TBH that sounds like a lot of code I’ve seen from outsourcing companies in India. Their typical approach is to copy an existing program, module, web page or whatever and modify it as quickly as possible to turn it into what’s needed. The result is often a mishmash of irrelevant code, giant data queries that happen to retrieve some field that’s needed along with a ton of unnecessary crap, mixing frameworks, etc.

In the early 2000s I had a manager who hardly ever gave me anything to do. Like in 6 months I did maybe 3 weeks work. And it’s not like I never asked. I was already fairly disgruntled and had other reasons, but it led to me leaving the company for a job at a cancer research center. The problem with not doing anything at MS is that unless you can hide it somehow your review comes up and you have nothing to show for the year, you’re kind of screwed. So after a relaxing 6 months it was a good time to jump ship. Anyway, a couple years later I read MS was laying off like 600 people - which might have been their first layoffs ever, I dunno. It was supposed to clear out “deadwood” - so I checked after another couple months and found out my old manager was still there! So much for “clearing out deadwood” lol.

Capitalism fanatics will say with great conviction that business has to be efficient because of competition, while government is inherently inefficient because it has no competition. There’s a little truth there, but the complete truth is that business is as inefficient as it can afford to be. The more money a company has, the more inefficiency they can absorb. In my mind that’s one good reason not to allow these gigantic mergers of mega-billion-dollar corporations. Huge entities with tons of money can be inefficient and sloppy as hell for a long, long time before they fail.

Mainly lack of marketing I think. When I went to England a few years ago they were everywhere. I bought one as soon as I got home. Fantastic invention!

Popup blockers aren’t as satisfying as a browser plugin that adds a “Fuck Off” button to them.

I’d go with the Captain Kirk chair.

My daughter has used AI a lot to write grant proposals, which she cleans up and rewords before submitting. In her prompts she tells it to ask her questions and incorporate her answers into the result, which she says works very well, produces high quality writing, and saves her a ton of time. She’s actually a very competent writer herself, so when she compliments the quality I know it means something.

Retired dev here, I’m curious about the nature of “the mess”. Is it buggy AI-generated code that got into production? I know an active dev who uses ChatGTP every day, says it saves him a hell of a lot of work. What he does sounds like “vibe coding”. If you’re using AI for grunt work and keep a human is in the workflow to verify the code, I don’t see how it would differ from junior devs working under a senior. Have some companies been using poorly managed all-AI tools or what? Sorry for the long question.

And no doubt struggling to blame their bad decisions on each other and preserve their salary bonuses.

I used to feel that way, but Trump has done so much damage he’s just not fucking funny anymore, and I wish people would stop generating all the noise to point out how stupid he is. We know, and by now it’s WAAAY past funny.

Sadly Mr. Japan died in April.

Could things like this go in linuxmemes? Memes are fun but it would be nice to keep this a place for actual information. And no, this is not a comment on what it’s saying, I’m just tired of so many memes.

It’s really pretty simple, happy people don’t tend to be assholes. Politicians, if you want less crime don’t build more prisons, make life better. I mean, that’s your job isn’t it?

Pretty normal. See “California king size bed”.

As long as e can clearly get down on his own, just leave him up there.

So they’re saying removing distractions improves focus? Woah dude, spoiler warning!

The old school method of learning a programming language, database, framework or whatever was to read books and take classes, do a series of exercises that teach you how to use the features, and the errors you get if you don’t do it right. Then you write code that way for like 10-15 years.

The Information Age method is to find some sample code, copypaste into an editor and hit Compile, then paste compile errors into google and fix them until there are no more. Then hit Run and copypaste/fix runtime errors until there are no more runtime errors. Old-schoolers used to call this hacking, but now it’s called not having time to deeply learn the hot new thing because before you do you’ll have to start over with the next hot new thing.

Which casino does your dad own?

I’m really into IoT automation - wiring up Arduino & ESP devices and programming them - but tbh it’s hard to think of much to automate IRL. So I haven’t automated anything yet. I want a few ourdoor lights to sense motion more elaborately than just having a motion sensor built in - to light up when approached from opposite directions. Also to add switches indoors where I didn’t think to put them when I wired the house. So like, have several ESP32 wall switches tell a room light to turn on or off without running new AC lines through the walls. That would be super useful. Another one is subtle night lighting on stairways for safety, so my eventual cause of death isn’t falling downstairs after tripping on a cat.

Only if I think I set it for too long.