Off topic, but with DeCSS the problem wasn’t that it was proprietary or a trade secret. Once the algorithm got out, it was out. Since it had been a trade secret, there was no patent protection on it.

However, some laws and treaties prohibit distributing code that circumvents copy protection schemes, and this is where they ran into trouble.

And that’s why they were all those songs and t-shirts and other free speech items made with the DeCSS algorithm on them. Eventually the cases were dropped.

I was just going to say this. The modal part is the important part. Helix seems great, but I was unable to find a killer feature to draw me away.

The funny thing is I really liked the old JS prototypal inheritance. :)

I’m a firm believer in “Bruce Lee programming”. Your approach needs to be flexible and adaptable. Sometimes SOLID is right, and sometimes it’s not.

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

And some languages, like Rust, don’t fully conform to a strict OO heritage like Java does.

"Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

You can set git’s difftool to vimdiff. That is admittedly outside of the current editing session, though.

Honestly, I write virtually everything as markdown in Vim. The only time I get out of that is when I have very specific formatting requirements and I don’t feel like messing with LaTeX or I need to submit a Word document.

Plain text is superior due to lack of dependencies. 😁

Sparingly. I use chatgpt to help with syntax and idioms when learning new languages. And sometimes I use it to help determine the best algorithm to use for a general problem. Other times I feed in working code and ask for improvements like a mini code review

The only time I had it code something from scratch for me was when I wanted some Vimscript and I didn’t want to learn it. I tried the same thing with jq and it failed and I had to learn me some jq.

I hate popups in editors in general (no intellisense for me), so I lothe AI trying to auto complete my code.

Now this is a great use of LLMs. Love it. So many old apps and games exist only in compiled form.

IMHO, the top way to get better is to code a lot in a space you’re unfamiliar with. And make it a substantial project, not just some little toy thing. If you want to learn mobile dev, choose an app you want to clone, and start working on it. It will be slow and painstaking going, but you’ll learn a ton.

When you’re stuck, don’t AI. Use standard search because you’ll learn more that way.

And understand that people who are skilled in the art have been learning for years. Don’t let that dissuade you. Just take it one step at a time and someday you’ll have been learning for years, too. ✋🖐️🖖🤘

FFS. How are these ideas remotely patentable in the first place? Software patents are pure dogshit.

Usenet is having a small revival now that Google got out. The spam is gone.

Good God… I don’t even think there’s a place in my entire town that charges that much. :(

Another potential route: your public library. Mine prints for 5¢ per page and has a web interface for uploading documents from anywhere and printing them when you go in.

In the 6 years I’ve been with Firefox on Linux on my 9-year-old laptop, I could count on both hands the number of sites that didn’t render correctly, and on one hand the number that didn’t run or weren’t performant.

Maybe I’m just lucky, but I definitely feel for folks who are stuck with Chrome and all those ads.

“Average” is the key word here, for sure. Our goal as humans is to be better than the AI. If you’re not such a good writer, average is a step up. But maybe we should all try to level up, instead.

I’m pretty sure every time you use AI for programming your brain atrophies a little, even if you’re just looking something up. There’s value in the struggle.

So they can definitely speed you up, but be careful how you use it. There’s no value in a programmer who can only blindly recite LLM output.

There’s a balance to be struck in there somewhere, and I’m still figuring it out.

LLMs won’t get smarter in the next 10 years, but they will rapidly outpace humans.

I just installed the original about a month ago to try it again. I hadn’t played it since the early 90s on a VT220 attached to a MicroVAX II.

Didn’t make it past the first level. 😅

Basically “does this JSON object contain at least these two properties, and is the value of one particular properties a string of digits followed by the letter ‘Z’”, for example.

I tried and failed to get an LLM to write jq code to do a regex based matcher for finding if one json object was a subset of another.

Gave up and learned it enough to get it going. jq is nutso powerful.