He's developing a toxic relationship with his AI agent. I don't think it's the best way to get what you want (demonstrating how to be abusive to the AI), but maybe it's the only method he is capable of getting results with.
MangoCats
joined 6 months ago
I frequently find myself prompting it: "now show me the whole program with all the errors corrected." Sometimes I have to ask that two or three times, different ways, before it coughs up the next iteration ready to copy-paste-test. Most times when it gives errors I'll just write "address: " and copy-paste the error message in - frequently the text of the AI response will apologize, less frequently it will actually fix the error.
Well, I very literally lived the "one can never go back home" reality while away at University, my home town doubled in population. So, most of the old places I remember are still there, but there's all the expanded roadways and bigger crowds everywhere you go. Half of it was built after I left, so the half I remember is now the dingy old stuff.
Of course we all change as life goes on, I find that home is wherever I am, and the longer I'm there the more it feels like "my home."
My big trip was across Europe (I'm from the US), and there's a strong tradition in Europe of the "wanderjahr" taking a year off before, after or even during University to travel and see other places, meet other people, etc. I only got to do "wanderjahr light" and I ended up going back the following summer for an encore. I definitely learned more in those 4.5 months than I did any two years in school or University.
The first half dozen times I tried AI for code, across the past year or so, it failed pretty much as you describe.
Finally, I hit on some things it can do. For me: keeping the instructions more general, not specifying certain libraries for instance, was the key to getting something that actually does something. Also, if it doesn't show you the whole program, get it to show you the whole thing, and make it fix its own mistakes so you can build on working code with later requests.
There's a certain amount of: "if this isn't going to take over the world, I'm going to just take my money and put it in something that will" mentality out there. It's not 100% of all investors, but it's pervasive enough that the "potential world beaters" are seriously over-funded as compared to their more modest reliable inflation+10% YoY return alternatives.
Yes, absolutely. However, on $14K/yr income (in 1990), with a beater car, ramen diet and cheap room rent, I was taking summers off and flying to Europe. Sure, I'd stay in youth hostels and travel on the train pass or rented bike, but 3 months in Europe didn't even cost $4000 out of my $14K income.
Domestic trips in the beater car were of course even cheaper, as long as I mooched lodging off of friends and family.
Jimmy, is that you? Little Jimmy from the house across the creek! Oh, we had such fun together.
10 years ago, if I saw 5 seconds of movie preview, I would know if I had seen it before and generally be able to tell you the whole plot, etc. These days, I can be 30 minutes into a movie I saw 10 years ago before I recognize anything in it, and still be surprised by later parts after recognizing that I have seen it before.
Which is good, because the vast majority of new stuff coming out looks like crap to me.
Pain I can manage. It's the loss of senses that really sucks for me in old age. I used to have 20/10 eyesight, this crap they implant for cataract repair may be 20/20, but it's the suckiest 20/20 I have ever experienced. Hearing is getting muffled, smell comes and goes... if I live to be 150, I don't want to do it "locked in" a sensory deprivation box.
About the multiple layers... I did a few months of (near) solo travel, seeing different countries and figuring out things like food, lodging, transit, language when possible/necessary for myself in each new place. It was great, but at the end of it I sat down and watched "a movie from home" and realized that for the past months I had been scrambling, struggling to get through the basics, barely scratching the surface most places because of the sheer effort required just to get through the days and nights. That sappy, unremarkable, movie "from home" just flowed into me effortlessly, with all the layers and subtexts unfolding without any struggle to translate or relate. It was very much a Dorothy "no place like home" moment. And then I flew home and instantly regretted not being able to continue my nomad lifestyle for many more months.
I found that when I lived with a beater car and ramen noodle budget, I had several months of free time per year to do things that I have never been able to repeat since getting "a real income." Life sucks that way.
Inescapable movie reference: The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.