Wait until you try Rust… 😅

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.”

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. ✋🖐️🖖🤘

“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.

Sucks for today’s juniors, but that gap will bring them back into the fold with higher salaries eventually.

I used to land there a lot on my searches, but ChatGPT gives higher quality results, unbelievably. Kagi+AI goes far.

I always left it open-ended and that seemed to work. Part of the interview was seeing what they’d come up with. I’m pretty sure people always brought things they’d already written.

It never happened–since they knew in advance, they had time to whip up something cool if there wasn’t anything else. It didn’t have to be massive. I just wanted to see some clean non-trivial code and a clear understanding of how it worked. Fizzbuzz wouldn’t have impressed. :)

One of my classmates years ago loved bash. They wrote a filesystem for their OS class in Bash. It was a really, really impressive and bad idea.

But how do you handle candidates who say something like “look, there’s heaps of code that I’m proud of and would love to walk you through, but it’s all work I’ve done for past companies and don’t have access (or the legal right) to show you?”

It never once happened. They always knew in advance, so they could code something up if they felt like it.

I asked candidates to bring me some code they were proud of and teach me how it worked. Weeded out people really quickly and brought quality candidates to the top. On two separate occasions we hired devs with zero experience in the language or framework and they rocked it. Trythat with your coding interview, eh? 🙂

They most definitely do.

I don’t think it’s bad–it’s impossible to make error-free material, and it’s more error-free than not, for sure.

But other people are right: you’ll “graduate” to MDN and not look at W3 Schools again.

You can absolutely write a Star Wars knockoff, though. You just can’t call it that. There’s some gray line in there somewhere.

I’m a gray developer and nothing makes me more get-off-my-lawn than too many levels of abstractions. :)