I've been working with physics engine (cannon then rapier) + three js recently using Claude and found that AI was struggling quite when it came to fine tuning physics constants (friction, weights etc.) quite a lot. A human touch was needed - ended up vibe coding a small debug / admin panel where I could adjust those manually.
I think this argument would work if hand-written code would convey some kind of status, like an expensive pair of Japanese selvage jeans. For now though, it doesn't seem to me that people paying for software care if it was written by a human or an AI tool.
I like programming by hand too. Like many of us here, I've been doing this for decades. I'm still proud of the work I produced and the effort I put in. For me it's a highly rewarding and enjoyable activity, just like studying mathematics.
Nevertheless, the main motivator for me has been always the final outcome - a product or tool that other people use. Using AI helps me to move much faster and frees up a lot of time to focus on the core which is building the best possible thing I can build.
> But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.
Opus 4.5 just came out around 3 months ago. We are still very early in this game. Creating things this year already makes me feel like I'm in the Enchanted Pencil (*) cartoon in which the boy draws an object with a magic pencil and makes it reality within seconds. With the collective effort of everyone involved in building the AI tools and the incentives aligned (as they are right now) the progress will continue be very rapid. You can still code by hand but it will be very hard to compete in the market without the use of AI.
>> For me it's a highly rewarding and enjoyable activity, just like studying mathematics. Nevertheless, the main motivator for me has been always the final outcome
There are two attitudes stemming from the LLM coding movement, those who enjoyed the craft of coding MORE, and those who enjoy seeing the final output MORE.
Do other platforms already provide something similar? While I've been picking up calls mostly in meeting / silent rooms (times of gathering around a jabra like a camping bonfire are fortunately gone for now) - some of the users of a platform that I've built (https://flat.social) would occasionally experience the atrocious feedback whistle while being in physical proximity.
Once you learn, how do you maintain the language? I'm currently in Brazil speaking Portuguese a lot. I used to speak more Spanish. Right now, if I want to switch back to Spanish it takes me a lot of time. They're so similar I still keep on mixing them up quite often. I even started a small project (https://glot.space) to try to keep training vocabulary in two languages at the same time to keep the distinction in my brain.
It is hard when they are such close languages! But maintaining is always hard. I compare it to building with clay while it's mildly raining. You need to keep re building chunks that fall off what you've built. Eventually some chunks dry enough that they are solid forever and you use them as a base to keep going.
I don't think you need to put a lot of time and effort in maintenance but you do have to put some with certain regularity
I’m working on phrasing.app partially to solve this problem. My solutions are:
- study flashcards from l3 <-> l4 to cut down on time
- practice switching between the languages and distinguishing between them (I use interleaved flashcards on phrasing)
- have a really painless audio review (to get a lot of your reviews done quickly)
- listen to input every now and then (tv, podcast, something). A little bit every now and then goes a long way
OP here. I'll just say what I'm currently doing. I read a book in french , a second book in Spanish and I'm watching an Italian tv series on Netflix. Doesn't have to be more than 10mins per language per day. The only way you don't forget a language is to reach a high level. Even if I don't speak Spanish for months I won't forget it. But I'll surely forget Italian.
Same here! I've been running my own digital products (https://flat.social and some smaller ones) and bridging the gap with consulting. For me, the flexibility lead to a fully location-independent lifestyle which allowed me to work from places where I feel at my best. Currently writing this from a tropical patio in Brazil :)
Is it worth getting a better desk? Better chair? Larger screen? On average sleep + work will take 2/3 of your day. Back problems are common and if not prevented early enough they really can take away from quality of your life. Having a comfortable bed and a comfortable work setup is an investment with a very high return in my opinion. Height adjustable desk are not only used as standing desks - they also allow you to get the setup just right for you.
What I’m about to say is purely anecdotal. Posture, in my experience, is vastly overrated in preventing back pain. No amount of high-quality equipment will prevent issues because we’re simply not meant to remain static for extended periods of time. All of my back and hip pains went away the moment I started weightlifting, resistance training will do wonders to your body assuming you’re not injuring yourself in your practice.
You need to keep your body moving, and even mild resistance training is much better than any standing desk.
When asking Google - what the etymology of the "robot" word is, the answer is from Czech word "robota" which is they translate as "forced labor".
While I don't speak Czech, I speak Polish which is a close cousin. For years it didn't occur to me that "robot" and the shortened "bot" words have slavic etymology. In Polish "robić" means to do (carry out, perform etc.) something. "Robię kawę" means "I'm making a coffee" and "Zrób coś" (imperative mood - do something!) is a call for action to take action. It's a popular multi-use verb.
"Robota" is a job or some work that one has to do, not necessarily forced as Google suggests.
Edit: Also adding another interesting fact. Golem is an inanimate entity from Yiddish folklore, with a story strongly related to a 16th Prague Rabbi. I looked it up on Wikipedia if there was any connection with the "Robot" and indeed there seem to be some - "The play was written in Prague, and while Čapek denied that he modeled the robot after the golem, many similarities are seen in the plot." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem)
> "Robota" is a job or some work that one has to do, not necessarily forced as Google suggests.
This is a popular misconception among speakers of other slavic languages, but the Czech word "robota" really does refer to forced work performed by feudal serfs: https://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?slovo=robota
Yes, robota has a different meaning in Czech (mandatory work performed by serfs for the benefit of their landlord) than in eg. Slovak or Russian where it means simply "work". Cf. Slovak phrase "Idem do roboty".
Btw Rossum in “Rossum’s Universal Robots” means "Reason".
I've always read that it came from "robotnik" which just means "person who is doing something". And I agree, I'm also Polish and "robota" does not imply forced labour in the slightest, maybe it does in Czech but I doubt it given the close similarity between languages. It's quite common for people to say "Idę do roboty" which just means "I'm going to work"(as in - my place of employment).
I'm Czech and while those two languages are close, "robota" is really forced work in Czech. What you called "robota" in Polish is called "práce" in Czech. In Czech, "Robota" is forced work and has bad connotations. See https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robota . It's interesting that this page doesn't have Polish translation.
A lot of Czech people use this phrase in a very subtle, almost undetectable jest, but it is still fundamentally in jest. Drawing a connection between having to work for a living and likening it to being forced to work. It's similar to saying "Back to the salt mines" meaning back to work.
I don't doubt that, you're probably from somewhere around Ostrava. There are of course regional differences. I'm from Brno and instead of "jít do práce" we usually used "jít do hokny", "jít do háčku", or just "jít makat". Whenever I hear word "robota", I connect it with my grand-grand-...-father who was forced to work ("robota") by "dráb" (overseer) and didn't like it. So he cut overseer's head with his scythe, became a village hero and founded a church there.
It is similar in Polish. “Robota” as a colloquialism is used to denote tedious, unpleasant, and labor-intensive labor (literally manual labor), and it has a coarse connotation, so it is often used in jest (“wracać do roboty” is something like “back to the salt mines”).
The typical and more genteel way to refer to work is “praca”. “Szukam pracę” is how you would typically say “I’m looking for work”, for example [0]; “ciężko pracuję” means “I work hard”. So while “robotnik” is better understood as specifically a manual laborer or someone of the working class, “pracownik” means something like “employee”.
[0] I am aware of the Czech false cognate “šukat” :).
Interesting that in Ukrainian робота and праця are synonymous. Although, some derived words are different in meaning. Like робітник is a worker but працівник is an employee. I see in another comment that the same is true in Polish.
Etymologically Czech is the most conservative here. In other Slavic languages and in Proto-Slavic the original meaning was also forced/compelled labor (hence also why "rab" or "rob" means "slave" and not "worker" in most East and South Slavic languages). It just happened to evolve into a generic term meaning "labor" because the forced/compelled kind was so widespread and normalized.
Slavic languages aren't the only ones with such a trajectory for the term - the German "Arbeit" is directly related and underwent a similar process.
I would say that in Polish “robota” has a similar connotation. And “robol” describes a kind of low-level grunt. It’s definitely pejorative. “Praca” is the typical way to talk about work.
I'd translate "robotnik" as a "worker". A "person who is doing something" sounds a bit too general. Nevertheless, it's easy to guess that the root of the word is the same verb.
No, in Czech the meaning really is more specific and forced labor is not an overly bad translation, it's work done by serfs in medieval times.
It can be used to describe any work as heavy, but that's either in joke, or when used by people geographically close to Poland (typically referring to mining).
I vaguely remember that in English, we have words like “cattle,” French etymology, and “cow” Germanic, and the speculation is that it is because the aristocracy were French for much of England’s history (so, the French word is used to refer to cows as a sort of abstract resource to be considered in bulk).
I believe it's a similar thing.
Semi-educated guess based on historical facts:
Because of various (not least religious) reasons, Czech-speaking intelligentsia pretty much ceased to exist mid-17th century (fact, replaced by German/Latin) and only actual serfs spoke Czech, work and robota became defacto synonym (speculation). And when it became fashionable and cool to speak Czech 100-200 years later for the city-dwellers (fact), they probably felt the need to differentiate whatever they were doing as a job from the definitely uncool farmers of the countryside (speculation).
The evolution is the other way around - the original meaning of that root in proto-Slavic was obligatory work, and that one in turn is a derivative of a PIE word with the same meaning.
"Robotnik" means *manual* worker. E.g. someone fixing roads, or working in a factory.
"Pracownik" is a generic word for "employee". Can be an office worker or an manual worker.
"Robić" basically means "to do". While "pracować" means "to work". As you can notice one is more formal than another.
"Robota" is a less formal word, something closer to a "gig" (however it also means "work" or "job"). You will probably not find it in written texts. In writing "praca" (work) sounds more formal.
As a bonus, if you are a (manual) worker who complains and makes some not subtle digs about your job, you can say that you "have to go to your kołchoz tomorrow" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz ). As the communist slogan said "work is your second home" after all :)
On a side note, do Czechs really like the polish word "pomidorek"? (Little tomato)
It is sort of funny that when shortening it in English, we ended up with “bot,” dropping the “ro,” which looks like the more important part of the word.
Wouldn't be the first time. The English word "bus" is derived from a neologism "omnibus", "for all" (as in, "carriage for all") invented to describe the first attempts at mass transportation using horse carriages. In that word, "omni-" corresponds to "all", and "-bus" is just a suffix indicating dative declension of a plural noun.
Same with Polish, but in Czech where the word originates from, there is a difference and normal work is called "práce" not "robota" which is reserved for forced labor or as an in-jest name for work.
Interestingly, the Chernobyl liquidators forced to clean the roof were referred to as robots. I think the TV series expanded that to "bio robots", but books about the incident from tbe nineties simply used robot.
In Czech, "robotnik" meant "serfs" and "robota" was the work that the serf was forced to do. Of course, nowadays, "robota" took the meaning of "a job" but that is not relevant to the etymology of the words.
As your neighbor from the North (Romania) I highly recommend visiting the general Central and Eastern European area.
In the last few years we’ve been to Prague, short stay in Vienna, Bratislava, Ohrid (spent a night in Pernik on the way there, which I count as part of the experience) and I’d also put Athens and Southern Greece/the Peloponnese on the list (even though it’s not Eastern nor Central European). All very interesting and beautiful places in their own way (yes, even Athens), I highly recommend them.
slave (n.) c. 1300, sclave, esclave, "person who is the chattel or property of another," from Old French esclave (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin Sclavus "slave" (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish esclavo), originally "Slav" (see Slav); so used in this secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.
Indeed, which is interesting, because “Slav” comes from the word for “speech” or “word”. In Polish, for example, “word” is “słowo”, whereas “Slavs” is “słowianie”. Germans are “niemcy” from “niemy”, meaning “mute”. So to be a Slav meant to be intelligible and able to speak, whereas Germans were unintelligible or “mute”. Compare this to “barbarian”, from the Greek, which comes from the sound of the unintelligible speech of foreigners to the Greek ear (“barbarbar”, almost like “blah blah blah”).
The first part makes sense, the second one doesn't: where would that 'c' come from? No such thing as Sclavic people, never was.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure if there is any reflection on the fact that mediterranean pirates (and nomadic tribes further east) plundered Balkans for captives and southwestern europeans then bought them. And that, perhaps, was a suboptimal way to behave.
As for why there's a "k" there - Greeks would naturally adapt any foreign word to the phonotactics of their language, which does not have "σλ" as a valid syllable onset, but does have "σκλ".
Slav (n.) "one of the people who inhabit most of Eastern Europe," late 14c., Sclave, from Medieval Latin Sclavus (c. 800), from Byzantine Greek Sklabos (c. 580), from a shortening of Proto-Slavic sloveninu "a Slav"* -- https://www.etymonline.com/word/Slav
Not really; it was more along the lines of "Ottoman-style seating" being referred to as "an ottoman", in the same way people refer to "a long chair" (chaise longue) as a "chaise".
One of your other comments sounds like you agree with the etymology jefftk cited? But that says the exact same thing. The word slav was first, and the word slave was made from it.
Something being "propaganda" and "revenge" does not stop it from being the origin of a word.
Edit:
Oh, you elaborated slightly. > It's not derived, it's used - first by defeated.
That's what derived means. They took a word and used it to make a new word.
That's nonsense, not true and a libel.
That words are INDEPENDENT:
slave doesn't mean faming, people names:
Bogusław mean Godfaming - not slave of god,
Mieczysław mean Swordfaming - not slave of sword.
Once you add those numbers, the total is usually insane. While I do miss being in the office sometimes (mostly for the social life), it's just too expensive for me as a worker right now. It's not just the time spent on commute, it's also the money that you have to spend to stay within a commutable distance from the office.
Also, my profession is being a Software Engineer, not a train passenger.
> You spend around 8 hours on travel weekly which amounts to around 45 days of full-time work per year and will sum up to 450 days of full-time work (3600 hours) over 10 years.
It's 4 years of full-time work days (9000 hours!) over 25 years.
And if you're driving to the office, that's 450 hours where you can get into a fatal accident, with about half of them in the morning when you might be too sleep-deprived to safely operate a motor vehicle. Driving on four hours of sleep is the equivalent of drunk driving. And if your start time is the same every day, then it's likely you'll have many nights where you fall asleep too late, maybe even because you're preparing a presentation for your morning meeting...
Money to stay within commutable distance, but also the cost of the commute itself.
E.g. my yearly cost of commuting when I did added equivalent to about $2.5k/year in after tax transport costs.
I've typically told recruiters about 20%, from a high base, and frankly that is lower than it ought to be when accounting for both the time and costs, but given I already live where I live, I feel I could justify it in terms putting extra cash straight into my pension pot and retiring earlier. But not enough to lower it further to find a point where someone is more likely to take me up on it.
... but not even close to enough to car-commute more than about 10 minutes to it, given the option. That's roughly the cut-off. Under 1.5 bikeable miles (that's ideal!) or maybe 5 miles by car.
And to get that short a commute, I'd need all kinds of other compromises in most cities. Worse schools, more expensive and smaller housing.
Is my preference for the office worth hundreds of hours a year lost commuting, thousands of dollars a year in transportation costs, and all the extra micromorts from the commute? LOL. LMFAO. God no, it's not even close. No typical commute is a low enough cost that I'd pay it to be in the office. It's way off.
So, though I do in fact prefer working in the office... nah.
