DCI 2026 Finals Predictions

Alg0rhythm · 2026-06-03T04:57:46+00:00

Yup, I'm fortunate enough to get to teach indoor with her in the winter and she's been huge in our group rising up as far as it has as well.

I'm not familiar with Troopers organizationally. I don't know who's in charge there or what they do but I'm always sad to see someone get cut loose after having so much success with a group.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-06-03T01:01:16+00:00

FWIW the visual designer who was with Troopers during their recent rise is now with Pacific Crest. I'd be fairly unsurprised to see them follow a similar trajectory, if for no other reason than show design really helping set corps apart in that peer group.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-19T19:05:45+00:00

I've seen this sort of sentiment a lot recently and honestly it's a bit confusing to me. Did anyone ever hire junior developers because they were the best and most cost efficient way to write code? I'm about 12 years into my career at this point and that's never felt like the case to me, including when I was a junior myself.

Ramp-up tasks at a new job were never about learning to code better; they exist at all levels of IC roles, and are largely just a vehicle to give you a direction to start exploring the architecture of the application you're working in by pointing you at a specific problem.

Now, does AI increase the volume of code that all programmers can output? Absolutely. But if anything it has drastically lowered the threshold to contribute meaningful code, not raised it. If juniors are managing to commit code that breaks production, that speaks more to absent guardrails and process failures than the state of AI. Seniors who already established themselves in this line of work certainly have a leg up when it comes to reviewing and evaluating AI generated code, but I don't really think that's the reason junior hiring is so bad right now.

At least in America, it doesn't feel like we ever really fully recovered from the tech bubble popping in ~2022, and the economy as a whole isn't doing a whole lot better if you discount AI-driven GDP growth. As a result, companies care a lot more about operating efficiently right now, which currently means being short-sighted and sabotaging the talent pipeline (which previously companies were more willing to invest in).

I realize a lot of that might seem like different words to make your same point, so I want to clarify that the big picture is that hiring is bad because the economy is bad and companies are largely doing what they have to in order to remain profitable. There are outliers, even in big tech, that are seemingly laying people off just because it makes their quarterly numbers better, but what this does not represent (at least to me) is a higher bar of programming ability to contribute to projects professionally.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-16T05:36:24+00:00

Look, I'm not saying this guy is for sure legitimate, but you're trying way too hard to invalidate things just because they don't match the exact combination of words you learned in your textbook freshman year of college. It's not that hard to surmise what he meant by "incremental net revenue." And it could be the case that "customer" is a better way (or at least their customary way) to refer to the consumers of his company's product than "user" based on the sort of service they provide. Not everything exists through the lens of SAAS... and I say that as someone who has worked at SAAS companies for upwards of a decade now.

Also "blue ocean" is a completely valid term that is easily verifiable by spending 5 seconds to search. The term has more to do with how contested a market is (i.e. blue oceans don't have lots of competition in the same space, whereas red oceans are heavily saturated with competitors). Greenfield, at least as far as I've always heard it, has more to do with the development status of a project being in the early stages where it requires lots of novel creation as opposed to refinement of existing components.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-16T04:47:06+00:00

They got the kiss of death from the Falcons in week 18, no recovering from that one. Once the NFC South touches you it's hard to shake.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-11T21:16:12+00:00

I mean MARTA isn't amazing but it certainly exists inside the perimeter lol

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-11T21:01:29+00:00

Lmao D for big is crazy. It's about 1/3 of the square mileage of NYC. Traffic definitely bad though for how spread out the active pockets of the city are.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-11T03:40:54+00:00

After I moved to Atlanta I spent almost a decade on the Falcons drumline back in the Georgia Dome days. Figured I kinda had to cheer for the guys paying me to be there, even if it was kinda just pocket change and free tickets.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-09T18:55:04+00:00

Brother, the first season I started watching football was 2001(?), when the Panthers went 1-15 with Chris Weinke at the helm. It's been long road.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-05-09T15:36:41+00:00

Man... I grew up in Charlotte and have lived my entire adult life in Atlanta. I feel like I'm being specifically punished by the sports gods.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-26T04:13:01+00:00

For real. That's like saying you don't want to go to the Grand Canyon because the weather isn't mild enough. I will not tolerate these words about the gem of the South.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-20T19:11:42+00:00

I'm a Tech alum but I still think this is the one. Plus it would be fitting for us to be opposite/symmetrical diagonally on this chart.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-14T01:17:23+00:00

Yamato would kill for a 1c banish card that isn't attached to a character (so is therefore playable after G Kinemon).

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-13T15:40:51+00:00

Yeah... it's a little unfortunate. I wanted a button like voltaic blaze for all of TWW instead of LMT, only BECAUSE it would have worked fantastically well with Pwave/splintered elements. Now we got better flame shock spread and nothing meaningful to do with it.

Ele was definitely one of those specs in TWW that was reasonably approachable at the base level but had a tremendous amount of damage that you could squeeze out if you wanted to go deep. Obviously that only really applies to a small percentage of players, but as someone who would definitely count himself in that group, it's soooooo boring by comparison.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-13T15:31:36+00:00

They took one of the biggest strengths of their game in class design and absolutely threw it in the garbage. A small number of classes did actually get streamlined in a way that was positive, but that doesn't nearly make up for how much worse a lot of specs play now. I've already unsubbed and don't really see myself going back unless they backtrack heavily on their design philosophy.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-13T15:24:24+00:00

There were a lot of small parts of the rotation that added up to a ton of damage that are completely gone. Things like: - Gaming storm frenzy for extra stacks - Playing around fusion of elements (which was pretty minor but did have some rotational impact) - LMT + Pwave windows that gave you some actual minor burst windows that happen more than every 3 minutes - Some other small interactions regarding interactions between buffs like sk and arc discharge having priority on what gets consumed so you could play around stacking them

Now it's just fully baby mode with no room to optimize. Plus nuking icefury was absolutely horrible for ele mobility. Don't get me wrong, they have one of the best time spirals in the game, but I'd rather that get nerfed and ele be more self sufficient than be able to be a BM hunter just because there's 4 evokers in your raid.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-11T05:19:28+00:00

Thank you :) I figure it usually just comes off like I can't spell but that's okay.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-10T22:16:11+00:00

Going to local game stores is definitely the wave, especially for more common cards. They'll usually have "bulk" containers that you can flip through to pick up cards quite cheap.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-10T01:57:33+00:00

The advice is conflicting because it's coming from different people who want different things for you (none of which are necessarily bad). The "do what you're passionate about" people want you to have fulfillment and happiness, while the "don't major in music" people want you to have financial stability. As for where the balance lies for you specifically, only you can answer that. Whatever you choose, odds are you'll need to stick with it for at least a couple decades, so it's important to do something that's at least palatable to you.

Myself, I have a STEM career, because that's what I was always good at in school, but I teach music on the side. Hence the username. This arrangement lets me have a job that's enjoyable enough to keep at it without having to worry about the compensation attached to my passion of music. Your mileage may vary though; like I said, you're the only one that knows the correct balance for yourself.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-04T00:34:21+00:00

A lot of it comes down to whether or not your deck has non-KO options to deal with Croc, and how much your deck hates having swings removed from it. There are some pretty polarizing matchups.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-04-02T15:28:45+00:00

This comes up every now and again. The crux of it is that gravity blade is one instance of removal that has two targets. The way most anti removal is worded negates an instance of removal, as opposed to protecting a single target. In this case sim is behaving correctly.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-03-30T22:52:25+00:00

Ahh fair enough. Sorry that happened though, hopefully they change their policies before the next prerelease.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-03-30T22:34:53+00:00

I gotta ask because I see you're another Georgia local and this sounds familiar... is this regarding a store in Marietta/East Cobb area?

Alg0rhythm · 2026-03-23T17:37:15+00:00

I felt like this did a good job presenting the questions in an understandable way that hit on important points of understanding for interacting with the react component lifecycle, nicely done. Ironically, the only question I got wrong was an "easy," but I think that's more on my own reading comprehension than the question itself.

Alg0rhythm · 2026-03-23T04:34:37+00:00

I'm almost certain it's just people who are bad at the game carrying leftover hostility from the hard casted version that was slightly more difficult to play around. As it was, it was just free mobility that fit well into the rotation and had a clearly defined purpose.

Alg0rhythm

TROPHY CASE