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>Image generation may not always trigger:

>The model may output text only. Try asking for image outputs explicitly (e.g. "generate an image", "provide images as you go along", "update the image").

>The model may stop generating partway through. Try again or try a different prompt.

Seriously?


Does it still charge 2 cents for that? Lol


I only make art designed to be printed on 10-12 color large format inkjet printers. Making plotter art is not inherently better or worse that printing, it's just a different type of art. I love what people do with plotters, but I just prefer doing printed versions, since what I make is often not possible with a plotter, as I deal in pixels (up to 200+ megapixels), and plotters deal in vectors. It's like Photoshop vs Illustrator, the don't compete as much as specialize in different things. https://andrewwulf.com if interested.


I’m sure you know this but it took me entirely too long to really understand and feel the satisfaction of taking and printing my own photos.

It’s very accessible these days to have a finished piece of art that’s all yours - even with little artistic ability.


Are there decent at home photos printers nowadays? I was always underwhelmed with the old inkjet soggy paper prints.


Yup! Both epson and canon have some great printers for high quality printing at home. First Man Photography on YouTube has videos on the topic that I enjoyed.

The surprise for me was that paper quality makes much of the difference.


Agreed 100%. It all comes down to the artists intentions, and plotters have many limitations. My hope for this article was to expose people to other options.

Great portfolio of art btw, thanks for sharing!


Yup, if your art was sculpture or dance, then a printer or plotter are equally useless.


Good stuff! Those would make nice textiles too.


I had a shirt from a piece made at Printful, but it's way too small (even at XXXL) for a normal person. It is cool to see though. I wish I could find a tailor who actually makes dress shirts, and have the fabic made at Spoonflower.


I parsed the original Illustrator format in 1988 or 1989, which is a precursor to PDF. It was simpler than today's PDF, but of course I had zero documentation to guide me. I was mostly interested in writing Illustrator files, not importing them, so it was easier than this.


I use a lot of truchet tiles in my art (https://andrewwulf.com), but I color them afterwards, which seems fairly uncommon (article from last year, https://thecodist.com/my-art-and-color-after-tiling/) outside of shaders. I focus on 2d art for print. I also use various combinations of 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 tiles, sometimes all in one work.


Funny, I wrote a recursive descent parser in 1982, in Fortran, to parse the syntax of the Jovial programming language. That was my first ever professional programming project, with no university degree in CS, or job experience. Note, Fortran (78) is a terrible language to write a parser in.

I wish I could have save the source. It would be fun to see it.


I've been doing it for 52 years (with a gap during the late 70s) and still teaching myself new things.


At what point would you say that you became "good" at programming?


You never say that you become good at programming.

You let other people in the field say it. And that happens when it becomes accountable. For some it happens early in their career. For others, entire careers end and the words have never been said.


Humility and a desire to continually improve is, of course, essential in everything in life. But false humility - eg spending 52 years doing something and refusing to recognize some degree of skill - is just as bad as the lack of it. (I'm not saying the original commenter said this, but rather the people who responded in this vein)

And I say this while thoroughly enjoying a quote by one of the comedy greats, George Carlin, where he was quoted a legendary cellist, Pablo Casals, who kept practicing daily into his 90s, saying "I'm beginning to notice some improvement".

Recognizing your skill while also recognizing (perhaps even immense) potential for improvement are not mutually exclusive.


Not parent, but after a couple of "finished", functioning projects. I still do not consider myself "good", I lack self-esteem, severely so. I believe everyone is better than I am, even if I am told otherwise. Unfortunately no matter who praises me, that praise has no effect on me. It is really debilitating though, as it stops me from having a job I would be good at, and that pays well, which I really do need as I have MS so my options are severely limited and the expenses keep piling up due to my illness.


Anyone who claims they're good at programming is still learning. We're all just, more comfortable with nuances but still really bad at it. Programming rocks to do things correctly is hard.


I think it's fine to be "good at programming" given a specific context. If your neighbour says "Hey, my daughter likes computers and thinks she might want to program them as a career, are you any good at that?" then sure, whatever, you're good at programming and can send her some links to get started. If your coworker asks if you're any good with databases and you know he's learning SQL for the first time, then sure, whatever, you're good with databases and can teach him about CTEs.

I get that humility is a virtue, but at some point you have to admit that you're capable of doing a piece of work.


Yeah, my question was are you "good", not are you the "greatest" programmer.

Humility is absolutely necessary in any skill development (and in general), but false humility - such as has been on display by various responses - is just as bad as the lack of it.


never though id be good at programming. doing it for 20+ years now, not fulltime.

still feel like that lil kid. other ppls program humble me and teach me how little i know.

sure i understand more than i did when i started, but theres various reasons you're never 'there', and to me, i wonder if feeling you are good would even benefit you.

sure, you can still program C like in the 90s. Still write python like its on v2, or html and CSS like its 1999, but in reality to tap into the systems and their potential you need to constantly keep up. and i think its pretty much impossible to keep up with everything. there is so much, and more and more every day...

im a bad programmer. my bugs sometimes compute stuff!


If you've been finding elegant solutions to complex problems for a while and you feel like everything kinda repeats itself. (I'm not that good, still encountering completely new problems)


How do you define "good" at programming? Better than you were yesterday? Able to write code without looking up anything? More capable than a newbie?


You become good at learning what you need; and also become a bit humble and avoid presuming you know best just because you've learened some things.


One test is that you build a system that works and solves some problem, and that it keeps working.


When it puts food on the table.


You can put food with barely any knowledge, just automating a few things. More true now with vibe coding, not sure in 3-4 years.


More of an "ai operation" skill than being a good programmer, but yea that works


That's an awfully profit-scoped way to frame human competence and assumes profit as the end goal. What about hobbyists?


My point is not to presume the competence of others (which, frankly, I don't care about outside of like Knuth and "are you making my life harder at work"), but to point out we should establish our own view of whether we're competent enough based on what our goals are. People tell me I'm a good programmer; I don't really see it. This used to bother me. It doesn't anymore because I've found other things to enjoy in life.


Does ramen 7 days/wk count as food on the table?


Absolutely.


My cardiologist did all of these except the eGFR. My calcium score was fairly high, but not high enough to be concerning since my cholesterol is controlled and my diet and exercise regime are good now. Until the CAC was done, I had no idea if I had any or not. It's better to deal with cholesterol earlier than I did.


> My cardiologist did all of these except the eGFR

eGFR is typically inferred from serum creatinine (not creatine!), which is part of both a comprehensive and basic metabolic panel (CMP/BMP), which your GP usually orders, along with a CBC, and perhaps an HbA1c.


I too worked at Apple during this period (Dec 95 to May 96). It does not surprise me that code was released without anyone asking or looking at it from a product standpoint. Management of Copland for example (the new OS from hell that was eventually canned, leading to the purchase of NeXT and the return of Jobs) was a complete utter shitshow, leading me to give up and quit (leading to me spending my life going d'oh).


Everyone that bought even a share of AAPL and sold before … last year … is going d'oh.


I never trusted them from the start. I remember the hype that came out of Sun when J2EE/EJBs appeared. Their hype documents said the future of programming was buying EJBs from vendors and wiring them together. AI is of course a much bigger hype machine with massive investments that need to be justified somehow. AI is a useful tool (sometimes) but not a revolution. ML is much more useful a tool. AGI is a pipe dream fantasy pushed to make it seem like AI will change everything, as if AI is like the discovery that making fire was.


I completely agree that LLMs are missing a fundamental part for AGI, which itself is a long way of from super intelligence.

However, you don't need either of these to completely decimate the job markets and by extension our societies.

Historically speaking, "good enough" and cheaper had always won over "better, but more expensive". I suspect LLMs will raise this question endlessly until significant portions of the society are struggling - and who knows what will happen then

Before LLMs started going anywhere, I thought that's gonna be an issue for later generations, but at this point I suspect we'll witness it within the next 10 yrs.


How does drone delivery make any financial sense at all? It seems riskier nad less likely to work, given that people's homes (not to mention apartments) may not have any reasonable or safe delivery spots.


Delivery is so much faster when you can fly point to point and don't have to contend with any traffic or traffic control (stop light, stop signs, etc.).

It's more of a surprise that delivering a hamburger in a ton of metal and plastic with a human driver makes financial sense.


I would imagine that this makes sense for a large subset of deliveries, if 30-50% of deliveries can be done with drones, not only will it still be worth it, but I imagine those customers will likely buy more from the store, especially if they can make it same-day delivery


I'm not so sure drone-to-drone anti-collision detection is a solved science. Maybe it is as simple has 802.11p or v2x announcements to determine hight and traveling plane.


I like proposed drone in the delivery truck ceiling idea. Adding even 20 deliveries a route would pay dividends pretty quickly. I'm concerned about the risk that I might end up with a Walmart/Amazon flight corridor over my house. Last-half-mile deliveries from vans would have a much lower impact.


Ukraine cargo container style. Do 40 deliveries at once in an area.


The same vehicle could also disgorge wheeled bots to drop off (or pick up) heavier stuff. The vehicle could rumble slowly (and quietly) thru a neighborhood while the sub-vehicles and drones do their thing, so it could be unmanned.


It may not make financial sense right now but these companies are willing to subsidize it on the expectation that it will one day make sense.

Someone needs to do the R&D work first and then roll out real world implementations to iron out the bugs.


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