Human error is my prime motivator pushing for automation, mostly because I’m the one getting fucked by it more often than not. I’m the guy processing data people enter or produce into automatic reports.

Every type of error I run into takes time to investigate, figure out how common it is and decide how to handle it. More often than not, I need to specifically document that handling too, because someone is gonna come asking for it.

“Your report says we had 17 invoices for Dec 2020, but we’ve booked 18” Yeah, because someone entered the booking month as 20212 or 200212 instead of 202012 and there’s no reasonable way to parse that.
Nevermind the ones where the booking month is just “02”. Like hell am I gonna write logic to guess the year if it’s ambiguous.

Please just implement an automatic process to sync booking and invoicing systems. I don’t have any magic tools to turn your slag into gold.

IDK I’ve got two 1440p monitors connected via DP. I can’t say I’ve encountered any fidelity issues.

I can produce NI-slop on my own. I don’t need AI to do it for me.

I’ll save that comment for when I actually follow through on that resolution. Thanks for the advice!

I switch mine (and my keyboard) between private PC (located under my desk because it’s cramped enough atop it, to the right) and company-issue laptop (placed atop it, to the left) when working from home. Like hell am I pulling the cable(s) out of my cable management to move it (them) over and move it (them) back, sometimes multiple times within the same day.

I’ve got my private headphones and my controller wired, but mouse + kb are keyed to the same dongle, which I proceed to move as needed. It’s a concession to convenience.

They’re also very efficient - I chronically forget to turn them off, but they still last so long that I was genuinely puzzled when the mouse started acting up and turning off until I noticed the blinking signal to indicate low battery. They’re not rechargeable, unfortunately, but I probably should see about getting rechargeable batteries.

I’m guessing that the user did eventually figure out it’s labelled as “finder” and got pissy at you for being all pedantic and not just calling it what they call it because really, is the correct name so important?

(Or is your standard-issue “read customers’ thoughts to know what exactly they mean” device broken? Really, how can you call yourself support without crucial equipment to spare customers from having to be clear?)

“AI took my fucking job – the modern struggles of porn stars”

Well, Microslop are the ones that buried it in the first place. I imagine they’ll have hired some construction company to dig the trench to lay it.

That bar is so low, you’d need professional tunnelling equipment to not clear it

Remember to tell it not to put any bugs in its output! That’s sure to help.

unless you’re getting paid to do it

Close air support Getting paid for it covers a multitude of sins

I get to participate in a project to see how well-adopted AI tools are in our company… with the intent to see where we should invest in more promotion and schooling in how useful and valuable they can be.

Didn’t have the heart to tell the manager requesting my assistance that I’m also one of the non-adopters and no amount of promotion or schooling offer is likely to change that. They’re lower management anyway, can’t change the decisions made higher up, and I’m not gonna pick fights and sour working relations where there’s nothing to win.

Thanks, new anxiety unlocked

I swear there are some people watching Black Mirror and furiously taking notes

I recommend reading the whole thing. Most hilarious “what the fuck” I’ve had all week!

Not that it has any strong competition…

The trick is just to think of it like a junior engineer – a smart, fast junior engineer, but lacking in experience and big picture thinking.

The problem is managers genuinely starting to do that, because it’s cheaper than human employees. Some years down the line, they will find out that (unlike human junior devs) the AI won’t eventually mature into senior devs, and by the time the senior devs retire, there’s nobody left to unfuck the shit their perpetual juniors fuck up.

But of course, those managers will have gotten their nice bonus for saving money, jumped ship and will never suffer the consequences.

No biggie, I just named an example. Even “real” programmers, whatever definition you want to use for that, don’t know all languages.

But yes, many languages do use // as comments and particularly the Javascript environment it originally stems from does. Python (#) and SQL (--) are the only examples I interact with frequently enough to know off the top of my head (but SQL still recognises /* ... */ for delimited comments). XML/HTML also has <!-- --> for comments, but that’s not so much a programming and more of a description language.

Or an asynchronous process loading without always interrupting the UI

Python, for example

People went on to use JSON for human readable configuration files

Speaking from my own experience, “I could also use this for…” seems to be a ubiquitous programmer affliction. Single-purpose tools that are great at their thing tend to be short-lived unicorns until someone starts sticking other parts onto them for additional functionalities, taking off the horn because it’s in the way for some thing or other, and somehow we end up with yet another multi-function-tool that does a lot of things poorly.