At the current cost, I just use the best model all the time. Why wouldn't I?

> coders are not exactly demonstrating great discretionary decision making.

From a business perspective, why would I start thinking about which model to use, when I could cheaply always use the best model?

Are you suggesting AI can understand things deeply?

LLM's are fast at applying information, but thinking deeply, they do not.

I love LLM's, because now I can focus more on the creative and thinking deep aspect, and leave most of the typing and stack overflow browsing to the LLM.

So Russia invades Ukraine, and somehow you blame leftists for that? You must be buried deep in Russian propaganda.

> when will you sign up for Ukraine's army

There is only room in your brain for extreme thoughts? There is a lot of space between not supporting Ukraine and going to the front lines. For example donating money (I sure do as a center-right wing):

https://savelife.in.ua/

When kids learn calculation, they indeed are not allowed to use a calculator.

Same is true for your field now. When kids learn things the AI already knows, it's clear they can't use the AI.

If you want them to become smarter than the AI, they will have to pass through a period where they are dumber than the AI, and it's clear at that point they can't use it.

AI raised the bar, that's all. But it's still a bar that can be passed with human intelligence, and your job is to get them past that.

> it's still a bar that can be passed with human intelligence

Can you expand on this?

As a developer becomes better, they become better than an LLM, being able to deal with more complex things than what an LLM can handle. Some people will not be able to pass it, but others will.

When there will ever be AGI (I don't think this can be achieved with the current architecture, it needs another AI breakthrough), then we might not be able to surpass it, much like chess currently.

The problem with spec driven development is that your specs are never complete, and for sure contain inconsistencies, wrong assumptions, etc.

So now you write specs, and then an LLM, which is known to be overly compliant, will handle the implementation. If you don't see the issues with this workflow, you for sure have learned nothing about how the software development process evolved.

> High performing teams made to do agile become average teams and low performing teams made to do agile can become average teams.

This is also my observation. I compare it to McDonalds vs a star restaurant. Put the top chef of a star restaurant in McDonalds and he will perform average. Put a McDonalds member in the star restaurant and he will perform badly.

The amount of process needs to be tweaked to your team. Ideally, you can give your star players more freedom.

    At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
    to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
    its behavior accordingly.

https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

I switched as a long time Linux user to a MacBook because of the hardware:

- Battery: no other laptop comes even close

- Trackpad: I don't use a mouse anymore, no other laptop comes close

- Audio: No other laptop comes close

"Sharp edges" really don't bother me to be honest, I wouldn't have noticed it if nobody told me.

I have a nano-texture screen, and it works great in daylight.

Just goes to show how opinions can differ.

I remember multiple reviews of other laptops that indeed came close in all of those categories. So those statements are objectively wrong.

Problem is that I dont remember which, and if I remembered the model might very well not be in stock anymore. The other vendors with their always changing lineup of models make that impossible by choice.

But the above criteria are mostly subjective, so objectivity largely doesn’t apply.

"comes close" in itself is a very relative concept. So how can you claim my statements are "objectively wrong"?. Depends on how close "close" is, right.

If you can provide me an example of a laptop that beats one of those categories, it's objectively wrong. In all other cases, nope.

In reviews, I'd say the closest one can get is either Asus Zephyrus ROG G14 or Asus ProArt PX13, on top of the mentioned HP ZBook.

As I like my laptops not cutting into my palms when typing and being lighter, I am sticking with Thinkpad X1 Carbon for now and enjoying the fact they are less than 1kg as well (also, they run actual Linux well :)).

The HP ZBook G1a comes close in computing power, screen, sound and trackpad quality - but not at all in battery life: about 7 hours. It's also pretty overpriced, but discounts are common.

> Trackpad: I don't use a mouse anymore, no other laptop comes close

I always hear this but don't get it. Every time I use a Mac laptop, I hate the touchpad. Maybe it's the defaults but I don't feel it's more accurate or anything... Why do people think it's good? A certain acceleration profile?

I much prefer the commodity Synaptics trackpads I've had on my last 2 laptops, running Linux with Gnome and now Hyprland. I just crank the sensitivity, have all the gestures enabled, tap to click and 2 finger reverse scrolling and am happy.

I hate the tap to click, so that's probably our difference. I really want to physically click, and a tap should do nothing. I always get fake clicks in the other case.

Dragging also becomes more natural when you have a real click.

The trackpad is also big enough to easily cover the whole screen.

> Dragging also becomes more natural when you have a real click

Agree to disagree. I find tap to click + hold turns into a double tap but hold on the second tap which I find quite intuitive. And two finger tap is "right click".

> The trackpad is also big enough to easily cover the whole screen.

So is mine with the sensitivity up. But I don't have to move my hand at all, only my fingers.

> I hate the tap to click, so that's probably our difference

Ok fair enough. I have noticed most Macs I use for whatever reason don't have tap to click enabled. So larger size + probably a nicer click could be reasons.

My only complaint is with the EN-international keyboard my company prefers - there is no way to reverse the tilde key position back to the same place next to 1 on the US keyboard. The OS knows what keyboard the laptop has and refuses to change it.

I've created my own keyboard layout plus do some key remapping on my mac. Are you sure this won't work for tilde?

The tilde key exists in the key map here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450...

You can see how I did mine here if you're interested: https://github.com/bruse/dotfiles/tree/main/macOS (I suspect com.local.KeyRemapping.plist is most interesting, but the key layout file is there too, with some comments on how it was generated).

Thank you. I'll check as soon as I can. I remember having asked that in the Ask Different Stack Exchange forum, but I couldn't even find my question.

I am using XKB layouts from Linux recompiled for Macs and loaded with Karabiner: I am sure something as simple as rearranging the tilde key is possible, but maybe management software from your company will prohibit it.

The approach from @zith works, but I haven’t found the key codes. I’ll try to cobble up a utility to make that less cruel.

I recently tried to replace Dropbox with Filen. Filen supports full encryption, so like you say better on privacy.

Then I mounted it as a drive on my MacBook, and moved some backup files there. The move took a while, and after it, no backups on my MacBook, and no backups on Filen. Just nothing, no log of it, nothing.

Going to stay with Dropbox.

So in this case, Europe definitely does not do it better.

Edit: I also tried to replace Sendgrid. All European alternatives are crazy expensive, so not going to replace that either.

Instead of focussing on old tech, and keep running behind US and China, maybe we should jump on the next boat.