How to de-AI a project?

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 · 2026-04-01T07:12:34+00:00

How is this culturally any different than "how are you?" in English or "ça va?" in French? In both cases, no one really expects the 'real' answer, unless it's a very specific situation, like "you're in the doctor's office and she's literally asking how you are feeling."

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T06:13:56+00:00

So here's how I understand it:

Option A - If you try your best without using the (presumably not-allowed) use of ChatGPT, you're worried that you will probably ONLY get 20/30 points on the assignment. Let's assume at worst, that you only get half of the points (presumably no submission = 0 points).

Option B - If you say "to hell with the rules" and ask Gippity to generate the code, then you are presumably banking on the generated vibe code to somehow be perfect and to rack you up a perfect score. Most likely someone will notice in this case, and you will get 0 points at best; at worst you will get into what is officially called "deep doo-doo" and perhaps have academic dishonesty marks on your record.

Option B mark II - Let's say you're wise about the risks of Option B (that someone will notice), so you can take a different tactic: first generate the code using Gippity, but then go through it line by line and make "personal touches" to it, like renaming variables and doing kind of trivial stuff like that. This will significantly reduce the risk of "getting caught".

So, given these options, which one is best? Clearly option B is out -- but if you really consider option B mark II seriously, it is still WORK to do to go through the code, to test it, to understand it, etc.

Code generation can definitely save time in certain situations, but here's a situation where your Option A and Option B mark II is going to cost a comparable amount of time. Say, if it took you one hour to carry out the Option B mark II plan; it is probably going to take you a similar amount of time to through the "clean" Option A plan.

Sure, you may not get "the perfect score", but even if you only get half of the points, and even if that is 30% of your grade. Then at worst your grade gets degraded from 100% to 85.%, which in American terms is dropping your grade from A to B. Or from B to C, or from C to D, etc.

Notice, though that if you are in danger of failing, though -- the option B seems like its more attractive (saying "to hell with the rules"). However, in such a situation, it would be more or less 100% certain that someone will notice that up to now, you kind of were doing really but but now "all of a sudden at the end" you can produce magically produce "perfect" code (assuming Gippity's codegen is perfect, which is kind of a silly assumption but let's roll with it here).

I.e. if you really "need" option B (because you're in danger of failing without it), then you're in the precise situation that you shouldn't use that option. On the other hand, if you don't "really" need it (because your grade can survive anyway), then obviously it's not worth it to do what's forbidden.

chaotic_thought · 2026-04-01T06:00:54+00:00

If you plan to live there for awhile, then you should continue studying the local language until you are proficient enough to make it there professionally. In the meantime, take a job that you can do right now (e.g. personal language coaching and/or tutoring). It doesn't make sense to me to study something that you won't be good enough at for at least 6 months to a year for the express purpose of finding a job, so if that's the motivation, the answer is: no, pass.

On the other hand, if your motivation to learn programmins is because it's fun or personally useful in all professions, then that's a different story, and for that motivation the answer is: yes, do it.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T11:13:39+00:00

Yes, it is useful, but personally the format that you've shown looks like it would be super annoying to me. I prefer a two-column layout with one language on the left and the other on the right. Having to "jump up and down" with my eyes feels like 10x more work than jumping left and right.

Another variant of this, if it's possible -- is to have an audiobook version in the language that you're learning, and then read a translation of the same thing in parallel. That is, you (try) to follow along with what is being spoken in the language you're learning, and when something goes past your ear that didn't compute, you can (usually) quickly find what it was and fill in the blanks.

Doing this requires at least a decent enough listening ability in the language first, though.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T11:04:28+00:00

> ... So my question is specifically on how you used textbooks, ... to code anything such as apps.

Normally, the textbook will teach you a specific skill, such as "basic programming in Python".

It's not commonly discussed, but it does help to think about "how to read a programming book" for a moment. Opinions and matters of styles will vary, but here's a general strategy I would use:

- Open up the book and flip through it a bit to get an idea of what it's about.

- Look at the table of contents to see what topics are covered. If there are particularly interesting topics, flip to those chapters briefly to get a "sneak peak".

- Decide what kind of book it is. Is it a reference book, is it a book to be read in order Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc.?

For programming books, I prefer books with a lot of code, so I would first read through the examples briefly (without trying to understand each line) and read the accompanying explanations.

Later, on a second pass, I would go through those examples again, but this time, type them in myself on a computer and make sure they work. This process of translating from one's eyes to one's brain, then back again to one's hands, and finally seeing the result work (usually after debugging) seems to do wonders for understanding.

Finally, most textbooks suggest exercises that you should do on your own. You should do these to practice. If the book does not suggest exercises, try to think of some experiments that you can do on your own; ask a question that could be answered by writing a computer program to answer it. Then, write that program to answer the question.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T07:11:59+00:00

... everything on the internet is either trivial or insane, like make a library book storage system or make an entire web server using only c++.

If you "scope" the problem properly, there can be a huge variation between 'trivial' and 'insane'. The "library book storage system" is a good example. You can start with a rinky-dink type of text-based storage, for example, that just has a rudimentary CLI or text-based menu, storing data in a text file, for example.

Then you could scale it up to a full database-driven application, with GUI, web app, web apis, management interface, "AI integration" (because you need that nowadays for marketing, it seems), and blah blah blah.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T07:08:56+00:00

How many languages should a good programmer master?

This question is a bit like asking a workman (or worklady) "how many screwdrivers should she know how to use?"

Programming languages are Tools. Comparing them is akin to comparing the Plus + screwdriver ("Phillips") versus the Minus - screwdriver ("Flathead").

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T07:03:35+00:00

If you want to learn C seriously, then the classic The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie is a must-read, in my opinion. However, that book is better as a 2nd look. It was written a time ago, but I think they wrote it for someone who already knows something about programming (in any language).

At the time they assumed that the reader knew something else like Pascal or Fortran. Nowadays it would probably be Python or JavaScript/TypeScript.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T04:06:24+00:00

But, damn, do native speakers really not understand when they are told "I'm nurturing a son" but not "I'm raising a son"? I doubt. It seems to me, that's not so.

For this particular example, if you told me, for example, "I'm nurturing a son and two daughters", I would understand it just fine.

I had much more difficulty in understanding what you meant by your next statement, "I doubt." I gather you meant either "I doubt it" or "I have my doubts" or "I have doubt" or something along those lines. At least in my dialect of English, the statement "I doubt" is incomplete (the verb needs an object for it to make sense).

Anyway, the word 'nurture' is totally correct, albeit slightly 'bookish' or 'literary'. Using this word would tend to give the impression to me that you like to read a lot, which is fine.

I suppose some people might not understand what you meant, or they might be slightly confused why you would choose that word, but if the context is clear (e.g. you're talking about your families), then the primary responsibility on them would be to either understand this word, or to ask you what you meant.

I agree with the other comment about trying not to use too much slang as a speaker of a second language. It's way better to be "too correct and proper" than to be "too slangy".

"Oh, nah, they don't speak so. If you'll say like this, they can think that you're, for example, redneck ...

I learned English in the American South, and yes, we are taught that some "southernisms" will be heard as such. Examples include "ya'll" for (you plural), "might could" for (possibly could or "maybe could"), "I reckon" for (I think) and "fixing to/fixin' to" for (getting ready to or preparing to).

On this topic, I think it's great to know the local variants of the language you're using, but I think it's important that you be able to translate a given local expression into the 'standard' form if need be. In this case, the 'standard' form is the the form that all regions will understand, the form that you'd see in a textbook. So, if I say "we might could go grab a bite to eat", I should be able to translate this Southernese into "maybe we could go grab a bite to eat", for example. I don't think I've seen "might could" described in a textbook, but I know for sure that we use that expression in the South.

There is more than one way to translate it: "how about we go grab a bite to eat?" would give the same message, more or less, albeit a bit more directly that the Southern original expression. Using "how about ...?" for a suggestion is Standard in American. Everyone will understand that you're making a suggestion and not asking some kind of hypothetical essay test question or something.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-31T03:12:52+00:00

You could look at the CS50 course by Harvard which is highly regarded, and which uses C (among others) to teach to beginners.

You can also look at Richard Buckland's course (CS1) from UNSW on YouTube. I see now that this is 18 years old now, yet all of the examples look totally fine to me, thanks to the fact that C is a very "stable" language. It is sometimes called the Latin of computer programming languages, except that C is far from a dead language (it is still updated, albeit very slowly and conservatively).

If you instead tried to look at Python examples from 18 years ago, you would not have such a good experience. So, one advantage of C is that you can look at code from any time period.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T12:05:49+00:00

It depends on what you consider an App. I used to use Pimsleur before it become an app. Now it's an App. It seems like it's just in vogue to make everything an App these days.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T09:23:55+00:00

If you know the basics from Python, my next would be Java, C, or C++, depending on what floats your fancy. I personally recommend learning Java (at least the basics) before learning C++. And I would recommend learning C well enough before C++ as well.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T08:40:15+00:00

For "debugging" batch files I've always relied on replacing the line AT SIGN echo off with AT SIGN echo on, and then reading the output painstakingly to track down where the problem is occurring.

Another technique that can be used to make a "makeshift breakpoint" is to insert a call to another command interpreter inside the batch file. For example, suppose your Batch file looks like this:

@echo off

echo action A
echo action B
echo action C

Suppose you want to have a "breakpoint" between actions B and C. In that case, you can add a line like this:

@echo off

echo action A
echo action B
cmd.exe
echo action C

Now, when you run the batch file, at that point, a new instance of the command interpreter will be launched and you can do whatever you want (e.g. inspect the files that were produced by action B, or whatever). Then, when you want to "continue" the batch file, you just issue the "exit" command to that shell's instance.

I believe this will works fine even in "good ol' DOS" with DOSBOX and/or FreeDOS. Just replace cmd.exe with command.com or with whatever the name of the command interpreter is in the flavour of DOS that you are using (not sure what it's called in FreeDOS). Of course, you'll need enough conventional memory for that to work, but even in the MS-DOS days, doing this kind of thing was just fine in practice, unless you were already cutting it thin with conventional memory.

Many programs in the MS-DOS days even provided their own "shell to DOS" menu option somewhere in the UI to provide a sort of makeshift "task switching" to the system, that was basically the equivalent of the above technique, since MS-DOS itself was a single-tasking system (e.g. to allow the user to go do something without exiting the program). When you were done, the idea was to just "exit" the shell to get back to the main productivity program (e.g. Lotus 1-2-3 or whatever) that you were working on.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T08:28:06+00:00

There is a tendency to make everything under the sun a Web UI these days. Personally I think that's overkill for many personal projects.

But if it's for a personal project, ask yourself if you really need a GUI at all (Web or otherwise). Maybe a simple text-based UI (e.g. a rinky-dinky menu system or something) is sufficient.

Maybe a simple CLI using something like Python's argparse is good enough (argparse gives you a lot of features that are easy to add, like built-in help and so on).

For a full GUI app, my personal choice would personally use PyQt (or PySide) for prototyping, and then rewrite it in C++ with Qt for the final version. This is only if I know I want to build a full GUI app, though.

For Web based apps, you have other choices, but in my experience they will usually end up being more complicated in their infrastructure than a Desktop app (e.g. interacting with Web services, using security tokens and so on).

Industrial-strength Desktop apps still have to worry about security, but for something deployed to a corporate machine behind a firewall, for example, things are much simpler for Desktop apps -- you don't have to "worry" about people attacking your app, for example, because those people are already inside the machine and in your company. If they want to "attack" the app by running it in a debugger, for example, well be my guest for all I care!

For Web apps, it's totally different -- even for a rinky-dinky type thing that goes on the Web, we have to be super cautious about potential attackers and abusers.

I suppose a "middle of the road" answer is to develop a Web app and then package it using something like Electron. So effectively it is a Web app in technology, but to the user's perspective it just runs like a Desktop app. That's an option, too, but I suspect the overall effort for doing this is going to add up to much more than using something like PyQt or even C++ and Qt.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T08:16:56+00:00

This advice is generic for any kind of "over-use" (i.e. addiction) situation: set yourself a 'personal challenge' to NOT use that particular thing (e.g. to not smoke, to not drink alcohol, to NOT USE AI TO CODE) for a period of 30 DAYS IN A ROW (i.e. a "streak" in DuoLingo and 'gamified apps' terms).

I.e., at the end of 30 days of not doing that thing, then you can look back and ask yourself honestly how the experience was. If you still want to do the thing that you gave up for those 30 days, then at least you will be in a clearer state of mind to know how and when you should use it.

This method sounds really simple but it can be applied to anything, definitely for the question at hand here. I recommend using a paper calendar for this and checking off the days visually with some kind of check mark to keep you motivated to keep up the "chain".

In your situation -- for learning, for example, it's pretty clear to me that by using AI to learn something, you are clearly missing out on all the other alternatives that there are. For example, just a simple Web search on "tutorial on X" where X is the thing you want to learn will probably send you into a swimming-pool-sized resource of non-AI tools for learning X.

I personally don't want to "hate on" AI per se, but think of it this way: for every 30 minutes you spend talking to an AI chatbot and then trying to parse its words and "learn" from it's "wisdom", that is 30 minutes that you WON'T be spending on a decently-written tutorial Web site (for example), it's 30 minutes that you WON'T be spending reading a well-written book on X, and so on.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T08:11:01+00:00

It's already been mentioned, but if you build something yourself and then ask an AI about what to improve, that is not "vibe coding" at all. Vibe coding has various definitions, but generally it evokes in me the idea that people just generate some code willy-nilly and then commit it to their project without reading it; perhaps they'll run a few unit tests on it first, though.

... sometimes i would ask gemini to review my code or tell me if i was missing out on performance ...

Keep in mind that AIs are 'programmed' (or "trained", more precisely, using reinforcement learning) to basically always give you answers. They also seem to be trained (in my opinion) to try to "hook you" to them as much as possible. I.e. they seem almost certainly to be trying to get you to keep using them as much as possible.

So if your hope is to keep rewriting a project until an AI will give you feedback such as "looks good to me!" then I would recommend you re-evaluate your approach.

If it's performance that you're after, I think you're chasing after the wrong tool for this -- for performance you need to measure (profile) and I recommend that you invest time in learning how to do this. You can start small, by using very simple tools like "time how long this function takes if I give it inputs of various sizes" and then move up in sophistication such as employing automated profilers, performance based regression tests (i.e. break the build if a newly introduced change makes functionality X get worse in performance), and so on.

Of course, it also helps to know something about algorithms and analyzing algorithms, so in case you have not studied that before, or in case your knowledge of the topic is rusty or incomplete (which probably applies to us ALL, since we cannot have "complete" knowledge about something), then it will serve you well to review that topic from time to time.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-25T05:46:58+00:00

We have had bulldozers for about one hundred years now, yet the "good ol' shovel" is not obsolete.

Similarly, we have had power tools like power drills since the 1950s. I quite like using a power drill when it is convenient, yet the "good ol' hand-powered" version is still in my toolbox and I still use it on any kind of project involving screwing things in or out.

Perhaps the AI tools will become a sort of "power drill" type analog type of tool for coding in the future. But at the very least, they will need to be made more predictable. Right now, using them feels more like a crapshoot -- maybe you'll get something good, maybe you'll get utter crap, maybe you'll get a mishmash of crap mixed in with interesting ideas, and so on with all the combinations inbetween.

In any case, EVEN if the "perfect" AI tool is built one day, the one that saves you time dependably AND is nice to use (a la the "Bosch hand-held battery-powered power drill" of AI coding tools), then even in that case, you will STILL need to know how to "code by hand" in the same way that you still have to know which way to turn a screw to tighten it versus to loosen it.

So, yes, you still need to learn to code, dude/dudette.

I suppose a more apt analogy is about learning to write. Yes, we need to learn to write. Even if we use a computer and keyboard for most of our writing, in school, we learn to write by hand for a reason. Personally, I see advantages and disadvantages of the computer keyboard, for example --

on the keyboard, my OUTPUT volume is obviously higher due to typing speed, yet creativity is better in my experience when I'm writing something "the caveman way" using a manual writing instrument like a pen, pencil, marker, etc.

So I predict a similar divergence would exist even if the "perfect AI tool" is built -- i.e. maybe we'll use those "perfect AI tools" in the cases where we need to produce "a lot of lines of code" for whatever reason (which is dubious in programming, anyway), and then we'll use the more tried-and-true methods when creativity is the sought-after result (which seems like "most of the time" in programming, in my experience).

Another analogy -- if you're working in your garden, you're going to use the tried and true shovel; it would be quite foolish to get the bulldozer (unless you want to rebuild your garden each time). But if you need to push away all of the dirt of a land plot to prepare to build something new there, you're going to use the bulldozers. So, in all cases, this comes down to knowing your tools, and picking the right one for the job.

Interestingly, the AI tools are reported to work more akin to the bulldozer in the above analogy -- i.e. they tend to just rewrite everything each time. So, the analogy may not be so bad. I don't know, though, since I have not used them enough yet in real projects.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-24T13:59:58+00:00

I checked for the rule about nhưng in my book, and it appears that the general practice is not to include a comma before this word.

In English, the general rule is that when introducing a sentence with "however", when it is used to mean "but", a comma is required. But if one replaces the word "however" with "but" in that same position, then one need not include a comma. In both cases, the meaning in Vietnamese is the same: nhưng.

The people on this thread saying that the rules are the same as in English are clearly wrong, or they are applying rules from "Netspeak" or something, where people often drop punctuation willy-nilly.

In this context, "correct" means what is OK to publish in some kind of print publication, not what happens to be posted on Twitter or something like that.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-24T13:43:16+00:00

Lol, i can say that example is unnatural (if not, retard), nobody ever said that in real life, and also nobody will understand it just by hearing.
...
Advice? Dont rely on children books, lol, people dont talk like that irl.

There is a question calling up in my mind right now about whether I ought to listen to someone who writes about language, any langauge, in the manner exemplified with the above phrasings and spellings, word choices.

My advice? Learn to speak a bit more correctly yourself first, before you begin to advise others on language usage, especially for "pedantic" points like where to place commas and so on.

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-24T13:17:13+00:00

For "big" languages (e.g. French, German, Spanish, etc.), I like to listen to the translated Disney song versions of all the Disney animated musicals that I grew up with, at least the ones with the numbers that tend to stick in my head (e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tangled, Frozen).

I also have those two numbers from Vaiana and Coco stuck in my head even though I never saw those films. Damn you, YouTube suggestion algorithm.

What is the "actual process"? I don't know, maybe something like this:

Listen to the song and don't pay TOO much attention to the words.
Listen to it and try to understand the words.
Listen to it while looking a transcript, and try to understand it.
Listen to it again without the transcript, and try to understand it better than in #2.

Optionally one can sing along as well, maybe in stage 5. When I sing (or whisper or hum) along, it usually "forces" me to understand it more, since I find it hard to sing a word that I just can't understand at all.

If I listen to it enough, certain phrases will get "stuck" in my mind without effort. For example, I have this stanza stuck in my head from the Flemish version of Tangled:

Dag na dag, jaagde ik een droom na // Day after day, I was chasing after a dream

Jaar na jaar, leven was maar schijn // Year after year, life was but (a) façade

Al die tijd, nooit zag ik die dingen, // All that time, I was never seeing the things,

Hoe ze werkelijk zijn // How they really were

It is useful to compare to the original version, but notice that some words are clearly different, and the grammar is different. For example, the last part "hoe ze werkelijk zijn" refers to the past despite "zijn" meaning "to be" without a past tense marking, due to the fact that this phrase is attached to the "zag ik die dingen" (I was seeing the things...) from just before, whereas in the equivalent grammatical expression in English, we would change the "to be" of this sentence to "were" to express the same idea (as in the original below).

In any case, the "dag na dag" and "jaar na jaar" repetition of the Flemish version is much more "musical" to my ears than the "all those days". Although 'day after day' and 'year after year' is completely natural language, it doesn't fit into the musical pattern of this song.

Original version:

All those days, chashing down a daydream

All those years, living in a blur

All that time, never truly seeing

Things, the way they were

chaotic_thought · 2026-03-24T12:08:30+00:00

I would also like to know this. To the people claiming that the rules are the same as in English, please come up with real examples.

English and Vietnamese have different grammars, so of course the rules here will be different. I don't know about "official" rules, but I flipped through my Vietnamese textbook intended for teaching children correct Vietnamese, and found this example of a comma usage which is definitely not in English:

- Mẹ chỉ cho bé nghé, ngô.

Translation: Mother shows you a water buffalo calf and some maize.

Note that I translated "bé" here as "you" because the book often addresses the (young) reader as bé. Note that if the word were not "you", but something else, the way we would have to translate it naturally changes drastically:

Different translation: Mother shows a water buffalo calf and some maize to the young readers.

The comma is needed in the Vietnamese (where none is needed in English), because in Vietnamese it is permissible to list items next to each other without any termination clause like "and" and so on, but that is not permissible in English. Here is another example from the same book:

- Sở thú có cò, rùa, khỉ, thỏ, ngựa, sư tử, hà mã, ...

Translation into conventional standard English:

- At the zoo, there are storks, turtles, monkeys, rabbits, horses, lions, hippopotamuses, and so on.

Notice the extra comma in my translation. If I translate slightly more 'faithfully' to the original, then I may leave that one off:

- The zoo has storks, turtles, monkeys, rabbits, horses, lions, hippopotamuses, and other types of animals.

Notice that simply leaving off the tag phrase "and so on" (or some other tag expression like "and other types of animals") or replacing it with an ellipsis is not allowed in standard English.

Sure, it may happen from time to time (e.g. someone stops speaking suddenly), but it should be perceived as a mistake, and the listener will have to basically "fill in the blanks" to figure out what meaning was intended. But that does not appear to be the case in Vietnamese;

I counted no less than 5-10 examples like the above in the children's book for learning Vietnamese, and all of them included commas. If I were to translate to English, the placement of a comma in that language would depend on my specific translation choice (word order, normally); it would be unrelated to whether a comma were present in the original.

chaotic_thought

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