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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • The things about quantum computers is they are really, really powerful at a some kinds of things, some of the time. Maybe even most of the time.

    Binary computers are okay at one thing, but it does that one thing exactly every time. If it ever makes a mistake then entire thing might crash.

    The problem is a quantum computer is so different from normal computers you have to start over from the beginning of the tech stack. Even if you get it working reliability (which is hard to do), how does it help you? You can do some crazy math, but it can’t run an operating system. It doesn’t have a bios. There are no drivers that speak some percentage of up spin vs down spin. There isn’t a standard assembly language. There isn’t a standard anything. It’s like how computers were in the 40s.

    I think quantum computers are very interesting and might help in very specific applications, and I mean like custom made math heavy applications that only run on that one machine you built it for kind of specific.

    Can that change the world? Maybe. But it will take time. No one wants to talk about it because it’s a hard problem that is still years away from doing much to impact peoples lives. Better to talk about ai slop, that gets clicks because you can see it and touch it right now.




  • 90% of programming I have seen after a decade plus of doing it full time is minor changes being made to code that was already made by someone. Likely not documented. Likely already changed in a dozen little ways. Math isn’t the problem. Understanding what the guy who wrote it is often the problem.

    Oh and you can’t ask them because they likely don’t work here anymore.

    Being a programmer is more like being a detective than anything else unless you work for a small company.



  • I finally made the switch recently. Windows kept getting worse, and worse, and worse. Every day I felt like I had to fight it more to just do anything. I’ve been mainly a Windows user my entire life and I just couldn’t stand to use it any more.

    I couldn’t be happier. Every game I play on steam just works. I’m installing mods and updating config files deep in the magical proton depths and it just works. A clean install of the operating system is actually a clean place to start. I’m telling everyone I know.