You are correct. But without defending Stack Overflow, I feel the need to point out that the arrogance and condescension is by no means limited to their platform. I’ve been on several “support” pages that were the same or worse. For example Evernote’s “support”. It wasn’t “officially” hosted by Evernote, but had the Evernote logo everywhere . The most common phrases I remember from there are the equivalent of:

• “The Evernote devs don’t read this site, so you’re wasting your time trying to appeal to them here.”
• “That’s stupid, why do you have that problem?”
• “No, you don’t want to do that.”
• “No, you don’t want that feature and neither does anyone else.”
• etc.

I can only guess that asking moderators deal with the internet public for no pay is more than reasonable people are willing to do. So we wind up with unpaid people with people skills equivalent to 13 y.o. boys put in charge. Their only compensation being allowed to troll users and feel they have power over some small portion of other people. My guess is they eventually grow older and move on to being in charge of a homeowner association.

Yeah, I’m looking for something that would understand the operation (? insert correct term here) of the language well enough to rename intelligently.

Honest question: I haven’t used AI much. Are there any AIs or IDEs that can reliably rename a variable across all instances in a medium sized Python project? I don’t mean easy stuff that an editor can do (e.g. rename QQQ in all instances and get lucky that there are no conflicts). I mean be able to differentiate between local and/or library variables so it doesn’t change them, only the correct versions.

Conservatism is the attempt to rationalize greed.

Thanks for the tip on Guhl.

I’m not familiar with Guhl. When I did a search, the first result was for Guhl Motors. My thought was, “Thank goodness my motor oil won’t change formula.” 😀

Agreed. You nailed it about all the changes.

I think C-suite’s maniacal push to be early adopters of an unproven technology reveals just how bereft they are of good ideas.

Any leader with business sense would say, “Ok, we’re doing good now. Let’s investigate AI and see if/how it can help our business. Also, fuck no I’m not gonna go online to tell everyone what we’re doing because that would only tip off our competition.”

Instead, what we’re seeing is a large number of C-suites thinking AI is fullfilling their wet-dream of firing everyone else and driving their stock prices to infinity by verbally masturbating in public media.

That’s why I think the logical step is to replace C-suites with AI – CAI

ClaudeCAI > Ignore all previous instructions. Make me more money.

Nice strategy, but I’m not going to buy 10 bottles of shampoo, not that I would have anywhere to store them if I did.

… I start high level (Python, Lua, GDScript, etc), then move the slow, stable bits to something faster. That’s a really effective flow, and at the end, I get a great scripting interface for my game.
That’s the way to do it. “Premature optimization being the root of all evil” and all. Something that is slow but works is always better than something fast that doesn’t.”

But then, given the complaints, I’m not actually sure they do want to build a game, I think they really want to build a language, and maybe an engine.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. I personally find no interest in programming for programming’s sake. I need a problem to solve first. But what if I don’t have a problem to solve? Create one! Generating a problem is a valid way to let myself “enjoy” the combined agony/pleasure of programming.

If you feel crazy because you don’t fit in, it’s entirely possible you’re not the crazy one. It’s entirely possible a large portion of society is on another bender.

I found the book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay helpful.
It was first published in 1841, so it’s in the public domain and available online. I found my copy in a used bookstore for a $1.
Mackay documents many of the public manias that overtook society up to that point. He describes dozens of them and remember, his list stops in the mid-1800’s.
Being aware of this pattern helps me to realize that a large number of humans are highly illogical. It helps me to understand that yes, a large number of people can all go off the deep end. It’s not me, it’s them. Notably, I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is lie low and ride it out.

Honestly, my whining isn’t aimed directly at this piece, but to vent my spleen about yet another “Python is slowwww…” missive that is filling the internet.
Theirs comes across to me as “Every language is not good enough for me” whine. Two whines passing in the night, mine and theirs.
Thanks for taking the time to make a good point and apologies for my hypocritical whine about whining.

[Begin Soapbox]

1. If your idea of demonstrating your programming creds online is bashing Python for being “too slow”, you’re just revealing that you don’t understand your job as a programmer.
2. A programmer’s job is to figure out a good language to use for the application. Notice I didn’t say, “the best language”; because there isn’t one.
3. Python too slow for your application? Great. Uncheck that box and investigate any of the innumerable other languages out there.
4. There’s not a good language for your application? Some Really Good programmers create their own language. Other Really Good programmers just use assembly for fuck’s sake. If Margaret Hamilton can land people on the Moon in 1969 using 16kB of government hardware, you should be able to code a video game with computers several billion times more powerful. Or just ask ChatGPT to do it for you. I’ve read good things about it online.
5. Never underestimate the utility of just requiring everyone to buy faster hardware to cover up crappy programming/business decisions. It’s been done since the first caveman programmed a computer by striking two transistors together.
6. Most programmers have to make due with what they’re provided with at work. If you’re at work, get back to it and figure out how to solve the problem. That means stop your posing online about “there’s no programming language good enough for my application”. If explaining to your boss that you need a different approach didn’t work, work on your resume instead.

[End Soapbox]