Context: parent originally said "you should not say 'worth mentioning', if it's worth mentioning you can just say it". That sentence has now been edited out so my comment looks weird.
For general use, they are in theory thief-proof because you can take them everywhere with you. The downside is they're expensive so you HAVE to take them everywhere with you. Leave them out and they'll get stolen. For that reason I think the happiest I've been is with a dirt cheap bike in Japan. Didn't even lock it properly (just a key built into the frame) and could park it outside any old shop or restaurant for hours. Super convenient.
For me, just having a $7,000 bike parked on the street would be too stressful even if it didn't get stolen. I've had bikes stolen in Australia and there is basically nothing you can do about it. The thieves have hoodies, masks, and battery powered grinders that will cut any lock.
The only defense is storing your bike inside. And then you get karens on the owners corp whinging that you aren't allowed to take bikes inside. Who also don't give two shits when your bike gets stolen from the basement bike storage.
Not any more. A new generation of locks have an abrasive-filled plastic layer that aggressively wears down angle grinder discs. They aren't completely immune to angle grinders, but the better locks will take 20 minutes and multiple cutting discs to defeat.
I felt this way until I bought full coverage bike insurance.
For my $250 deductible I basically just get a nice upgrade to the latest version / a brand new ebike for ~$200 / year.
The peace of mind alone with insurance (and a really nice lock) have fully mitigated this for me. I've been leaving my ~$2k ebike locked up all over San Francisco for ~3 years without it being stolen. (My first beater bike was a POS locked up in my apartments secure bike storage and it was stolen after I owned it for ~9 days so I figured I couldn't double down on the bad luck).
> For that reason I think the happiest I've been is with a dirt cheap bike in Japan. Didn't even lock it properly (just a key built into the frame) and could park it outside any old shop or restaurant for hours.
I didn't see a single bike locked up when I visited Japan. I was told that this is because of the high conviction rate and mandatory bike registration process that they have. Was I just in especially low-crime areas? Do most Japanese cyclists lock theirs up?
If the bikes had baskets they were very cheap and not worth stealing. Obliviously theft is lower in general in Japan and the police will pursue it. Police have been known to arrest someone ordering a small coffee cup and using it to fill a medium coffee, or stealing satsumas from an unmanned vegetable stall.
I want app X. I know how to code it but it'll take a whole weekend/vacation days. I would learn nothing. Now I can use AI to make it. What exactly am I losing here?
As you perch comfortably in your Throne of Purity, it's worth remembering that the average software developer sits on top of 10+ layers of abstraction (not counting hardware).
LLMs are not a level of abstraction, can we let the meme die already? For the same reason why literature summaries are not an abstraction over reading.
The generated code is an abstraction, as you do not need to concern yourself with how it was made, only the surface API. Saying "can we let the meme die already" is not an argument.
If you're coding for the sake of coding, maybe. If you have itches to scratch and ambitions, but can't summon the motivation or the time, then how is that "working in your free time"? A project that used to take up my entire weekend or vacation can now be knocked up in 15 minutes. That's the exact opposite of working.
What is coding for the sake of coding? I don't think anyone does that. Its about solving puzzles, using your brain, learning by doing, creating things- none of that happens when you use llm coding tools. Instead all you're doing is creating more cheap mediocre throwaway crap just because you can.
> What is coding for the sake of coding? I don't think anyone does that. Its about solving puzzles, using your brain, learning by doing, creating things- none of that happens when you use llm coding tools.
Why do you think that? I do regular ol' coding at my day job and have been vibe coding some side projects. They both require using my brain and both require my input for something to be created. They are different, though.
> Instead all you're doing is creating more cheap mediocre throwaway crap just because you can.
It probably is these things but since I'm just building stuff for myself, it hardly matters.
I've written a lot of code and a lot of that has been doing roughly the same thing. It's not a mental challenge; it's a chore. Sometimes it is really gratifying to code and try to figure stuff out. Often times it is not. So when it comes to building something in my free time, I'd prefer to avoid that sort of mental friction and banal tasks just to start working on the actual problem. More so than that, I'm building tools for myself to make my life easier so I can spend it more on something else.
I ride an electric bike with pedal assist. Does that mean I'm not really bicycling? Some might say yes and that it defeats the point. To me it ensures that I pick the bicycle more because it reduces friction to do so. I know that if I encounter a hill that the pedal assist will help me up it and thus I use it more and the net benefit outweighs the downsides. I think it's the same thing here.
I don't take pride in the work that an LLM does for me but I will happily benefit from it. It's a tool.
Bicycle is a surprisingly good analogy. If you cycle for the exercise or the challenge, an ebike sucks. If you cycle to get from point A to point B and be healthier than a car, it's great.
And just like with bikes, people who take pride in doing things the hard way can continue to do so. And they shouldn't belittle people who choose to use assistance.
It frequently fails to apply its diffs at first but it always succeeds eventually for me. I'm happy with it. I understand it is slower than other models but it also costs barely anything per month.
I wonder what I am missing, because I can use gemini-cli with English descriptions of features or entire projects and it just cranks out the code. Built a bunch of stuff with it. Can't think of anything it's currently lacking.
>> Can't think of anything it's currently lacking.
Speed? The pro models are slow for me
The model 3.1 pro model is good and i don't recognise the GP's complaint of broken tool calls but i'm only using via gemini cli harness, sounds like they might be hosting their own agentic loop?
All of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans. I have no idea why sokoban is so popular; I find it very tedious to move blocks around manually, especially if I already know the solution and I'm just making it happen. For me games like Artisan of Glimmith, LOK Digital, Tiling Town and Lingo are the most fun, followed by deductive games like The Roottrees Are Dead and The Case of the Golden Idol.
>All of the critically acclaimed puzzle games seem to be sokobans
Wouldn't really agree considering:
Antichamber, The Witness, Talos Principle, Manifold Garden, Portal, Zachtronics, Tunic, Blue Prince, Return of the Obra Dinn, Seance of Blake Manor, a bunch more I could list.
Tunic is such an incredible experience. If you ever enjoyed the original Zelda and its manual, you simply must play tunic. It captures something incredible. And it has some amazing twists.
Exactly, I am quite surprised by this thread. I always thought sokobans were just one of the niches of puzzle games (one that I am not quite a fan of, to be honest... I find it just okay.)
A good sokoban should not be busy-work. Well designed puzzles should be pithy and not require a lot of running around. The distance between discovering the solution and executing it should be very short.
That must be a specific niche. I enjoy puzzle games and the only sokoban game I can think of is Baba Is You. Though many games, including games that are not primarily puzzle games have a sokoban-like puzzle at some point.
The puzzle game that reaped all the rewards this year is Blue Prince, it has its sokoban moment, but as a whole it is definitely not a sokoban game.
Stephen's Sausage Roll, Can of Wormholes, Patrick's Parabox, A Monster's Expedition (and spin-offs), Baba is You, Void Stranger, Isles of Sea and Sky, Maxwell's Puzzling Demon. All of these are highly reknowned.
By "critically acclaimed games" I should clarify I mean games acclaimed for their mechanics and general mind blowingness. For whatever reason sokoban enables some crazy logic stuff that is harder to find in other puzzle games.
What kind of accessories? You can use cheap generic USB-C docks/hubs, depending on your needs. (macOS doesn't support DP MST so depending on # of screens you want to attach, you may need a more expensive dock, though it still doesn't have to be Apple-specific).
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