AI coding assistants significantly accelerate repetitive tasks, but they lack true contextual reasoning, long-term architectural insight, and accountability. Human developers remain essential for critical problem-solving and design.
I was an "operator" on a Tandem NonStop. First was Pitney Bowes, I preferred the night shift. In the computer room, there was a Tandem, and a UNIVAC. My job was mostly swapping disk packs on the Tandem, and swapping tapes on the UNIVAC.
One of my jobs was to shutdown the dialup system (customers mailing machines would send data about the mailings they made overnight). I had to shutdown the dialup lines according to the time zones across Canada. I decided to write a script to automate it. My script would shutdown each phone line in order. The first time I ran it, I "broke" the Tandem. My script was a basic loop. It would check the time, and shutdown one of the timezones. First time I ran it the Tandem "mainframe" froze. I had to call "Doug" in the middle of the night, I was freaking out. Doug came in, looked at my script and quietly pointed out that the time command was a high priority system. My script didn't have any "waits" in it, the loop I wrote was constantly asking the system the time, taking up 100% of the processing. "Doug" had to reboot the Tandem, and after the "wait" was put into my script, all was good.
After I left Pitney Bowes I was an operator at the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police), that system had the OMPPAC system on it (Ontario Municipal Police Automated Cooperative), The criminal database for the Province of Ontario.
I was down in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in 2008 for BGG (Board Game Geek convention). I tracked down the address to the id office, and got John Carmack to sign my id ball cap (had it custom embroidered). I didn't meet Carmack, but the kind receptionist took my cap back to his office, and he signed it.
I set my phone on DND when I go to bed. The only notifications I let through the DND are my security cameras (internal), and 2 phone numbers, my sister, and my business partner.
I have a good friend who WAS observant of the Sabath when we were roommates. His new girlfriend, who was also Jewish, lived in the same apartment building 1 floor down. He'd frequently ask me to be his "Shabbat Goy". On Friday nights he and his girlfriend would like to watch a movie on their TV (VHS at that time). They'd start to watch the movie before Shabbat started, and I'd go down to their apartment at the designated time (after the movie), and turn off their TV for them. That arrangement was made BEFORE Shabbat obviously, as Jews can't ask a non-Jew to do "work" after Shabbat has started.
I also attended many Shabbat dinners at his parents house. There were always a lot of questions I had, about the fridge light coming on when it was opened (they would unscrew the light(s) before Shabbat). They had an alarm system too, with motion sensors that would turn on the red LED whenever someone walked by them, so they covered the motion sensor during Shabbat. It was pretty fascinating to learn all this stuff as a non-Jew.
In Canada you can record someone (phone call, in person, etc) if just one party consents to the recording. In other words, if I'm a phone call with someone, even if there are several people on the call, it's NOT illegal for me to record them, as long as I'm a participant in the call. It's called the "one party consent" exception. I have no obligation to ask, or tell the others on the call that I'm recording.
I got started with Visual Basic 2.0
I wrote a shareware game in VB3 in the early 1990's called "Nisus Missile Master", a Missile Command clone.
If I remember correctly, I sold just over 400 copies.
My game made it into "Shareware Magazine" (print). I was also interviewed by the author of "Programming Games For Beginners" by Chris Howard, a chapter about Missile Master, and shareware sales.
You can find and play it here, but the emulator is very slow.
If the new cat behaves differently (which it will), you’re forced into one of two painful positions:
“This isn’t really them.” “Why aren’t you like you used to be?”
That comparison can prevent the new animal from being accepted as its own being.