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• Post #4078622

  RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/116811128152569506 Some great alternative terms and phrases to communicate about "AI" without adopting all the misleading marketing terms: "artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation" "prompt → text input" "answer → output" "chatbot / conversational agent → conversation simulator" "who’s right? → is the machine output correct?" (& more in the article)

• Post #3996743

  I haven't seen any reasonable progress on automating empathy. That seems like a good skill to differentiate on. Building the right product Making sure it actually solves a problem people care about Building the highest impact features first This is empathy work (although on LinkedIn you can call it product and project management).

• Post #3993621

  For me, the most perilous stage of software development is when we're close enough to the goal that folks' internal sense of completeness gives them the dopamine hit from being "done", but we haven't delivered yet. We get an influx of new ideas for what to do next, suggestions for internal systems to replace, ideas for how to optimize the system -- but we haven't delivered yet! Ideally, our internal sense of completion would not come until the code is delivered to cust...

• Post #3891873

  It's fitting that the software industry, which famously undervalues the relational work, empathy, and compassion that is actually an integral part of software development, would become convinced that a statistical engine could be a viable substitute for a human software developer.

• Post #3677900

  Advice for an intern friend at work: I care a little about how much you know, but I care a lot about how well you learn.

• Post #3630165

  "Using Naur's ideas, the designer's job is not to pass along 'the design' but to pass along 'the theories' driving the design. The latter goal is more useful and more appropriate. It also highlights that knowledge of the theory is tacit in the owning, and so passing along the theory requires passing along both explicit and tacit knowledge" from https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf 💯 I think this is a nuanced, software-specific way to say "don't...

• Post #3580939

  The weirdest thing just happened. I updated the Ente Photos desktop app (it prompted me to update), and then it showed me a dialog with the list of changes in the update. And many of the changes seemed valuable to me! One of them was genuinely exciting! I can't remember the last time "a new version is available" led to anything positive. Refreshing.

• Post #948230

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@cocoaphony/115913806013557052 "And we made it be ok by being bored and fixing stuff" This! This is such a good description of something I've felt for a while but not been able to articulate. One important software development skill is to be able to focus on boring repetition. Sure, sometimes we automate. But sometimes the details are nuanced enough that every case is different, but similar enough that it's boring. And that'...