Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you’re coming from. And I’m sure we’d get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you’re saying and it never goes anywhere.

Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.

Yes, helping people is fine and all but I think we can all agree the real question is can we grow extra teeth and where?

FWIW you’ve been level-headed throughout the thread and it does seem like a valid note to me. It’s not like, damning, as you’ve pointed out yourself, it doesn’t magically invalidate his work. But it does seem odd to me and I’m glad you pointed it out, and the response you’ve been getting seems weird and disproportionate.

That hasn’t been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don’t (can’t) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn’t my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

Aww c’mon, I was gonna deliver this in a much more conspiratorial tone!

Can confirm, I’ve worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don’t know what it’d take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

Definitely not wrong! Especially once you’ve dialed in your routine of anti-malware utilities to run on pretty much everything. It’s like an antibiotic cocktail, lol. Or did you prefer the “back up and nuke on sight” approach?

Oof, couldn’t help but notice my subconscious response to that line as well.

Yep, I did similar around the time. Can’t blame people for being mad that the thing they bought is damn near unusable (and was destined to be, but they didn’t understand that part). If someone buys a new bike, even if it’s cheap, it shouldn’t roll like you’re on gravel after a couple weeks and become impossible to pedal within months. But damn, there were a lot of horrible machines sold in those days.

And then of course, the least fun part of that era, the guys who would bring their machines back weekly despite very stern warnings to stop visiting “those sites”.

Awesome, thank you! This largely matches my own experience, I’ve found it (Claude in my case) most useful in areas where I’m weakest. I haven’t tried this scaffolding-via-comments approach though, it sounds cool.

Any experience with Cursor or other IDEs or agents? Was co-pilot a choice or just kinda a natural default?

Would you mind sharing a bit more about the workflow you’re describing? I’m on a “ask people how they’re using AI to help them dev” kick.

Sounds like you’re using an agent integrated with your IDE, would you be willing to give specifics? And you’re talking about writing some comments that describe some code you haven’t yet written, letting the AI take a stab at writing the code based on your comments, and then working from there? Did I get that right?

Happy for literally any elaboration you feel like giving :)

I have a good friend that sounds kind of similar. She’s historically the most active among our friend group usually, generally the most fit and capable (she did the Alcatraz swim, for example). Eats completely reasonably, at times very well (due to what you’re describing). But she’s just always kinda large, even at her smallest. It’s always struck me as extremely unfair, like you said, and she’s really suffered for it.

I don’t know your situation, but she’s currently living her best life. Happy family with kids, loving kind partner, rewarding job in a stunningly beautiful (if fairly remote) location. And she deserves it, she’s a wonderful human.

But boy did she suffer frustration and hopelessness on repeat along the way. Nearly gave up on trying for the life she wanted more than once. And I fully recognize the deck is stacked in some important ways against folks like y’all, so please don’t read my “happy outcome” story as contradicting anything you said. But don’t give up on what ya want.

What an incredible experience that must have been.

My friend, the trumpet, well played, is one of the finest and most expressive instruments to ever grace earkind, how could you feel this way? Can deliver ~every possible emotion, a range of volume starting at “drunken disappointed groan” and reaching “holy shit ouch stop”, only got a few little twiddly bits, fits in your hand. Shiny.

Defend your position!

Oh for chrisakes. I also donate to The Wikimedia Foundation, feeling secure in the knowledge that at least I could feel good about that one. Time to do some reading I guess.

Ugh, poor error reporting is such a frustrating time sink.

The hilarious part about your comment is you’re the one over-explaining to me here. I’m super familiar with about every way a man can be characteristically shitty, happen to have witnessed most of it first hand over the years, committed some of the milder stuff before I grew up and learned how to behave, but here you are kindly helping me understand things about men. Interestingly, of all the things I have witnessed, what I don’t really see often is “mansplaining”. What I do see sometimes is a dude earnestly doing his best to offer help and someone else being totally uncharitable about that, like it’s some affront. And never to the dude oddly enough, only in a mocking, condescending way to others behind his back. The reason I see those ugly hidden reactions, incidentally, is because my behavior makes it clear I’m a solid ally of the people making those comments, and they trust me.

So I dunno. Way I see it, there’s a catalog of valid complaints about stereotypical dude behavior. But being super critical about sincere (if clumsy) attempts to support or help someone just always strikes me as deliberately nasty, for fun. But you do you.

Don’t bother with the TV sitcoms, please. “Bumbling idiot father who fucks up even the most trivial things constantly and is roundly shit on by everyone including his own children” is a core, continuous joke behind so many shows. And fuck it, often it’s hilarious, I’m not gonna get bent outta shape about it. Your “see, look how toxic, it’s been on TV forever” feels pretty weak.

Can’t forget the fun flip side too, where some guys who know a lot are unwilling to share, because they (being fuckin cowards) feel it’s necessary to protect their job security by being the only one who knows how to do certain things.

Or! The guys who know how to do things - have decided they hate doing some of those things (usually for good reason in my experience) - and therefore pretend they don’t know how to do them. I kinda sympathize with this one sometimes.

But yeah, “likes to teach” as the toxic trait? Anyone who thinks that is the toxic version of knowledge sharing is kinda just revealing how little time they’ve actually spent around men.

Completely agree! It’s SO much easier to lighten the mood and keep things upbeat and productive in an actual conversation vs. just text-based feedback. For example it makes it easy to throw in self-deprecating anecdotes of your own when discussing mistakes / needed changes, which can really help put juniors at ease. It’s just worlds better in >90% of scenarios.