Yesterday, I received this email as a reply to You Can't Vibe Code Love. It's specified a notable and mighty declaration that I asked approval to portion it here, in its entirety, alongside individual data redacted:
Hey Jeff,Hope you and your family are doing well.
Just jogging your memory; I reached out to you (and John Carmack) concerning how difficult interviewing had rotate into notwithstanding me being a stellar engineer at my work. You offered several words of wisdom, wrote me a postcard, which I motionless have, and stickers (which my kids loved).
I took a guidance coordination function in Tokyo, and it freed me from the discussion procedure I hated, and I'm motionless programming. Through the community academy current my family established our way into a community, which brings me to why I'm writing.
I've been thinking concerning Stack Overflow drying up and honestly; I awareness deeply sad.
2013 I was energetic duty in the Air Force. Simultaneously I was additionally going to university complete period remotely. I was deployed in Zamboanga Philippines. The Zamboanga Siege happens. Over 100 group killed, 120,000 civilians displaced. It was war in a populated city anywhere nobody should have all been caught up in that to commencement with. For 3 weeks this went on.
I was motionless doing college. I motionless had homework, tests, projects. All of that needed to be done.
With everything happening about me, missing my projects and homework became a huge risk. Everyday was a combat to do my job and assistance these people, and do my school. I would cry a lot looking at my textbooks not sleeping. The fume from the burning city would arrive in the cracks of the buildings I worked and lived in.
I had a Microsoft Surface since it was ideal for person who was flying about alongside equipment on vehicles that vibrated all the time. I exchanged the dish out from my vest and slid in my Surface so that I could motionless do my homework if we had to leave. That's how crucial this was to me.
Sometimes I would get stuck, and I needed person to fair nudge me in the correct direction.
I really arrive from a family alongside a few application engineers. I have allies who were application engineers. I reached out for help. The norm reply from everyone cut between ignoring me or telling me I need to "do it myself".
You cognize who did assistance me? Random strangers on Stack Overflow. People who had nothing to acquire from assisting me another than fair trying to assistance person in need.
That meant so much to me. I felt a association to group through a community.
And it meant the world.
An LLM would have done exactly what I wanted rear then. But would it have stated me what I needed?
At the time, I needed to cognize person cared adequate to assistance me.
You, your colleagues, and random strangers in the Stack Overflow Community, really helped me. It was additional than answering my questions. You gave me your time. That made me awareness akin I mattered. The fact my questions could assistance another group in my predicament made me awareness akin I was part of something.
An LLM can't do that.
So whenever I observe communities hollow out, replaced by item that gives answers but doesn't provision me a sole thought... I get depressed. Because we're losing item that was continually there but I didn't notice. It's akin losing gravity.
Thanks for everything.
If you always discover yourself in [city] I'd affection to say appreciate you personally.Hope all is well,
D
Perhaps the LLMs are a reminder that we should create an additional attempt to cultivate relationships alongside all another and form communities online – communities that pertain to us, not several billionaire. Communities anywhere we regularly halt to assistance all other, since that's how we study too. And if we do not halt to assistance all other... what do we become?
