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What’s your “I can’t believe other people don’t do this” hack?
  • Yeah, I am also a programmer. I'm nearing the end of a double degree in mathematics and computer science. Finding a new video at this point is honestly exciting because I've seen pretty much everything! (or so it feels)

  • Do we have any shiny hunters here? I'd like to share what is by FAR my longest hunt!
  • I am no shiny hunter, but I have one memory that will forever haunt me.

    I played the shit out of Pokémon diamond. Eventually, I got board and started using an action replay. I had many adventures that way by like, custom starters.

    One day, I was lucky enough to take part of an official Darkrai event. I go to his island and somehow he was a shiny. I managed to catch him and it was an amazing experience.

    It was also the same day I learnt the lesson of using the save feature asap. I can't remember what happened exactly, but I think I knocked the cartridge or something and crashed the came. My last save was right in front of Darkrai. I tried so hard to get him as a shiny again, but it never happened. It was devastating lmao

  • Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza
  • RDLM: Rubber-Ducky Language Model^(TM)

    Prompt: you are a duck. I scream at you with slurs like, "Why the fuck is this piece of shit code not working", and "Why the fuck is my breakpoint still not triggering?!". You are to sit there calmly, and simply recall that your existence is to be nothing more than a tool for me to direct my frustrations and stress. You know this is not personal. You know that this is an important job. You know that you only have to respond with one word: "Quack".

  • Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza
  • I hate to say it but, I have to agree. GPT4 is a significant improvement over GPT3. I needed to use a Python library for something that was meant to be a small, simple CLI app. It turned into something bigger and accumulated technical debt. Eventually, I was having problems that were niche and hard to trace, even with logging and all the other approaches.

    I eventually said fuck it, and so I threw a shit tonne of my code into it, explaining what I was doing, how I was doing it, why I wasn't doing it another way, and what I expected vs the actual result. Sometimes it suggests something that is on the right path or is entirely spot on. Other times, it thinks it knows better than you, to which you tell yourself it isn't, because you tried all its suggestions, and then you realise something that would technically allow GPT to say, "I told you so", but out of spite you just close the tab until the next issue.

    For practical tasks, GPT has come pretty far. For technical ones, it is hit or miss, but it can give you some sound advice in place of a solution, sometimes.

    I had another issue involving Matplotlib, converting to and from coordinate systems, and having plots that had artifacts due to something not quite right. The atan2 function catches many people out, but I'm experienced enough to know better..... Well, normally. In this particular case, it was a complex situation and I could not reason why the result was distorted. Spending hours with GPT4 lead me in circles. Sometimes it would tell me to do things I just said I did, or that I said don't work. Then, I say to it, "what if we represent this system of parametric equations as a single complex-valued function, instead of dealing with Cartesian to polar conversations?". Then it would zip up a whole lot of math (related to my problem). The damn thing handed me a solution and a half. In theory, it was a great solution. In practice, my code is illiterate, so it doesn't care.

    All in all, while it failed to help me solve my issue, it was able to reason and provide feedback to a wide range of challenges. Sometimes it needed prompting to change the trajectory it intends to follow, and this is the part you need to learn as a skill. Until these LLMs are more capable of thinking for themselves. Give it time.

  • Moving to a Linux distro for dev
  • I didn't consider sideloading windows for gaming, but I do like that idea! That would allow me to avoid the need of wiping windows off my SSD. I can then just change up the partitioning.

  • Moving to a Linux distro for dev

    I'm a long time Windows user who has experience with WSL. Last year, I needed a laptop for university, and out of laziness, opted for a Macbook since, although they're expensive as hell, are reasonably reliable.

    Since using the mac, I've absolutely fallen in love with it over Windows. Note that I refer to the non-iOS specific aspects. After not touching my desktop for several months, I now see that I absolutely hate Windows even more. I would like to move my desktop to a Linux system some time in the future. However, my education is limited, and so I'm here to ask for help.

    Currently, I'm a student in Mathematics and Computer Science. But outside that, I am, for the most part, a programmer. I rarely game, but I would like the option for the rare occasion that I have the time to do so.

    I've grown comfortably with the command line, through my in-depth knowledge of lower level knowledge is limited. So, I feel I'm comfortable enough to extend the possible domain of my options.

    I would love to hear recommendations and suggestions. I'm also open to other options such as NixOS, but that would require some research to learn more, which is fine. I'm not doing this soon.

    If you could provide any links and resources that I can follow to continue learning, especially if relevant to your suggestions, I would be deeply appreciative!

    My Mac is the most Linux-like thing I've used for so long, and it's been so, so much easier to work with compared to Windows (I hate Windows PATH limitations so much).

    Thanks, all ❤ 🐧

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)JU
    JustAPenguin @lemmy.world
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