This actually reminds me of “Augmenting Long-term Memory”, a good article I’ve read years ago.
I have been meaning to give flashcards another go, but can’t seem to make the habit stick. This one looks amazing. If it doesn’t work for me, I’ll give physical index cards a go.
Dad visits museum of all the fun hobbies he used to have
It was emotional, getting rid of my unused shoes last week. Climbing, trail running, weightlifting and CrossFit shoes, all unworn in over a year. Been too busy reading Gruffalo stories, and I wouldn’t change it one bit.
In four years, we went from “everything is a file” to “everything is systemd”.
I guess I just hate almost all software
I stopped using Linux between 2010 and 2014. When I came back to it, my distro had switched to systemd and I could no longer understand how to do basic admin tasks anymore. To this day I “pay” for those four years' lost context. How on earth do I set the time zone settings, argh.
The virtue of the smartphone camera is that it takes the fuss away from gear selection and puts you in “just shoot” mode. I gave that up when I switched to a dumbphone. I’m not packing my Sony Alpha everywhere I go. So many pictures I wish I could have taken.
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
Out of the “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four” that is the internet, Reddit is the only one I keep visiting. Not because I want to, but because search engines point me there. I will start paying for Kagi again, just so I can filter it out.
The negative externalities of widespread LLM usage are the rest of the world starting to ‘enjoy’ the sloppiness we programmers have gotten away with for a decade and a half.
Vibe coding is a symptom, not the problem
Do not allow this language [Ada] in its present state to be used in applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations, cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missile defense systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus: It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities. An unreliable programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations. – C. A. R. Hoare
“Glorifying God with our bodies isn’t about what we don’t do”
This is what it means to be made in his image (Gen. 1:27). What does an image do? It images. It reflects. It displays. It makes visible. God made us to image him, reflect him, and display him in this created world. We’re meant to live in this creation as God himself would live if he were a creature in the world he made.
Reisner’s Rule of Conceptual Inertia: “If you think big enough, you’ll never have to do it."
I found this amazing set of courses on church history from The Gospel Coalition. I’m only a few videos in, but the “recommended resources” to follow up on have been super helpful.
Founder mode, hackers, and being bored by tech
I’ve been thinking about this as I look for a job: why do I feel so repulsed by the idea of writing software for a living? Have I changed? Probably, but it’s also the case that the industry has exactly zero things in common with what it was back when I started.
In allowing and encouraging the likes of Graham to define what tech looks like, we have made tech look boring, unless you are the kind of teenage who dreams of getting rich quick by starting a company, riding a hype cycle, and flipping it to some sucker for a few hundred million.