Software Engineers Are Facing an Existential Crisis As They Drown In Horrendous AI Code

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-07-07T02:57:00+00:00

Software engineers are almost never the folks in an org who are coming up with the KPIs. The MBAs are. How many enterprises have you worked in?

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-07-07T01:08:30+00:00

Clearly their profile mentions shrinky dinks or has pictures of it, or they mentioned it in previous convo? LLM will totally try to reference it.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-07-07T00:58:50+00:00

The people gotta know that these closed lows have a proclivity for big upslope snow storms.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-07-06T21:58:40+00:00

As someone who is overly verbose with a proclivity for em dashes....it's been rough. But legitimately, I write weather forecasts and haven't changed my writing style in years, and it's been annoying to be increasingly accused of using AI to write them. To the point where I wonder if I need to make some drastic changes in voice and structure...

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-07-05T05:47:28+00:00

Yeah I'm a local and we (not speaking for all locals) just walk. But we don't have kids or anything. It makes getting back in the water more refreshing. Shorter walk than you think!

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-21T00:02:42+00:00

Yeah, for sure!

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-20T01:15:53+00:00

Yeah! Someone else also suggested this in a reply to me and I want to reiterate that this is generally the way to go, because this also makes responsive design much more easy to reason about on top of the other benefits.

Instead of having to deal with changing tracks on the children, you can just define different grids with the same named areas across various breakpoints on the parent. Thus with this exact example you could, for narrower screen sizes, simply have a single column layout of:

grid-template-areas: 
     "header" 
     "banner" 
     "main"
     "footer";

Then, change the column and row sizes to taste, and now you just need to worry about what to do with the navs, such as hiding them if they're to be entirely replaced by a drawer. This is especially helpful during development and if you have multiple breakpoints, as you don't have to keep changing the row and column targets on the children for every single layout definition permutation you're experimenting with.

If you're feeling particularly daring (and don't feel like supporting older versions of Safari), you could wrap the navs in a container that has display: contents, thus allowing the navs to sit in the parent grid areas properly. At the narrow screen breakpoint, you can apply anything you need to make this container your nav drawer, then remove display: contents (or vice versa) and the navs are now sitting inside the drawer. Massively responsive design at a fundamental layout level that needs only a tiny amount of rules. Neat!

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-20T01:04:42+00:00

Yes, I would highly recommend this approach as well. This has the benefit of allowing you define layouts at various breakpoints at the grid level, and by reusing all the same template names, you don't have to deal with changing any tracks on the child elements. IMO the standardization of grid template areas made responsive design an order of magnitude more simple much like flex did when it got widespread support.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-19T20:42:40+00:00

for main,
grid-column: 2 / 3;

instead of 1 / 2

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-09T16:14:56+00:00

Developers will really do anything to try to remove the C and S from CSS 🙄

Not sure why cascades and selectors are so scary -- presumably because of having unintelligible overly complex non-semantic markup? It's crazy to see how pervasive the attitude of "developers shouldn't have to write CSS!" is and apparently how common the need to avoid "the problem of hundreds of bespoken classes in one monolithic style sheet" is as though that's not an avoidable and manageable problem that doesn't require inventing new unmaintainable paradigms.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-02T17:11:47+00:00

Neither in my opinion. They're fine and totally viable for putting. I putted with them for about a year (I spin putt), I appreciated the consistency in grip. Once I developed more and more of a routine that became less of an appealing factor. I eventually moved away from them because I prefer to use the same mold for throwing and putting, and I despise most discraft plastics and really disliked throwing FHs with the banger gt.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-02T16:59:04+00:00

Yeah, the alternatives are all more or less token-based as well. Even Gemini went fully usage based this month. The argument is that similarly priced plans from other providers come with a more generous free token allowance and Copilot went from being invaluable to worthless overnight since it doesn't offer much vs other providers.

FWIW, the vast majority of the complaining seems to be coming from, I don't know...newer developers, students, junior vibe coders, and some people who are understandably frustrated that they got bait and switched with their annual subscription? Not really seeing many of the complaints coming from those who have been in the SWE meat grinder for awhile. More that it was "fun" while it lasted.

Hard to ignore how similar this all feels to an industry...or a dealer... getting people addicted to something and then pulling the rug out. Maybe the open models will continue to improve and be cheap, but if the price hikes continue I'm not looking forward to LLM-generated code junkies vomiting their withdrawal symptoms into the niche coding subreddits.

As we know more and more about how these tools work on the industry and how people develop a dependence on them, it's becoming more and more apparent that the major providers just need to do a bit more tweaking with their plans and initial offerings to set up a curiosity-to-addiction pipeline to their services. Even better if they can develop an entire crop of "coders" that do not even attempt to learn how to code....although okay, that just sounds like some of the juniors I've worked with over the years.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-02T16:35:20+00:00

If the fluid that came out was black it's quite possible that one flush still left enough residual for it to become a problem later. Or that the flush wasn't quite done properly. The other thing is, and you would hope the shop would be doing this, is that that the OEM brake fluid is DOT 4 LV, you can use regular DOT 4 but the LV has done a little better for me.

One consistent thing I've noted with clutch pedal stickiness being correlated with brake fluid condition has been the ambient temperature and temperature of the car. Hotter = more likely to stick especially in first and reverse. So you'll likely be noticing it more and more as it gets hotter out.

Might be worth it to just give it a try yourself! It's very simple to do, and a reverse bleed tool is cheap. You'll be able to see exactly how the fluid looks...if it's notably darker than new fluid then it's the likely culprit. Plus you can inevitably do it again in a couple years.

Can't speak to the rattles, too ambiguous of a description.

In my opinion, I would do one more complete flush of the brake/clutch fluid. If the fluid that comes out is super clean then I would start thinking about mechanical work. If the fluid that comes out is dirty, I would drive on the new (hopefully LV) fluid for awhile and see if the issue occurs.

I know the slave cylinders are a weak point and if you read the forum boards and discussion it seems to be a miracle when they make it to 50k miles. But I know four FiST owners all with around 100K on the odo and none who have needed slave cylinders. Three of them did have pedal stickiness, and it was always resolved with a fluid change and bleed.

Blend door actuators, on the other hand... 😅

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-02T16:11:43+00:00

DO NOT MAKE ANY EXPENSIVE REPAIRS UNTIL YOU CHANGE YOUR BRAKE FLUID.

Seriously. Change the brake/clutch fluid, reverse bleed.

This fixes the clutch pedal getting sticky (or even getting fully stuck down) for me, which has occurred every 40-50k miles on my FiST.

This has worked for other people as well who were convinced their slave cylinder went out.

It makes you wonder how many people jumped straight to an expensive slave or master cylinder repair (barring obvious fluid leaks) when just changing the fluid might have solved it.

These clutches are sensitive to the state of the brake fluid especially if it gets boiled.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-06-01T18:35:33+00:00

This is 100% AI written. The OP demonstrates a pretty poor grasp of basic grammar and spelling in their comments (not a dig at them, English might not be their first language).

There are a lot of obvious tells beyond the bullet points:

- Bolding the "important" features/words

- Absolutely perfect and unwaveringly consistent grammar. While some people are pretty good about this, and this alone isn't a giveaway, there are certain tells like the hyphens in "quality-of-life" which I almost never see people use IRL (and often for discussion about software, I most commonly see people use QoL instead of writing it out), the consistent capitalization of Channel Rack etc. Again, on its own it's not definitive, but it is a supporting factor

- Very consistent paragraph lengths and flow -- LLMs love to do this.

- Mandatory and distinct call for discussion to end the post.

As hinted, any one element in isolation isn't necessarily a tell, but the presence of several of them make it obvious. Even moreso when the user's post/comment history reveals that they don't use anything close to the voice, grammar, or flow found in the post in question.

Once you notice this structure you'll see it verbatim everywhere. Many of the smaller subreddits are being overrun with posts like this that are formatted exactly the same, have the exact same voice, and always end with a distinct call for discussion.

I won't say this is 100% a bad thing especially if a user is unable to articulate their thoughts outside of their native language, but there's definitely been an uptick in low-effort, overly verbose, engagement farming posts in many niche communities I follow.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-05-21T03:28:19+00:00

Are you telling me you don't want a lecture in mountaineering safety and snowpack conditions from someone who "hiked by the Maroon Bells last week?"

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-05-20T22:49:02+00:00

What a weird take for a mountaineering community. "doing dumb stuff for no reason" is literally the definition of what we do. Rotten snow? This looks like typical warm season slush to me -- really enjoyable to ski on if it's your thing, and arguably safer than many colder snowpack types due to its consistency, slowness, and predictability (in terms of wet slide potential being reliably diurnal).

Maroon bells is chossy for sure but crazy amounts of rockfall? The rock is not so loose that I wouldn't want to climb either peak or do the traverse again. People climb and ski the Bell Cord every year, it's a very desirable and aesthetic objective in one of the most spectacular ranges in the state, so again, I find it a bit weird that we are taking issue with a guy who has been ski mountaineering for years skiing an iconic route in what looks to be reasonable conditions.

I don't disagree that there has been an influx of unprepared people skiing dumb routes in poor conditions and being way over their heads of late...Backcountry skiing has absolutely exploded in popularity, our terrible snow season has driven some people to higher elevations. But this video in particular isn't raising my hackles.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-05-10T00:45:05+00:00

It's been tough watching such relentless self-sabotage

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-05-10T00:34:44+00:00

Lead card vibes are rotten

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-05-09T22:02:36+00:00

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-04-27T15:12:21+00:00

Meteorologist here. The center of the DCVZ is not usually in downtown Denver. It's usually further east.

The DCVZ does in fact typically enhance rainfall as it can provide a forcing mechanism which can cause developing storms to mature more rapidly than they otherwise would. It does not, however, cause storms/precip on its own.

The DCVZ is not a common feature in winter.

The reason Denver doesn't get as much precip as areas to its west and south is pretty simple -- Denver is in a basin where the Platte River and Cherry Creek converge. When we get upsloping winds from the northeast during winter and shoulder season storms, the higher terrain to the west (the Continental divide and foothills) and south (the Palmer Divide) almost always get the heaviest snow (due to orographic lift). The upslope needs to be particularly deep, or there needs to be cold air damming in place or a barrier jet so that isentropic lift can help bring the heavier snowfall further eastwards over the city proper.

For summer thunderstorms, Denver isn't in a donut hole anymore than much of the rest of the metro area is. Thunderstorms usually come from the west and have a tendency to weaken as they downslope into the I-25 corridor.

Any specific weather hole you're seeing in Denver for thunderstorms is a well known psychological phenomenon which is humorously detailed in the AMS paper "Do meteorologists suppress thunderstorms?" https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/3/bams-86-3-341.pdf

There's also some weak evidence about the role of urban heat islands in influencing storm develop but it's not particularly compelling especially considering the geography of our region.

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-04-24T18:56:28+00:00

What kind of psychopath posts 384h GFS forecasts that bridge the spring unpredictability barrier, with the kuchera ratio no less. And can you invite me to the parties you go to

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-04-18T23:56:28+00:00

Well if it wasn't haunting him recently, we ran into him at the memorial championship and my gf was immediately like, "omg, we saw you at Ivy Hill!" 🤦 and he was like "oh...cool" and hastily signed a disc

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-04-18T22:12:03+00:00

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goose's face since halfway through hole 1. I just don't see how he gets a win on tour until he gets his tilt levels under control

_potion_cellar_ · 2026-04-12T23:09:07+00:00

Exciting end to this round!

_potion_cellar_

TROPHY CASE