server without a sandbox. I'm eagerly awaiting to see how they top this, might I suggest running the whole thing on Node using root?

> The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers and data scientists.

What is the implied definition of "early" in "early career" here? Limited experience with a specific technology? Limited experience with a specific software stack? Limited experience working for the government? Is the "early" in "early career" subjective or objective? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's objective, since admitting it's subjective would have literally all the age discrimination lawyers ordering new Porsches. Given "late-career" is generally defined as "the final phase of a person's working life", I would be more measured with my choice of words rather than try to argue that "early career", the polar opposite of "late career", does not implicitly include any age component.

I'm not a die-hard fan of C++, I do prefer Rust to it if forced to choose, but my greenfield choice is C-like options. However, this Rust fanboy stuff is super off-putting. There is much more to programming than memory safety, in fact, the overwhelming majority of defects are not related to memory safety. Rust isn't a magic bullet that writes bug-free code, careless devs can write bad code in Rust. Rust can and does crash, it's not bulletproof, it just makes it harder for you to work around the compiler when it comes to memory.

Wait, VB is still around?

Also, Java needs to go the way of COBOL. Java was once a language with a lot of promise, then Struts and Springs came along and decided it would be even better with a large dollop of XML and DI on top. Everybody knows nothing is more stable and maintainable than hot-swappable runtime dependencies glued together by XML files. That's the point I relegated it to the trash pile of history.

I don't have strong opinions of C#, but I don't think it's a pretty language, largely because it carries a lot of the baggage of its time trying to out-Java Java. It reminds me of what Swift has become, a good concept that is more suited to serving its masters than relevance as a general-purpose language. I don't see C# ever overtaking C/C++/Python, but Java, sure, I don't think anybody will shed a tear that day except maybe the consulting shops seeing their cash cow lose ground.

You know China has import tariffs, right? Especially on finished goods. If any company in China is making a similar product, you can expect an import duty in the range of 30%. Do you honestly think China is the lesser of two evils between the US and China? If so, you should stop drinking the Kool-Aid and read the Budapest Memorandum. The one where China signed security guarantees with Ukraine in exchange for disposing of their nuclear weapons. Oops.

This is exactly right. I don't have a problem with data centers per se. I think they're useful things. However, I do have a problem when they compete for residential utilities. If they can run 100% off-grid using some combination of solar, wind, hydro, geo, nuclear, then go for it. If they want to share existing public utilities, then they should be required to subsidize consumer rates so that they remain capped at pre-datacenter levels for as long as the datacenter is in operation. If the current residential rate is $0.20/kWh and the utility seeks to raise residential rates to $0.25/kWh, the datacenter operator's rates must rise to negate any impact to consumers. If the local grid requires updates, the datacenter must bear the bulk of the cost. This will not be popular with data center operators, but it does negate the rent-seeking impetus and creates a tangible local benefit from hosting data centers.

... then boot Linux via WASM on Firefox running on Linux via WASM on Chrome!

Bonus points for the VMS reference! Perennial winner of the "Least Fun System to FTP File To" award.

They're commies in spirit only, they're looking to get paid MORE, but don't dare to call it capitalism. For example, "depends on paying artists a pittance" and "just put it online for free", so apparently they like getting paid. I can sympathize that streaming music decimated album sales, I get it, but that old model is gone, and it's not coming back. If someone is looking to make a living playing music, they'd better learn to write music a LOT of people want. Is that selling out? Yes, of course it is. If nobody is being coerced into buying music, and nobody wants their music, they’re going to hit the bottle of the barrel pretty fast. To make a living in music, they have to either write music others need (eg. soundtracks) or they need to play the popularity contest. Bands don't get popular sitting in their garage playing music, they need to let people know about their music and pray that it resonates with people. Today, streaming services are the way people discover music, it's the current game, they don't have to play the game, but they'd better make sure music is their hobby and not their job if they don't.

What profits? Last I checked nobody had climbed out of the red in the space yet.

"More people leaving New Zealand than entering as young flee high cost of living ... with departures accelerating and labour shortage feared"

I see, so the problem is definitely not that jobs in NZ are underpaying, nope, it's that the cost of living is too high. Since we're tossing all economic theory out the window, I would like to complain about the lack of workers willing to work for $1 a year for my company. It's obvious that we have a severe labor shortage rather than the fact that I'm not offering anything near a living wage.

As someone who wishes LLMs could code better, no, we are nowhere near there yet for anything non-trivial. The models vary, but when the number of distinct responsibilities hits ~20, the models start generating very poor logic. There's a reason why all the codegen tools have some central "toolkit" like Supabase. We are nowhere near the point where LLMs can take over all coding. I'd say for web dev tasks, they're getting close to 80% of the way there, but that last 20% is the hard parts and it will take 4x longer than the 80% easy-kill parts to take over. If you go down a few layers to performance-critical code, they're well under 30% of the way there. Another reason why this will not happen by 2026 is that coding is not the hardest part of software, figuring out what humans really want is.

Right now, LLMs can do a good amount of the low-value work that a good template or snippet library would cover. They're also decent at pinpointing bugs because they're very efficient spaghetti throwing machines, throwing entire boxes of noodles at the wall faster than humans. However, they're not very good at fixing bugs without causing regressions.

Want to see a model fall on its face? Ask any codegen tool to write you an inference engine for the H200 in PTX, you're not going to get very far. It output something that looks like PTX code, but it'll be, well, some novel form of pseudo-code that doesn't compile and is fundamentally broken.

Maybe AI will take over posting rankings after we're gone?

I can see it now, 2 AI agents in a pissing match where one claims Flugnarg is better because it used it to program the T2000 that wiped out 40,000,000 humans while the other AI agent claims the T2000 is a dumpster fire because it's written in Flugnarg and that the Z8000 it wrote in Nargflug is so much 733ter because it exterminated 40,000,000 humans 1 second faster than the T2000.

Personally, I think Flugnarg is more quantum stable than Nargflug, so it actually is better.

"Bitcoin will collapse when its ECC signature algorithms are compromised due to enough qubits"

Hey!!! That's supposed to be a secret!!! You're screwing up my short positions!!!

I'll one-up that. H1Bs should not be eligible for contract work. You must work for the company that sponsored you on company premises for tasks directly attributable to the company that sponsored you. If you really want to tighten the screws, H1B workers must be in the top 5% of salaries for the role both at the sponsoring company and industry-wide. I mean, in the end, it's about exceptional talent, not dollars, right? Or did the narrative change while I wasn't paying attention?