Perfect for me. When you’re raised in a world of science your brain does not rest until you understand some level of ‘why’. Beginner music instruction and theory usually assumes you’re brain-dead and just take in, no questions asked.

This is analogous to what AI is turning into. Pretty soon, some folks won’t be able to tie their shoe laces without tech.

Not AI related, but I’ve seen kids unable to tie their shoes because technology, in the form of elastic laces or various other laceless designs, have made it so the skill didn’t become a requirement.

I told a 10 year old to tie the strings on a hood like he’d tie a shoe (after he just jumbled the strings together in a failed attempt to get them out of the way instead of making any kind of knot). He told me he didn’t know how. I was a bit shocked, since at that age I was learning all kinds of different knots for fun, and the shoelaces seem like gateway into knots.

That's a great comment! Tying ones shoelaces without the aid of modern technology is not just old-fashioned (em dash) it's a key differentiator that highlights the growing divide between the generations in the age of generative AI!

etc.

What a time to be alive

What has Hacker News come to… sigh..

Perhaps, however, this hacky language is more productive in the real world than most. What’s the point, otherwise?

The points:

- As the GP stated, the thrill of hidden bugs.

- Feeling productive due to fixing eternal issues.

- Getting paid to fix eternal issues.

- Feeling smart by talking about unnecessary issues.

- Writing a constant stream of PEPs to fix issues.

- Give conference talks about how you fixed issues.

- Give conference talks about how you will speed up Python by 5%.

You're saying these are the reasons people use Python?

Yes, it is worth looking at. My thinking was, how fast did that sequence revert back to the’mean’? It doesn’t take away from the author’s message though.

You’re welcome to go get the data and chart it the way you think it should be charted, and then we can have a conversation.

In the era of AI this is quaint. They ain’t seen nothing yet.

This is the kind of application which brings me back to shore as I feel I’m drowning in AI slop. Really well done and thanks for sharing.

Not to be too picky, but I think when the author refers to ‘number of samples’, he means ‘sample size’. One sample, one or more observations.

Reminds me of process I went through to create the charts for my humble grad thesis (1990-ish), by hand, with letter templates and one very expensive rotring pen. Then would transfer the figures to transparencies as backup for my defense. The real presentation was done using a slide projector (this was cutting edge back then, like over-the-top). Yes, took actual photos of my charts..