Love the closeout of the article: "On page 112 there are coffee stains where the caffeine blots are somehow still a valid Perl program."

There were a couple of cartoon series by Cosgrove-Hall that were _really_ well done. (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music)

I read it, and I cried like a baby. Still do whenever I reach for it.

> LN2 had something in a bathroom? You have to position yourself in the doorway and do a squat of faith)

Sounds like every time I go to the bathroom ... :D

I get the same. Work has shifted to being agentic first - and whenever I use anything other than Claude Opus it seems that the model easily gets lost spinning its wheels on even the simplest query - especially with some of our more complex codebases, whereas Opus manages to not only reason adequately about the codebase, but also can produce decent quality code/tests in fairly short order.

Oddly though, when using at home I'm using Sonnet via the standard chat interface and that, whilst it will produce substandard code in its output is still reasonably capable - even in more niche tasks. Granted though that my personal projects are far simpler than the codebase I handle at work.

Funny, I use Opus at home, but I have a Max plan, and I only use it during their non-peak hours. I can't bring myself to downgrade to Haiku or Sonnet.

Agents dont solvd compute, they solve context pollutuon.

> "I think it depends on what you find enjoyable"

Exactly this. I use agents every day to either produce tests for code I've written according to the guidelines I set out for it, or to produce the boilerplate code (which is seldom enjoyable) before I get to add the cool stuff.

Furthermore, when I inevitably get stuck on a thornier section of new code, or revisiting a codebase which I've not investigated for some time, I can use the agent to provide ideas and suggestions of where/how to start/get unstuck.

Like any tool - it's how you apply it to the job in hand (and ensuring the job is relevant) that counts.

That, and never 100% trusting the output.

Cannabis in the UK is still illegal, so unless you're picking up weed from your local dealer, it's not a big thing outside the home.

But price of booze is killing pubs here. Getting close to £8 a pint now in London. £10 for a pint of Guinness in many bars.

A few years ago there was a group formed in the UK to designate cask ale/pub culture to be recognized as intangible cultural heritage through UNESCO-- following Belgium's successful foray into its brewing/beer culture being designated this way. There are a few documentaries on youtube

There is CAMRA, but tbh it seems to mostly be retired people with enormous beer bellies in their 60's who are happy enough to drink bishops finger or doom bar.

> doom bar

Maybe not for much longer: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjendwk7979o

They’re not stupid, they’ll keep the brand. It’ll just be brewed somewhere else and taste like metallic piss.

MBAs don’t seem to understand that where and how a beer is made is important.

It's still illegal in the US too.

Federally but the feds don't enforce it. And it being legal in so many states has made it broadly available to anybody that wants it, one road trip to another state is very easy and almost seems normal compared to needing to know a "dealer."

The map is not the terrain.

They're mentioned in the article (with a photo)

I always thought the internals were encased in potting compound for these things to prevent exactly this scenario (certainly the ones I had for LightWave back in the day were)...

Copying listings from computer magazines into a ZX81 ... could never get the damn tape drive to save anything that would then reload (either a cheap tape deck, or cheap tapes)... so had no choice but to hand-code.

Also, didn't have the cash to go buy games from the local computer store so this was the next best thing...

This and a Z80 assembler book to speed up a bit code because the basic was really too slow to do anything (had the 16k memory extention too because 800 and something octet were not enough)