> I feel like I'm the only person on this site that doesn't use AI for coding.
I’m surprised by that. One reason I follow discussions here about AI and coding is that strong opinions are expressed by professionals both for and against. It seems that every thread that starts out with someone saying how AI has increased their productivity invites responses from people casting doubt on that claim, and that every post about the flaws in AI coding gets pushback from people who claim to use it to great effect.
I’m not a programmer myself, but I have been using Claude Code to vibe-code various hobby projects and I find it enormously useful and fun. In that respect, I suppose, I stand on the side of AI hype. But I also appeciate reading the many reports from skeptics here who explain how AI has failed them in more serious coding scenarios than what I do.
I wonder if the author’s use of “you” rubbed some people the wrong way: “You are alone and powerless. You encounter a deep challenge,” “When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you’ll never think possible,” etc.
The pronoun seems intended to refer to the author’s own experiences, but I can see why some readers might think it refers to them. I had a bit of a negative reaction to those “you”s myself, as I experience cafés very differently from the author.
I have a similar negative reaction to op-ed articles that use “we” to refer to some sort of personified zeitgeist. From some essays currently appearing in the Opinion section of the New York Times:
“We are all in a constant state of grief, even though we don’t always admit it.”
“But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection.”
“Over the past six decades or so, we chose autonomy, and as a result, we have been on a collective journey from autonomy to achievement to anxiety.”
Oh, this one is difficult. I vacillated a lot in my early writing between I, we, and you.
Too many "I" sounds self-fixated and irrelevant for the reader. "You" is way too presumptive, unless addressing a specific person or specific group with actual evidence. "We" can also read as too presumptive, but I feel like it works in the case of processes the reader could volunteer to be part of. However, it must not be used to project emotions or experiences onto the reader.
For now, I've personally settled on "we" for most things (because the reader could hypothetically choose to follow along actively), but switching into "I" if I need to discuss something negative or a failing of my own. In other words, I would never project "a constant state of grief" on my readers – that I can only attribute to myself.
When I refer to something that cannot be experienced by myself, only by my readership (e.g. because it happens only to people who do not know where the article is going), I prefer "the reader" over "you", because while it might be true for the median reader, it might not be true for each and every individual reading.
I'm glad someone else also cares about this! I don't find it discussed very much.
(1) It starts out with "I" having trouble packaging – my readers are generally more intelligent and experienced than I am, so I won't assume they have the same trouble.
(2) Then we go into my experience, but phrased in a way where the reader could hypothetically follow along. Thus, I ask the reader to imagine "we" have a Perl script.
(3) Somewhere in the middle, the article refers to something that might be noticed by "the very attentive reader". I do not expect everyone to, not even the median reader, but I realise some readers might.
(4) The appendix contains a note in case "you" are very curious, because here I do address each and every reader individually.
That is commonly claimed, but it is thought by some to lead to unnecessarily complicated text. A tendency is also noticed for the passive voice to be introduced as part of such rules.
In case the irony isn't clear, I disagree. Clarity first, and stylistic choices after that.
Without knowing the author, I wonder if that's a natural construct in their native language. As I've moved from Canada, I find myself consciously having to check to see if I've written "I", or "one", given that my local language, places a preferred conjugation in the you imperative.
Coincidentally, Quebec uses "we" a lot in their ads, especially as a way to say "this is how things ought to be done". For example, "this December, we vote".
German also has "man" which almost directly translates to "one" (the pronoun).
Swedish also has the "man" and I hate when people use it to project feelings or experiences on me that I don't have.
I know for some people it's just how they speak – instead of saying "I get the urge to scream" they say "one gets the urge to scream" and they mean themselves only. But my computer-diseased brain interprets it literally and I get the urge to contradict them and say, "No, I don't!"
Personally I found the writing style unpleasant, because people on LinkedIn write the same way. I associate it to a specific kind of low-value content.
In this case, the use of "we" is also funny, because the opening sentence is such an unusual take.
My house, built in the 60s, is actually 4 Sears cabin kits. The guy bought them, and assembled them end to end, making a long house.
Same guy dug the original ditch by driving back and forth with his jeep for an hour during spring rain. This gives a perspective on his can do attitude.
But really, I'm living in the house still, so it can't be that bad.
You literally can't do that today in any jurisdiction with building code. It wouldn't be illegal, but the hoops you'd need to jump through (and they way they'd likely try and screw you at every turn) to string together a bunch of kit buildings and call it a "house" would make it so expensive that you'd be better off hiring professionals to build a house the normal way.
From the perspective an enforcer that wants an easy meal without much risk to themselves they're a way tougher nut to crack. They're built by "big enough" business that getting their stuff engineered for all the various codes is an expense they can easily amortize over their production. And these businesses can afford lawyers and have every incentive to fight unreasonable stuff so the vultures in your local zoning board or building commissioner's office are unlikely to pick a fight with them. In contrast, some random guy is way easier prey.
But yes, on a fundamental level there's little difference between plopping a modular on a grid of piers vs plopping sheds on a grid of piers. The biggest difference is the level of finishing that's done at the factory.
Unfortunately yes. I wish it was that easy. That's why I said "jurisdiction with building code". Florida is free AF. They have pretty serious building code for anything people are expected to occupy because hurricanes. The mountain west is free, on paper, at a state level. But at a local level there's fucktons of jurisdictions that are basically run by carpetbaggers from California (if not in literal state of origin then spiritually) who make everything hard. The various offgrid cabin forums are absolutely chock full of horror stories about how those people run the place.
When I bought, it was maybe 2 ft deep. 60s Jeeps weren't quite a wide as today, either.
I dug it out properly after buying. It was a perfectly good ditch though, but I wanted to drain more water at the back of the property, so I lowered it another 2 feet.
One issue holding back the adoption of Hepburn has been that the standard national curriculum (gakushū shidō yōryō) calls for all children to be taught romaji beginning in the third grade (previously fourth grade) of elementary school. It's taught in Kokugo (national language, i.e., Japanese) classes and included in those textbooks, as romaji characters are used in Japanese alongside kana and kanji as well as, increasingly, in daily life (user names, passwords, etc.). At that age, native speakers of Japanese can acquire kunreishiki more easily, as the consonant representation corresponds more closely to the Japanese phonology that they have internalized.
It doesn't sound like a lot to me, either. I have known many people who moved to another country for graduate study. Some of them ended up settling in that country, but others pursued further study or employment in yet other countries. And perhaps the largest group among my acquaintances are those who eventually moved back to their home countries. They feel more comfortable there, they have family there, or, in many cases, returning home is what they intended to do all along.
Long-time Tokyo/Yokohama resident here. I’m basically the same: Especially if I’m by myself and near a train station or retail area, I just walk around to see what’s available and choose someplace to eat. Only if I am planning a meal with others do I look for options online, and then, in addition to Google and Apple maps, I also use sites such as tabelog.com and restaurant.ikyu.com.
I haven’t been outside Japan for nearly a decade so I can’t compare it with other countries, but my impression is that Japan has more small restaurants than some other places. It’s not unusual to go into a ramen, curry, gyoza, soba, or other eating place with fewer than a dozen seats and staffed by just one or two people.
The existence of such small places increases the eating-out options. I don’t know why such small food businesses are viable here but not elsewhere; perhaps regulatory frameworks (accessibility, fire, health, tax, labor, etc.) play a role.
Totally. We’re definitely lucky over here. From my talks with people in restaurant industry in NA, it’s just extremely expensive to start a business, on top of the regulatory restrictions that you’ve mentioned. And obviously the holy grail of money making - liquor. I can get beer in almost every random ramen shop near me. It takes months/years of approval to open a place with a liquor license in Vancouver, Canada. Margins on alcohol are huge, that gives breathing room to little margins places make from food.
About 20 hours after the earthquake, the University of Tokyo sent out a follow-up advisory to faculty, students, and staff [1, scroll down for English]. This part hit home with me:
“The ‘follow-up earthquake advisory for the Hokkaido and Sanriku Coastal regions’ was established following the earthquake (M7.3) that occurred off the coast of Sanriku on March 9, 2011, two days prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake (Tōhoku Region Pacific Offshore Earthquake) that occurred on March 11, 2011.”
I was eating lunch in a fourth-floor restaurant in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, on March 9, 2011, when that preliminary tremor occurred. I had felt many earthquakes before, but that one seemed different: longer, slower, creepier. It didn’t cause any damage, but I often recalled it after the much bigger one struck two days later. (I missed the March 11 quake, as I happened to leave for Osaka just a few hours before it hit. My office back in Tokyo was damaged, though.)
Same here. And I've been old-guy grumbling for years now about kids-these-days getting into vinyl and other retro technology that I was happy to be rid of.
I’m surprised by that. One reason I follow discussions here about AI and coding is that strong opinions are expressed by professionals both for and against. It seems that every thread that starts out with someone saying how AI has increased their productivity invites responses from people casting doubt on that claim, and that every post about the flaws in AI coding gets pushback from people who claim to use it to great effect.
I’m not a programmer myself, but I have been using Claude Code to vibe-code various hobby projects and I find it enormously useful and fun. In that respect, I suppose, I stand on the side of AI hype. But I also appeciate reading the many reports from skeptics here who explain how AI has failed them in more serious coding scenarios than what I do.
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