Day: August 9, 2025

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Vibe coding 🖥️

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Do you want access to the Chat GPT code assist as part of your job was the question I was asked. I said no, I’m not sure what I would use it for as the data structures I build and link together. To explain a task in English and then pose follow up questions to an AI Chat Bot seems like a lot more work and slower than just writing the code in plain old R directly.

Maybe I’m not with the times and fail to see the power of artificial intelligence but I generally see it clumsy and something more likely to get in my way rather than be actually helpful. But maybe I’m just stubborn. Years ago, I had this real beginners belief that it is better to code your own solution to problems then include a lot of libraries that to do a lot of extra things that I’ll never use and is overhead – though that’s not how the compiler or linker work in reality – libraries only link to symbols actually used and compilers optimize our unused code. And any library is likely written by an expert in the field who has included many optimizations I’m unaware of.

But AI is different than linking to a library. For one, it requires an external pay service that depends on internet access and you have to hope the API never changes. It also allows or maybe requires you to explain in English what you to do. That sounds nice if you have no idea what you are trying to do in code but in my experience working with AI, the generated code is full of bugs and by the time you explain what you are trying to do and then debug the code, you might as well right it correctly yourself. Libraries you learn the API and then you just link to them. No internet required.

The real problem with WOKE is the last two letters

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The police department had every police car printed with the slogan, “Black Lives Matter”. The officers no longer referred to blacks as niggers around the police station nor when arresting them. They didn’t stop the abusive tactics when targeting black motorists or the dispropational focus on African American communities. They were woke.

The real problem with wokeness is it’s superficial nature of being woke. It’s not that people shouldn’t care about race, climate change or any other so called liberal cause, it’s that many liberals state their support of the cause while failing to take any kind of serious policy action to address the cause.

Wokeness as a concept is not a new one. Phil Ochs in the sixties sung, Love Me I’m a Liberal, noting many liberals support progressive causes in principal but are equally resistant to take concrete action, especially if it effects them personally. Integration of schools is a noble cause worth fighting for as long their white children in a good neighborhood aren’t bused to an intercity school. It’s a problem.

There is no simple solution, though liberals should consider their advocacy and see if it equals their actions. The advocacy without action makes the liberal cause appear weak and is often meaningless – something both keen observers of politics and casual observers of every day life are hard to miss. Liberals should avoid carve outs for their loyal followers just because they don’t want to offend or upset them.

Crooked Lake House

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Neat old house across from Keuka Outlet Recreation Center with a picture of Keuka Lake shown on it.

Friday August 14, 2020 — Notes