I haven’t used Claude Code much, but I found Codex extremely frustrating. It doesn’t pay attention to anything in AGENTS.md, it’s completely incapable of removing code and is frustratingly defensive.
If you use it, the codebase constantly grows. Even when you explicitly instruct it to remove something, you always end up with more lines of code in the project than before the instruction. Also (I used it for Python and TypeScript) the code was littered with getattr(...), .get(...), isinstance(...), and TypeScript equivalents (typeof, ...). Even though I religiously type‑annotate everything.
We live in a society that defines itself not in terms of what it is but in terms of what it's not. We are not decent and kind human beings; we are not racists or not homophobes. We can't just not care; we have to be atheists. Even with bad stuff: We are not victim blamers and choice deniers; we are anti-abortionists.
And the products marketed to us are just a reflection of what we are. Gluten-free bread. Sugar-free drinks. Non-hallucinogenic LSD. No THC weed. Low-fat milk. Etc.
Everything is becoming defined in terms of what it's not.
"We live in a society that defines itself not in terms of what it is but in terms of what it's not. We are not decent and kind human beings; we are not racists or not homophobes. We can't just not care; we have to be atheists. Even with bad stuff: We are not victim blamers and choice deniers; we are anti-abortionists.
And the products marketed to us are just a reflection of what we are. Gluten-free bread. Sugar-free drinks. Non-hallucinogenic LSD. No THC weed. Low-fat milk. Etc.
Everything is becoming defined in terms of what it's not."
Basically, marketing 101 - don't sell the product, sell what it isn't or what it is. Boxed Water - It's marketed as better, even though it still is a packaged product that has supply chain woes as any product. It's a reflection of what society is, wanting the same product but not wanting to feel "bad" by it.
The above example goes with no THC weed, low fat milk, sugar free drinks, etc. Sugar has calories. Fat is not health. THC is bad but people still want to do weed, etc.
People want water, but they don't want to feel bad. Some people may know about Nestle and how they just rebottle public water, others come in that boxed water is better because there's no plastic, and it's just marketing water in a new way. Lifestyle choice.
A big thing about psychedelics, at least back in the day was that it was counter culture. There was The Man which isn't really used anymore. I think the best, newest pop culture usage of it is probably "That 70's show" to the remix "That 90's Show" or, to be seen there anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man I can go on, but - the more that psychedelics have/become a place of healing and more scrutinized and legalized, much of the original culture surrounding it is gone. And yes, many arguments are that it is better - proven results, proven research, trusted supply chain of chemicals to consume, no need to hide getting help if needed, not being penalized legally, not being criminalized, etc.
Which comes around to boxed water. Per the bloomberg article there several quotes:
"The name is not just fitting, it's precise. As much as the company is selling water, it's also selling boxes, or rather, selling its customers on paper over plastic. "
""Definitely a water company," says Jeremy Adams, vice-president for marketing at Boxed Water Is Better, when I ask him whether Boxed Water is a paper company."
"While bottled water is easily the most wasteful indulgence in the first world, it's also not going anywhere. Convenience water is a $24 billion market in the U.S., where more than 1 billion plastic water bottles are shipped annually."
"Sure, Boxed Water is selling people on a lifestyle product that everyone should rely on way less. But Boxed Water Is Better may in fact be an improvement on bottled water. Not just in terms of sustainability, but in the way that a highly disposable product is produced, packaged, and shipped."
All that, itself fits the original comment I replied too: "We live in a society that defines itself not in terms of what it is but in terms of what it's not."
Back to the article which has this nugget I'm re-quoting: "While bottled water is easily the most wasteful indulgence in the first world, it's also not going anywhere. "
I don't know about that. This sounds more like having a reference and deviations from it.
Whole milk is milk. Milk with the fat removed is fat free milk. Milk with chocolate added is chocolate milk. So you can have fat free chocolate milk defined in terms of what it doesn't have and what it has extra.
Reference LSD causes psychedelic visuals. LSD that doesn't is LSD sans hallucinations. LSD that makes you also taste chocolate in your mouth is chocolate LSD.
Not sure there's a deep observation about culture to be made.
Can you share the link to the study you're referring to? I will soon be choosing a school for my kid, and I'm very curious to see if there are any actual differences in outcomes. All the studies I found say there are. (For example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5670361/)
At the time I was selecting a preschool, it wasn't a specific study, however interpretations of various studies.
If it's helpful, this is a more recent one: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13575 which shows that Montessori preschoolers performed comparably to non-Montessori preschoolers in Kindergarten, though "disadvantaged kids" who attended Montessori schools performed better than "disadvantaged kids" who did not. (My interpretation being the correlation to performance is that the parents got their kids into a Montessori preschool despite economic disadvantages--biased because of what I learned in Freakanomics).
And a tangential analysis: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-017-0012-7 that concludes that most studies around Montessori are not sufficient to draw any meaningful conclusions, however adapting Montessori methods into traditional classrooms appears to be beneficial.
Regarding your upcoming decision--if I can offer my advice: find a preschool that best meets your families needs, and not worry too much about academics (at their age). If your children enters grade school with the abilities to succeed in the classroom that's great. If not, it's a great opportunity for them to learn early age how to overcome challenges--which will serve them well when they are adults.
That study basically says it will make your child better at school, and develops executive function earlier, which according to their results has no correlation with academic success.
If you want a child to be better at school, conditioning them early to choose from a constrained set of tasks with natural progression seems like a good way to make it comfortable for them.
I'm surprised that no one is commenting on macros. For me, that is the most exciting feature! It'll make writing code so much more enjoyable and avoid all of the code generation happening at the moment.
But maybe I'm the only one who's bothered with code generation :D
You're not the only one. They actually started work on macros before pattern/records, but for some reason it seems priority changed. I would have much preferred macros came first.
My biggest bone to pick with this interview process (I was also interviewed, passed the interview and then trained to do interviews) is that the calibration is all over the place.
If you're lucky, you'll get an interviewer who thinks that if you can solve a case insensitive palindrome, it means you should be hired with strong confidence.
But if you're unlucky, you'll end up with a person who will squeeze the last ounce of blood out of you, and even if you solve 99% of the questions correctly, he will still think you're low confident or even a no-hire because you missed that one edge case...
What I have seen is that many interviewers are actually subjective. I've had interviews which I passed and then to be told I was rejected without explanation. I knew I failed though because 1 of the interviewers didn't like me. This interview process is really a facade to not get sued. 9/10 of the team may like you, but it only takes 1. And from my experience, its usually the ones with lower EQ that make face-value assumptions about a person they are interviewing. You have no recourse to fight for your role because of the power dynamics of the interview process. They will simply say they don't want to hire false positives.
Not sure which FAANG does 10 interviews but anecdotally I've seen people get hired with 2 out of the 5 ratings being negative (i.e. no-hire).
Depending on where you live you likely have a legal right to the interviewer's written feedback. I've never tried it (US) but I've heard of many other people (US) that were successful but you probably need to know w/e relevant law it is as I assume by default you won't get it.
> Depending on where you live you likely have a legal right to the interviewer's written feedback.
That's a sure fire way to get blacklist from a company. No US company likes to deal with high maintenance candidates/ employees. The risk is too high to just move on and let it go. The best course of action is usually to come back in 6 months to a year and interview with another team.
Is the alternative that the bosses pushes ahead and hires people that have objections? Then the team risks losing a known good member who quits for spite, for a maybe good new hire.
I think respecting a red flag of any member of a team to stop a hire is a good practice.
That assumes all interviewers are a) good members and b) good interviewers.
I have encountered my fair share of bad interviewers. You don't even need to take my word, go on Blind and read all the horror stories from both the interviewer and interviewee.
I think the statement to be too generalized and doesn't address the power dynamics of the interview process. You assume they are good judges of character from a 60 minute interview.
Even with the training I had received at FAANG, there's still (and will always be) a level of subjectivity. I've seen colleagues hire candidates that didn't meet the "bar" but because the interviewer really "liked" that person, they went to bat for the candidate. Ironically that same interviewer would click "no hire" despite the candidate meeting the bar, all because the interviewee every-so-slightly rubbed them the wrong way.
If you use it, the codebase constantly grows. Even when you explicitly instruct it to remove something, you always end up with more lines of code in the project than before the instruction. Also (I used it for Python and TypeScript) the code was littered with getattr(...), .get(...), isinstance(...), and TypeScript equivalents (typeof, ...). Even though I religiously type‑annotate everything.