I think the community is divided. But I think it’s less A/B and more a spectrum. There are plenty of more balanced comments rolling in from people who’ve been using it for a while and have experienced both the advantages and disadvantages.
E.g., agentic development is great for solo projects and prototyping, but can become overwhelming alarmingly quickly when you’ve got multiple devs involved, especially if they’re not all super-disciplined and consistent about how they use their agents. And we’re all learning how to deal with that.
I suppose one could argue that VCs develop a taste for it after speaking with so many founders.
But, of course, you often don’t find out what lay down the road not travelled, except for those companies that get funded elsewhere, so it’s not like there’s an obvious objective measure.
I can’t help wondering if it’s a bit like Moneyball though and, if you had good enough data that you could model it well enough, you’d discover a lot of that taste is just shooting bull and doesn’t amount to much. Possibly there’d be a lot of variability across VCs.
My immediate thought on reading the piece was along the lines of, “Yeah, but lots of the people who pick what we should work on aren’t very good at picking the right things to work on, and even the ones who are a bit better at it generally can’t do it consistently.” (And I’m not implying I’m better at it.)
So in that sense, being able to simply build more - perhaps a lot more - of what’s on the backlog gives you a much better chance of implementing some of the ideas that will be winners.
I genuinely think there are people who don’t “get” hobbies or, if they do, don’t get that other people might like hobbies other than the ones they like. As you say, the point is to enjoy it and that’s all.
I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use.
But then, if you're travelling on holiday, do you really want serious use? I like your rationale of taking something that's bad enough that you won't want to use it but you have something if you really need it even if it didn't quite work out that way for you.
And, apart from theft, and depending on where I'm travelling, maybe a cheap device that I don't mind the authorities rifling through the storage of wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like I don't necessarily want $RANDOM_CUSTOMS_PERSON_IN_SOME_COUNTRY to have access to my bank statements, account details, or to get into my social media accounts, or whatever.
And it would be nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff if the machine did get stolen (sure, the drive on my main laptop is encrypted, but physical access is always a massive force multiplier when trying to gain access to a system or its contents).
I've been to a lot of countries (and thus through a lot of customs agents), the most they ever ask me to do, if anything at all, is turn the laptop on. I think the point is they want to make sure it's an actual laptop and not just a shell hiding something else. I've never had an agent touch my machine or show any interest in doing so, and I say that as someone who gets the extra searches often because I carry a lot of odd looking parts and small tools for work. Just pointing that out because I think the paranoia about what customs agents are allowed to do is a bit overblown unless you're suspected of smuggling or transporting something nefarious. They're not interested in what's on your laptop until you give them a reason to be.
I almost got denied boarding for a EU -> US flight ~13 years ago because the TSA agent at the gate noticed my 2011 MBP had 2 screws missing on the bottom panel (I've opened it up a bunch of times and lost some screws in the process). It didn't convince them that I turned it on and logged in etc. They still had doubts because, apparently, missing screws on a macbook was unheard of.. in the end, they held up the plane for ~10 mins due to waiting for a go/no-go decision via phone from some decision maker at the airline (as the final call was apparently theirs to make for some reason). Luckily, they were OK with missing screws and I was let on board.
I think it probably depends where you're going. We have relatives in a country where it might be a bit more of a concern, and we did briefly research taking a trip there to visit them, which is when all of this came up. In the end, for a variety of reasons, we decided it was going to be too risky to take that trip unless and until conditions change.
There are many countries where I wouldn't be at all worried about that, but I'd still be concerned about the possibility of theft (which, let's be real, can happen anywhere: I went on a trip to Switzerland once - generally considered very safe and low crime - where somebody had their laptop stolen from their room).
> the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad
I don't have the same problems with my model, possibly theirs is bad. I don't like that the keyboard is teeny and in the ANSI layout but I got used to it.
The trackpad isn't great but that's just yet another reason to avoid using the mouse and do everything with the keyboard.
That being said, I would never use it for fulltime use. I'm not even using it to type this message even though it's right next to me. I use it while travelling and it remains off at all other times.
> "I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use."
Me too. But the tray table compatibility resonates. I had hoped someone would build a modern netbook as a detachable focused on productivity and light gaming (say, Steamdeck class), maintainability and (modular) expandability; a modern road warrior that's also a nice hobbyist machine that stands some abuse. Framework was/is positioned to put something out, but they decided to release the F-12 instead.
I mean for the price I can get used thinkpads (and replace the battery if needed) and not have to deal with the crappy parts - I only have to deal with older parts.
I’ve still got a copy of this on a shelf somewhere in the house. Mine is the paperback edition with the funky comic style artwork of a dishevelled guy hunching over a computer in the middle of a tip of a room though.
I can’t remember whether I bought it or was given it, but it would have been some time around 1988 or 1989, because I think I still had my ZX Spectrum at that point. Or I might have picked it up on a choir tour in the early summer of 1990 - by which time I was into a relatively brief ownership of a C64 - because I have distinct memories of reading it on a narrow boat.
I enjoyed it quite a lot but, even then, its somewhat satirical take on microcomputers and the culture around them already felt quite outdated in many ways, so it was like a slightly jaded insider’s view into a past I hadn’t quite experienced - especially user groups.
At any rate it obviously made an impression because 36 years later I still own it - even though I probably haven’t read it in 35 years (though I did read it several times) - which I cannot say for a lot of books I had from my childhood and teen years.
On a laptop that old it might be worth opening it up to blow all the dust out with a compressor or air duster. I’ve often found that to work wonders on old MacBook Pros.
The other issue is that unless the battery has been replaced relatively recently its charging efficiency may not be that great and the high load being placed on it might be causing it to get hotter than it would have done when new.
I think this is OK though. We can still micromanage[0] the code generation part for a useful productivity boost, I think.
[0] At least, in my experience, "micromanaging" the AI is what gives me the best results. Iterating on the initial design, then iterating on the plan, then reviewing the proposed code changes (including tests), then getting an independent code review from another LLM, etc. If you give an LLM too much latitude that's when the really shitty code and ill-considered breaking changes/obliteration of existing functionality starts to creep in.
reply