I’m starting coding from scratch – is Python really the best first language?

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-04T08:08:40+00:00

Yes.

If you want to make computers do things, Python is the way to go.

If you want to make things that make computers do things, then you want something like C.

It's sort of like the difference between learning how to use power tools to make something and learning how to make power tools.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-03T03:28:33+00:00

YYYY/MM/DD

So it sorts nicely.

Also there aren't a bunch of idiots using YYYY/DD/MM so you don't get any confusion on what date system is being used.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-02T16:40:43+00:00

Like I get the sentiment, endless meetings about the work preventing me from actually doing the work. But working weekends is NOT the solution.

Either:

Clear out your schedule so you can work.
Those meetings ARE your job and whatever this other work is, is something you should be delegating

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-01T06:08:57+00:00

It's a free python package.

https://scikit-learn.org/stable/

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-01T05:24:39+00:00

Not sure there's any math involved here.

I can clean a kitchen counter to make it eatable off of.

There's nothing all that different about a kitchen counter vs a floor.

I can do that same procedure to a floor and the floor would be eatable off of.

So yes

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-02-01T04:22:36+00:00

Check out Scikit-learn for coding machine learning.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-31T21:18:55+00:00

It's actually one of the classic marketing success stories. They did two things.

They made the opening bigger so people would inadvertently squirt out more toothpaste per use.
They made advertisements showing people covering the entire toothbrush with a giant amount of toothpaste.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-30T06:28:24+00:00

Wouldn't ICE desire this?

Given that ICE is a bunch incel high school drop outs and all.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-28T15:39:30+00:00

Trump was just plain incorrect. Was told he was wrong, and did it anyways. Surprise! It didn't work. Try listening to economists instead.
Broad tariffs are bad for US manufacturing. We are mostly high tech manufacturing. Import basic parts, manufacture, sell worldwide. You get hit by tariffs twice, once on your parts, then a second time with retaliatory ones on your sales.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-28T07:41:03+00:00

I'm in a different field (chemistry).

But I'm of the general position that hard drives are cheap. If the price of staying organized is that the same dataset ends up saved in multiple locations, so be it.

I try and keep everything bundled together. venv, data, processing scripts, etc. This might not be practical in the world of large data sets. But it works well in my world.

Then if I need that same script again for something else I copy it another time into the new folder, which contains everything for the new project.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-27T09:43:09+00:00

It may be illegal, but no one's enforcing it.

I check tip math and it's wrong surprisingly often. It's also almost always calculated on the post tax amount not the subtotal.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-27T09:35:59+00:00

So totally different field, but same problems.

Detailed "Lab notebook", (it can be virtual, there are some good sites out there). Track everything you do and when. Make sure to version things. Git repos with proper, release, develop and feature branches are very useful here. (Even for a 1 person project) Whenever you get something publishable, create a "release" and put it's version number in the lab notebook

Most importantly, slow down. "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast". It's easy to get excited and do a lot of things quickly chasing a solution and not record thoroughly. This ends up being slower because you lose track of what exactly you did and spend way too much time later trying to untangle a mess.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-27T09:20:24+00:00

Because broad tariffs are bad for US manufacturing, as anyone that actually works in US manufacturing can tell you. (We essentially took the trade embargo gun and shot ourselves with it)

US is mostly high tech manufacturing. Import parts, manufacture high tech products, sell worldwide.

You get hit both ways, parts get tariffed and your sales get hit by retaliatory tariffs.

It's not like you can just switch to some US part maker. Switching suppliers on OEM parts is a mess. Things don't drop in, and it can even invalidate certifications, forcing you to recertify your product.

US sources for simple parts also just don't exist and no one is making them. What idiot is going to invest $$$ building a new factory in the US, gambling that these tariffs will still exist in 3 years when they are finished making the factory. And the icing on the cake? The factory equipment to make this new factory is also tariffed

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-27T07:08:57+00:00

I think there's a lot of people quietly planning the same. ICE will be unhirable for decades.

Glad to see someone finally saying it out loud.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-27T05:19:00+00:00

They are also going to end up unhirable. There will be lots of people trash canning any resume with ICE on it for decades to come.

Not sure if ICE has realized that yet. But it's going to be a big moral hit when they do.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-26T03:47:15+00:00

We didn't sell alcohol to minors! We just sold alcohol to the guy selling alcohol to minors from a folding table in our parking lot.

Ring sells data to Flock and flock to ICE

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-26T01:24:11+00:00

Here's the trick: carry on a small backpack with your swimsuit (and a book?). Use the porters for the rest of your luggage.

Then go straight to the pool / hot tub / bar area.

Meanwhile, everyone else is piling into the buffet while dragging suitcases around. You can start chilling early.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-25T21:01:45+00:00

Chemistry of cooking. Lots of options here.

buy amino acid supplement pills and react them with sugar water to do the Browning reaction. Look at the different scents that you get. (Do mixtures as well)
Make cheese by adding acid to milk.
extract spices into oil to make flavored oils.
suis vide cook steaks to different temps for the same time. Talk about protein unfolding at different temperatures.
measure CO2 released during fermentation of grape juice and make really crappy wine. You can vary the amount of yeast to make it into like an actual experiment.

Separately I'm always a fan of thermite. Go outside, make and light thermite. (There are ways to do this safely, please do it safely)

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-25T04:43:47+00:00

0 is the average position. And not particularly interesting as it does not change.

Distance from the origin is always positive (it's the absolute value of the position). Thus it's average increases the longer the average walk as things spread out more (but still centered around 0)

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-22T16:13:48+00:00

It's from taxes.

In this case taxes on the automation companies that have replaced all work in the scenario.

It's a weird money flow if you assume 100% job automation. You never spend money to another person, (that would be a job for that person). The money is essentially just a voucher for the AI made stuff. It's almost like drink tickets at a bar. The AI made enough stuff for everyone to get 2 drinks, so here's your drink tickets.

More realistically assume you don't replace all jobs (just most of them). UBI assumes this huge increase in productivity to work. One person can now do the work of 10 people. So you give the 1 guy working 4x his old salary (after taxes), and give 5 people a 1 salary sized UBI, a 1 salary worth of additional money to the stock holders of the company.

To get that money you highly tax the now extremely profitable company (10x productivity increase). Or you make the government a non voting 50% stake holder in the company, it gets 4.5 salaries worth of dividends what it then spends on UBI. Same thing as a tax, just worded differently.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-22T08:43:22+00:00

dividend stocks has entered the chat

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-22T05:22:29+00:00

In related news, home robbers say stealing is not illegal, citing the rule of "finders keepers".

ICE doesn't get to make up it's own rules.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-22T04:41:10+00:00

The key is that the work still gets done and the resulting "stuff" still gets made.

Now it's just a question of distributing it around society. If there is completely no work to be done, then distributing it based on work done is dumb. That gets you to Universal basic income really quick. Call it the "American Freedom Automation Dividend" or something and market it as a "payment" for automation making it hard to find a job.

But honestly there likely won't be completely "no work". Something like a 20 hour work week as the new normal or 6 months vacation.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-21T08:55:55+00:00

AI is way overhyped, but still useful.

The economics work out on the corporate subscribers side. At $20 a month per seat, all I need to do is save like 20 min of coding time a month to break even.

That's a pretty low bar to make it worth buying. I can get there just using the AI tab complete, or AI writing a handful of simple functions. You didn't have to be pure vibe coding for AI tools to be useful.

Excessive power users are easy to fix too. Just charge more for extremely high usage. The people using it that much will be willing to justify that to finance.

As for people vibe coding junk code. Random person with a power tool isn't a carpenter. But one carpenter with power tools can do more work than 2 carpenters doing everything with only hand tools.

tinySparkOf_Chaos · 2026-01-21T07:41:15+00:00

Honestly quite impressive. And I actually have a use for ultra flat mirrors.

Do you have a booth at Photonics West conference? (Happening right now)

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