IMHO 80 char lines are easier on my eyes, independent of monitor tech. I get antsy all the way over there on the right! Past 100 chars I am simply less confident in being able to pull off the ocular carriage return to the next line.
I find 80 characters to be too short, and the resulting code after passing through a linter is significantly harder to parse due to the indentation being all over the place.
All the AI researchers I know that also happen to be parents will not let their kids NEAR tools like chatgpt and photomath.
No, it's "traditional" things for their kids that are CHALLENGING and require practice, like woodworking, learning an instrument, sports, memorizing texts for fun.
"I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.
“But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.
“The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.
“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable.
“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
This resonates so deeply with me as an ADHDer. In the sense that I abhor it and have become clinically depressed in such situations.
It’s also why “evolutionarily” the farm-and-plan neurotypes became so numerically prevalent over the forage-and-explore ADHD neurotypes with the advent of farming and modern society.
That’s my working hypothesis at least. Also makes me think that’s why beer and alcohol were such an important aspect in Egyptian and other ancient societies. Perhaps believing that is just what helps me sleep at night having a semi-disfuctional prefrontal cortex. ;)
Still it fascinates me that ADHD neurotypes persist at a stubborn 1/20 ratio in almost all large societies even in cultures such as Japan’s where one might assume ADHD traits would be heavily discouraged. As in ADHDers are the required lubricant to keep the bureaucratic machines from rusting up and so persist.
As a descriptive counterpoint look at the imagination of the “perfect bureaucracy” in Star Trek: the Borg. The only way they progress technologically is by assimilating new peoples. I hope someone pursue this as a post-graduate thesis at some point.
I know DFW was, to say the least, a smart guy, but this book just oozes the essence of his depressive mentality - I could not get through it. Further I have a hard time accepting any insights derived from such a melancholic mind.
Zoo monkeys are bored too. Is that because they're too stupid to be "un-borable" or is it because they're trapped forever in a tiny boring cage?
And dealing with boredom is something nobody learns how to do anymore. We have constant entertainment in our pockets with mobile phones, social media, and streaming.
When I go to the gym I sit in the sauna for 30 minutes just doing... nothing. Just sitting. No earbuds, no phone in hand. I'm usually the only one like this. I get asked how I can stand it. It's just normal to me. I think about stuff I need to do. I map out the next day, or the rest of the day, or next week. I reflect on last week. My mind always finds something to think about.
In the US, yes. I've seen this more than once, but the worst instance was a guy who came into the sauna with all of his gym clothes on, also looking at his phone. You can't make this stuff up.
I think every time I’ve been (or even been moving toward) excellent at something, it’s because I found very little or none of it boring. Even very-focused drilling and such, or studying “boring” material (it wasn’t, to me—I didn’t have to deal with boredom to progress!)
Office work and dealing with bureaucracy stands out as something that lots of people find themselves doing and almost all of them find unpleasant, including experiencing tons of it as very boring.
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