Stephen Downes

StackOverflow is a website that used to be the developer's best friend. Got a problem or an error code? Search Google, and the answer would come up on StackOverflow. If it didn't, then ask the question yourself, and experienced developers would answer. Answers were rated and discussed and the best usually rose to the top. But what happened? Activity peaked between 2014-17, with another peak in 2020, but have dropped off the charts. Was ChatGPT to blame? Well, despite what this article suggests, the answer is 'no'. It was bad management. It became harder and harder to ask a question, and it just wasn't user-friendly. It was acquired by private equity in 2021, which means users were now wary of being monetized. Also, some time around then Google de-priorized StackOverflow results and began pushing Reddit. Now this may have had something to do with AI. But in general, in the coming months, a lot of bad management is going to blame its failures on AI. Don't always believe them.

Some fun. "For the last six months," writes Dave Rupert, "I've been incrementally changing the color scheme on my website every single day. I boiled you like a frog! Mu-wa-ha-ha. Don't believe me? Try for yourself..." He then offers a colour wheel that demonstrates the change right away, instead of over days. It's simple and elegant and I want to steal the colour wheel. Via Piccalilli.

The problem isn't 'motivation'. "Australian children who play Roblox are on the app for an average of 139 minutes a day and it is the gaming app most blocked by parents, a new industry report has found." The problem is designing learning technology people want to use as much as they want to use Roblox.

The really fun part about this article isn't the article, nor is it Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT from OpenAI that inspired it. The article is just a bunch of points saying, essentially, "ChatGPT doesn't understand anything and makes mistakes, and you'll stunt your growth." No, it's when we get to the responses to criticisms in the 'further comments' section about three quarters of the way through. For example, we get consideration of the (valid criticism that) "the idea that ChatGPT has no understanding of anything is indeed debatable, depending on how you define 'understanding'." There's also a response generated by ChatGPT (on LinkedIn, so there's no point linking). There's also discussion of 'temperature', the formal definition of 'creativity' used by ChatGPT (cf Boltzmann machines), and the suggestion "Don't try to play it by saying: 'no, creativity is more than that!' If you can't formally define what this more is, then your ideas aren't clearly defined enough." Via Paul R. Pival.

Cory Doctorow considers what sort of cost Canada could extract is the United States decides to rip up the trade agreements between our countries (beyond Doug Ford's suggestion that we simply shut off the electricity) and points to U.S.-style software licensing as a target: "You know what Canada could make? A Canadian App Store. That's a store that Canadian software authors could use to sell Canadian apps to Canadian customers, charging, say, the standard payment processing fee of 5% rather than Apple's 30%." Or, as he suggests, "There's no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors." Via Dan Gillmor.

OK, I like this introduction a lot (and really think there should be a few more installments to take people through the rest of the topic) though I caution that it's not clear enough that git is a command line interface. It just dumps you into it with this: "To start we will check in on our current Git configuration. Open your shell terminal window and type: $ git config --list." No, don't type the $ sign. If you don't know what a 'shell terminal window' is, you'll be lost right away. And the very people this article is written for are the people who might not know this. Is it better to start with the desktop app? No. Start with the shell. But explain to people what they're doing. More from Library Carpentry. Via Alan Levine.