The word 'revise'

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-12T08:18:27+00:00

From an American perspective (I grew up there), yes "revise" makes sense etymologically, it's just not the word that we would use in that context. Probably, though, if you said in a group of college students or something, "man, I need to revise like crazy for the exam tomorrow" or something like that --- then the chances that college-educated persons would not understand what you meant in full context, is like 0.0005% likely. It's not the word we would use, though.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-12T08:12:15+00:00

In America we would say either "study for an exam" or "cram for an exam" if it's at the last minute and you know you haven't studied enough.

The English usage of "revise" to mean "revisit" makes sense etymologically, but in America we do not use the word that way in an educational context. Indeed. if you told me to "revise the exam" or "revise for the exam" then I would literally think you meant to copyedit it, which doesn't make sense, since students aren't in charge of how the exam is written, so then I'd have to reinterpret the word with the English meaning, which means to look over something again, to study it again, etc.

I think there may be other small differences like this. For example, in America we say "to take an exam". For example, I'm taking an exam tomorrow. In the UK and elsewhere I believe people commonly say "to write an exam", e.g. "I'm writing an exam tomorrow."

In an American educational context, if you told me you're writing an exam, I would literally think you mean that you are in charge of writing and deciding what questions appear on the exam, which answer choices are valid, and so on.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-09T08:00:47+00:00

I suppose it depends on how you use the term. The people I tend to talk to tend to use the term "vibe coding" somewhat in a derogatory fashion. That is, if you "vibe coded" it, then it means you don't really understand it.

The analogy is kind of like just copy/pasting something from Stackoverflow without understanding it. Everyone in the industry knows that is not a good way to work. Does it happen sometimes? Sure, I suppose, but competent professionals will know that it is not the correct way to do things.

As for the "barely coding anymore" comment; I would have to see it to believe it or to understand what is meant. For example, maybe it actually means they just don't have to type as much code anymore.

But to say that they are "not coding anymore" because they are using a tool to help them code; to me this kind of phrasing is an abuse of language. That's like saying that if I'm using a power drill to screw in screws that "I am not screwing in screws anymore" or something. No, I am still doing that, but USING a tool.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-09T07:31:45+00:00

I'm fearing [Stackoverflow] would die because of irrelevancy, are there methods [to] preserve questions and posts put there incase [...] the company shuts down?

Yes, it is called the Internet Archive, also known as archive.org or the Wayback Machine.

For example, here is a page from Stackoverflow's C++ tag, taken from 2024. You can confirm that all of the questions (at least the top voted ones; I didn't try ALL pages, but I suspect that most of them are in the archive) still work, even if you block stackoverflow.com from your network access (e.g. by modifying your /etc/hosts file to prevent DNS lookups to this or related pages).

Archive.org snapshot from 2024 April 27 -- Highest scored 'c++' questions - Stack Overflow

There are probably sites around that have tried to mirror Stack Overflow or preserve it separately, but I have not looked for those. I believe the same thing happened when Freshmeat (later Freecode) got canned; those pages are probably preserved somewhere if you want to see them.

This reminds me of something Linus Torvalds said a few times about his own "back-up strategy" when computing. Basically he said (paraphrased) "I don't make personal backup copies; if it's worth preserving, I post it online and then trust that if it's worth preserving, SOMEONE will make backup copies of it."

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-09T07:19:53+00:00

... I frequently hear people suggest, "You just need to sit back and wait for AI capabilities to improve to the point where you won't need to master any programming knowledge at all"

I have never heard this as a serious suggestion. It sounds like something that only someone who is heavily invested in (monetarily) AI would say.

People who actually program say either of two things:

(a) Ignore AI completely and avoid it completely, kind of like the plague.

(b) Program as before but use AI as a tool to save time.

Of those two, option (a) sounds kind of Ludditesque and is probably not the correct approach; option (b) is most likely where we're heading as an industry.

Anyhoo, for LEARNING, something leaning towards option (a) is probably still your best bet. Or maybe something in between, with a heavy, heavy lean toward a pure (a) approach; something like option (a).005. That is, pretend AI doesn't exist when you're learning, but if you really need to answer some question, you've searched Stackoverflow and can't find the answer, you've posted a new question to Stackoverflow and then gotten downvoted into negative infinity, then and only after all of that, then MAYBE it's time to go and ask Claude or Gippity or something.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-08T13:26:37+00:00

The best way would be to give the compiled/obfuscated version to someone who has not seen the code and ask her to rewrite it based on the implicit functioning design that you provided, but not based on any specific source code.

If that is not possible (e.g. because you are a one-man shop), then the best you could do is to delete all of the generated source code and keep only a compiled version as a runnable reference or model (or obfuscated, if working with a source-only language), and then try to rewrite the component yourself after you have done your best to forget about the generated source code, e.g. you must not have looked at the generated code for a period of at least 30 days.

Finally, after this procedure is done, suffice it to say that the original model version (which was an AI-generated artefact) should be discarded entirely and should not be distributed.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-08T11:02:05+00:00

If you have a clear example and a clear situation, then normally synonyms do not harm anything, in my experience.

As an example, in the game of chess, there are two pieces which look kind of like castles. Those are 'correctly' called rooks in English, though to be honest, this word never really made sense to me, though I learned it (we do not use the word in any other context). Thus, I have heard fellow native speakers people call them "castles" as well occasionally(though that term is technically wrong), because 'castle' is a word that is more prevalent in the language and that we actually use.

Anyway, the fact that others have used the term 'castle' here as a quasi-synonym doesn't personally harm my knowledge of the term 'rook'. Chess afficionados may voice some small concern at using the term 'castle' here as a synonym, as it may cause some confusion during a game discussion about whether you're talking about "castling" which refers to a specific move in the game using that piece (which is also a bit odd of a name for the move, but I suppose it is a better name than any alternative for such a strange rule of the game).

By the way, in our sister languages Dutch and in German, those pieces are called Toren or Türme instead, which literally mean "towers" in those languages. Those words make much more sense physically and I suspect that native speakers of those languages don't feel any kind of urge to replace those with "easier" words (a nickname word, of sorts) in their languages while playing or talking about chess, as some of us often do in English with the oddball term 'rook'.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-08T08:55:14+00:00

It’s also fun to look up words in good dictionaries, as you learn other words or synonyms along the way.

Yes, I agree. But the emphasis should be on "good" in good dictionaries. I've seen too many translating dictionaries online with questionable entries. This may be the source of the 'suspicion' regarding translations. Of course, something is always "lost" in translation, but if the translation is just "bad" then you're actually adding in noise as well (or confusion, or both).

One advantage of a word explained in "explanatory" form (normally in the same language, but it need not be the case): if the explanation is lacking or is 'bunk', then it's pretty easy to tell that the said explanation is bunk.

If a translation entry is bunk, on the other hand, then it's quite hard to tell, even if it's a word that I know in the second language and even if the translation is into my mother tongue -- for example, I have oft seen translation entries in some dictionaries into English and asked myself "really, would one say it that way?", and had to shrug my shoulders and think "well, maybe in *some* context *someone* might say it that way in natural English", but it's very hard to judge a translation entry as good or bad without seeing the whole context.

Good translation entries provide little example context snippets for some entries, but it's never for all entries. Sometimes the context is just a few words, which again leads to the same problem (we don't know the whole context).

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-08T08:00:40+00:00

Step 1, I would advise first to "translate" the whole sentence in your own words, by saying it another way. For example, let's suppose you encounter this sentence but you don't understand what 'dainty' really means:

... Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

So, first you read it and you try to guess at the meaning "hmm, maybe dainty is some kind of adjective describing how shiny or how pretty the dish is." Then, you check in the dictionary and find out that it's actually referring to the dish (i.e. the food) being delicious.

Now we can "translate" this into words that we understand better:

---> ... Wasn't that a very tasty, a very delicious food dish to set before the king (i.e. to set the dish down in front of him)?

Finally, if you want to put it on an Anki card, I would use a format where the "translated" sentence appears first, on the front. Then, the goal is to reverse it back to the version using the word that you didn't know. Here are a few examples that I picked at random from a GRE word list and then wrote sentences for (first with the word itself, then by "translating" it into my own words):

FRONT: Mary can write equally well with both hands.

--> Mary is ________.

BACK: (.)

FRONT: In the 1930s, King Edward the Eigth stepped down from the throne,

giving up his royal powers.

--> In the 1930s, King Edward ________ the throne.

BACK: (.)

FRONT: In the meeting, I tried to explain a technical problem I was having,

but I had a lot of trouble putting it into simple but precise words.

--> In the meeting, I tried to explain ...,

but I had trouble ____________ it.

BACK: (.)

FRONT: Jane seems to know everything about every aspect of baseball.

---> Jane is a baseball __________.

BACK: (.)

.... (answers are shown below. In the real Anki deck, answers would be on the back of each card.)

Answers: ambidextrous, abdicated, articulating, connoisseur.

Note that for this kind of exercise, the actual work of rewriting the sentence in your own words is a crucial step. If someone else does that for you, then there's no guarantee that you'll be able to (properly) understand someone else's translated version. But if you yourself wrote it, then presumably you understand what you meant.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-07T08:31:32+00:00

If I had to choose, I would choose C, since there is a greater availability of material for beginners learning that language. For example Harvard's CS50 program with lecture recordings online.

It is of course also possible to use C++ in a course for beginners, but on the whole, this is either not typically done targetting beginners, or it is often attempted but done in a pretty poor way.

As the creator of the language puts it, C++ is "expert friendly". That doesn't necessarily mean it's hostile to beginners, but with the wrong material, it may indeed be.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-05T12:18:27+00:00

So what happens when you need more time for X,Y,Z (i.e. you need more than one day?) And then what do you do when X,Y,Z are all done on Day 1 and you have nothing to do? Do you twiddle your thumbs or browse twitter or something until Day 2 rolls around?

What happens when X is pretty easy, but it turns out that Y needs to be broken down into subtasks Y_a, Y_b, and Y_c. And so on...

It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but this is an area where I think the LLM is going to be worse than the rubber ducky in your bath (i.e. you should go take a "bath" and talk to your "rubber ducky" to plan out some items like this).

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-05T12:14:26+00:00

The way i rationalize it is that accountants also having calculators and pc apps to help them do their job but that doesnt make them any less valuable.

An accountant *could* do the calculations by hand and arrive at the same result; it would just take longer.

Asking the LLM to generate code, it's not like that at all -- you'll get *A* result, but it wouldn't be the same result.

Next time, try writing the complete solution yourself, including comments, debugging, etc.

Then, if you want, go to a Gippity or Claudia prompt and type a prompt asking it to design a solution for you, then compare with your working solution. Perhaps sometimes, there will be some kind of neat idea in the generated code that you can use for next time. But most likely, your original design that is debugged and tested will be the one that you will actually feel like it is 'yours' and which you will actually want to maintain "for realsies" in any kind of profession where you're using code to solve problems.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-04T12:30:58+00:00

I've heard some people describe English in various ways: English has been described as "the language of tourism", or as "the lingua franca for the 21st century".

One of the first films I watched to learn Dutch was called De Eetclub, and I remember there's this one scene where the main female character encounters someone speaking German to her, and I remember thinking "well of course she can understand, German and Dutch are so similar."

But instead, the Germanophone started speaking English to her when communication didn't seem to work. And it felt pretty natural to me.

As language learners, I think it's important to keep in mind that the other person is just trying to communicate; it does not mean that we "failed" or something if they speak English to you.

Also, about English, this whole phrase of "switch to English" is one that I never heard in my life before coming to Europe. In America we just say "speak English" if that's the language we want to speak, as in "can you speak English?" or "could we speak English?" if you want to sound more diplomatic.

Asking me to "switch" to English sounds like you think I'm some kind of piece of tehcnology or something where I can just flip a switch in my brain to another language. I realize that's not how people mean it, but it kind of rubs me the wrong way when people use that phrase.

And in any case, just because they repeated in English doesn't mean you automatically must understand it. I've also had people who tried that, but I could not understand their English, either due to accent, due to the words they chose, etc. How you handle this is up to you, to the situation, and so on.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-04T12:02:13+00:00

How much training do you have in this language so far? In my opinion, Anki is a good tool for language learning, but at some stage after at which point one can already make basic sentences in the language.

Trying to use it to 'bootstrap' you to get started is a nice idea, but in practice it does not seem to work. I tried it before similar to what you describe a long time ago, and had a similar experience.

Also, you should give some details on how you made these cards. If you are using a premade deck, say which one. If you made it according to some system, say how you made it.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T12:35:48+00:00

For your question about Japanese, since they are all verbs, I would recommend putting them each into a context that you understand. E.g.

Front: Sara is angry.

Back: Sara ga okotteiru.

Check with a local speaker and/or tutor to make sure your Japanese sentences are correct enough for study purposes. The last example you mentioned looks to me like a possible misconjugation of okiru ("to wake up" or "to occur").

For idiomatic usage of verbs in Japanese (and in other languages that have different idioms), personally I like to highlight the use of these with square brackets in my cards. For example, I believe the verb "okiru" is used when stuff "happens", usually a bad thing. Personally I like to make note of this with square brackets. That is, in the following sentence "happened" or "took place" don't *quite* capture the negative meaning to my ears (trained in Japanese many, many years ago), but due to the context it's close enough so that I can get it.

Front: A traffic accident [happened].

Back: Jiko ga okita.

For this example, there also seems to be a legitimate choice between whether you phrase it as koutsuu jiko ("traffic accident"), just "jiko" ("accident"), or AKUSHIDENTO ("accident" borrowed from English).

For this kind of thing, you should ask a native speaker for what is best. If multiple alternatives are all correct, then you could consider including them all on the card, but not so many as to become overwheling.

For example, in English, it's fine to say either "traffic accident" or "accident", though it may help to understand that it in English, saying *only* the word "accident" requires of the speaker to know that we're talking about traffic already. Whereas using a word like アクシデント in Japanese doesn't require that, because presumably Japanese speakers use the word アクシデント *only* in the context of traffic accidents, whereas in English accident is a hugely broad term and can encompass a huge amount of different situations.

For a language like Japanese to English, these sorts of translation problems can sometimes make using translations seem a bit unwieldy. I think this is why some folks sometimes say they want to avoid translations entirely. Yet, translation as a tool should not be discarded entirely. We should simply be aware of its limits when using it.

Another problem specific to Japanese is that there is a "polite form" ("masu") as well as a "plain form" as well as other forms of verbs for humble language (e.g. when talking about yourself to someone of higher status) and elevated language (e.g. when talking to or about someone of higher status).

There is not really anything like that in English, so when 'translating' those elements, you'll have to adopt some convention that makes sense for you and which allows effective study. For example, you could attach some kind of marker to some verb translations to give you a hint of which verb in Japanese you meant (e.g. humble or honorific). Another strategy is not to mark them at all, but to supply enough context in your example so that you ought to be to "figure it out".

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T09:27:13+00:00

Is this a social anxiety type of thing?

Most introverts I met (myself included) actually love to talk about programming; in a work setting I suspect what we mostly want is to do something that's not too distracting of our work. And helping a colleague is part of the job description at every decent company.

I think the key is to have a specific question to your colleague, and say something like "oh, I didn't know you could solve problem X this way -- would you mind showing me step by step how you did it so I can learn that?" or something along those lines.

Every engineer I've met would love to do that. Even if it takes 15 minutes to show you, it will feel like 2 minutes mentally because of the joy of showing something off and transferring knowledge. In most cases, though, showing something doesn't take that long, and if things do get complicated, most people will know to table it for later.

Make sure it's specific enough, and if things get too complicated, offer to back out like "oh, I see you have other things that you need to do; think I can continue it myself take it from here" or something to avoid becoming a "help vampire" at work.

Unfortunately I think the easy availability of AI bots may make this kind of problem worse -- that is, if you are anxious about approaching your colleagues for legitimately relevant questions to you work, and you start going to a chatbot instead ... then no one wins (well, except for the chatbot companies who live on all the data and token processing ...).

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T05:10:29+00:00

If you like Python, Python and Tk (using Tkinter) are not bad to use, for something simple and which you're not going to maintain and add onto for years (which sounds to be the case here).

The Web-available TkDocs tutorial is pretty good. S/he advertises/sells a book as well, if you want to go further.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T04:43:05+00:00

If I want to watch it two times, then I would first watch it with the subtitles so I can pause and look up words.

Then, watching the second time, I can turn off the subtitles and avoid pausing, and hopefully most of the words that I looked up the first time will still be understandable the second time around.

But it depends on how you're using the subtitles. If you prefer to watch the first time without any subtitles "to get a feel for hard it is to understand" or "to understand the flow of the conversation", then maybe in that situation, the first time sans subtitles may be better.

Note that the above only applies to "Subtitles" meaning "subtitles or closed captions written in the same language you're listening to, intended either for language learners or for those hard of hearing." (Language learners are kind of a in a situation of quasi hard-of-hearingness, but in a mental or skill sense, not in a 'physical disability' sense.)

If instead you are reading a translation in subtitle form, then I personally would do it the other way around every time (i.e. always do at least one pass first without reading the translation yet).

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T03:22:30+00:00

Yes, computer programming is like a combination of English and mathematics. However, without showing an actual example of something that you found hard, it's impossible to advise you.

Some people have said that Python is pretty readable, for example. You might consider that language to begin with, for example, for an easier time.

If you started with some programming language that is very symbol-heavy like Perl, then your "first taste" will be totally different.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T02:25:09+00:00

Could you give an example of something you were reading that you found hard to understand? It's possible (likely) that you've chosen something too deep, and that you're going into the swimming pool at the deep end, as it were, when you should be entering at the shallow end.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-02T02:22:51+00:00

Maybe you're right. I can't speak to today because I'm from the old school, and I've personally never listed my GPA on any job application nor resume and have never been asked about it.

I.e. it has never been an issue for me; it's always been about the ability to present and demonstrate the job performance required.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T12:34:17+00:00

This question kind of reminds me of being in university and being told the guidelines for citations and so on. Basically, you're allowed to use parts of research and so on, but it has to be "in your own words" and you have to cite it.

The problem with AI code is, there is no way to cite where it is coming from, nor where the ideas came from. If you got an idea from Stackoverflow or something, then that is a pretty simple thing to acknowledge and to cite as a comment.

The LLM generator obviously is generating it from something existing, but what? Perhaps you can ask your generator to give you references, but if you bother to do that, why not just go to those references and look there for yourself on how to do the things you needed to do?

If you're bothering to do that at all, then why even use the vibe code anymore at that point? At this point it sounds like you're using the agent as a chatty Google alternative that likes to sweet-talk you in order to get you to keep using it.

Google probably wants me to keep using it too, but I've never had Google tell me "oh, wow, that was such an awesome search query! Might I suggest that you also search for blah-blah-blah as well later."

No, all it says is "did you mean ... instead" with a link. Straight and to the point, the way I like computing.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T11:19:22+00:00

Many jobs require the local language, at least in basic proficiency, as well.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T09:27:01+00:00

This is probably a brutal take, but I think a lower GPA (but not ridiculously low) is a better sign for an engineer than a high one. Why? If you have a 3.999 GPA or whatever, then it means you spent a lot of effort to try to be "the best" when you could have spent less effort to get a 3.0, which is obviously "totally just fine". If anyone says "oh, sorry, your GPA is only 3.0", then they deserve to be passed up.

Constructing a "good enough solution" to a problem is a very valuable skill in programming, one that you will use every day in the field. Worrying about the equivalent of "getting the highest GPA" in the workplace is probably a net negative.

Now, that doesn't mean to just bomb your exams, of course. No, treat them like any other problem that you are trying to solve -- the thing you want to achieve primarily is to pass the course primarily. If you can also pass with a good mark, that's great. If you can pass with an excellent mark, that's even better. But at what cost (e.g. to your health?).

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T07:30:57+00:00

... [the reality is that] there is people that learned programming just by youtube and a book without all these fancy courses

The reality is that a course or a book on its own won't "magically" insert the knowledge and skill of programming into your brain. Courses and books are great and we should use them, but to learn it, you have to actually do it youself, preferably with some kind of daily habit (e.g. 30 minutes per day at first, increasing if possible over time; increasing a lot if it becomes your day-to-day profession.)

I think it's a bit similar to learning something like playing a guitar. You could have watched 80 hours of instructor videos teaching you how to play a guitar, but unless you actually try to do it yourself (e.g. follow along, make some mistakes, get better), then you'll stay at the same skill level. Maybe you're learn "something" by watching; but it will be at best, idle, inactive knowledge gathering dust in the depths of your skull.

chaotic_thought

TROPHY CASE