In the other Project Gutenberg discussion, I started checking out science fiction stories, and came across this one.

Robert Sheckley wrote this in 1953, but the story has so much parallels to the modern day LLMs and their capabilities and limitations to humans.

> It's well established now that the way you put a question often determines not only the answer you'll get, but the type of answer possible. So ... a mechanical answerer, geared to produce the ultimate revelations in reference to anything you want to know, might have unsuspected limitations.

I do. He is responsible for one of the major breakthroughs in the world. He is as trustworthy as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates is. Remember, they are playing the game of Business. The rules of the game are different than say rules of scientific breakthroughs.

So because he is responsible for a breakthrough he de facto becomes a trustworthy person? How does that connect?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the scientists and researchers are responsible for the breakthroughs?

If you're talking scientific credit, in an academic context, sure.

But the real work is far more complex than an idealized ivory tower.

I uh... well, I agree with your last sentence.

I suspect this might be a case of Poe's Law.

I really meant it.

I explore some thoughts on why LLMs make learning to code more important for a software developer.

Sorry to say that I don't understand where "important" came from. You gave examples on how LLMs can make learning to code more productive, but there's essentially nothing there about importance. The closest seems to be this:

> There is a perception that you can just prompt an LLM and ship an app. Yes, you can produce something. But what you have is an artifact, not software. The moment you need to tweak it, if you don't understand programming, you are stuck.

But it's unsubstantiated (I personally have seen coworkers with no proper coding skills iterate quite effectively), and even if there is a real limitation at the moment, you would need to do a lot more work to show that the issue is fundamental and won't be fully addressed by Claude 5 with the "I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to" skill.

At best, even if we were to accept that LLM-based AIs will never do good software engineering, then at most you get to "LLMs make learning to code as important" ; I don't see how you can get to "more important".

For what it's worth, I personally think you might be right in your claim, but you need to engage with the actual issue in order to argue against it.

> how LLMs can make learning to code more productive,

> "LLMs make learning to code as important" >> I don't see how you can get to "more important"

Oh, well, the semantics and I know it matters.

If you agree to the statement that "learning to code as important", then, it is pretty is a positive reinforcement to learn to code, rather than negative signal (don't learn as it a waste) or 0 signal (don't bother, it's a waste of time as you can prompt it away).

All I am saying is industry drumbeat is misleading us, and learning to code IS important, as much or more as we want to take our trajectory with us. Coding is not just typing code, which I have emphasized a lot in the post.

Wow! So much hard work done by these journalists, pursuing truth, facing the pressures of capitalism, and oligarchy in US.

On the topic of Emacs.

I have long struggled to learn emacs and use it effectively. Just for the fun it, If I were to use claude as I my teacher, how can I ask it to teach me to use Emacs? I don't like to ask questions and go back to try it. I want it to be a drive that will assist me with the usage. Has anyone tried such an approach to learn emacs?

There's a nice built-in tutorial for actually editing text with it. Press control-h then t to launch it. But that's just for using the editor. For actually configuring it, I've found that Opus 4.6 (inside Droid) is exceptionally good at tweaking my init.el.

Yesterday I typed "Set the default YAML indentation to 2 spaces." It came up with

  (use-package yaml-mode
    :defer t
    :config
    (setq yaml-indent-offset 2))
  
  (add-hook 'yaml-ts-mode-hook
            (lambda ()
              (require 'yaml-mode)
              (setq-local indent-line-function #'yaml-indent-line)))

Now I can hit tab to indent YAML by 2 spaces, and I learned a little in the process. I'm delighted with this setup.

> I've found that Opus 4.6 (inside Droid)

What does (inside Droid) mean ? Do you use any package to integrate to claude code in emacs?

Droid is my employer's alternative to Claude Code, which I personally prefer. But the general point is that LLMs are really good at Emacs Lisp these days.

I've started using Droid inside Emacs via the agent-shell package I learned about here a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45561672). It handles quite a few other agents, too.

Don't try to "learn Emacs". Grok the foundational layer - Lisp. Emacs is not an editor - it's first and foremost Lisp interpreter with a built-in editor. You need to get two things: REPL (evaluating Lisp expressions in-place) and structural editing (moving, expanding, transposing expressions).

You can start with vanilla Emacs with zero config and Claude/Copilot/Codex/etc, running separately. Your first goal is to have the LLM running inside Emacs - ask the LLM how. It probably will recommend gptel - as one of the most popular and robust choices, go with it.

Once you get LLM tools to modify Emacs state from within, you can just go crazy. You can tell it to change colors, fonts, ask any stupid questions, whatever. It will do it without losing a beat - no restarts, no waiting, no copy pasting - just flow.

How do you have the “modify LLM state from within” working? I can have it modify my config but I don’t know how to get it to eval and improve arbitrary elisp.

gptel has the built-in tool to eval elisp, prompt the LLM to make changes in the active Emacs session and watch it do it.

My advice is to use a base, vanilla Emacs for a little while to learn where its boundaries go, before installing a bunch of modes. That makes it easier to troubleshoot problems later.

Love this. I couldn't have imagined the quality of this Encyclopædia with this form that you have presented. Plus, the contributors! I love human race.

And Let there be Light - Isn't that either a biblical or a Vedic Origin story? Asimov kind of wraps the whole thing from science into human culture at the end.

Genesis 1:3 of the Bible, also the Torah

>And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

This is RustyRusell of Linux kernel fame. This is kind of the evidence that he want for a claim. First hand. Not what we just read from the NYT article.

> Adam could have released the email metadata and that would have absolved him, but he didn’t.

What if he gives an metadata that doesn't reveal anything? Then, you'd argue that he did that metadata.

My problem with this article is, it came on the same day when Trump was shouting that "He will end an entire civilization". WTF are their priorities in the first place.

Secondly, as a technical person reading this written for a non-technical audience, it reads like the journalist wanted his high for most and nothing else.