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by xiaoyu200615 hours ago |
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upvoteby aaplok12 hours ago|
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I like baking. There are machines that can bake bread at an industrial scale that I cannot compete with. There are home kneaders that do much of the work very well. I use one of those more often than not.

I still think it worth my time kneading dough by hand. It teaches me the various properties of flour, how external factors like humidity or temperature impact the overall process, and I believe that it makes me a better baker, even when I use a machine, because I am better at controlling what the machine does. When I get a new brand of flour I will make sure to bake everything by hand first to "get a feel".

Kneading by hand is also very relaxing to me. This is probably the main reason I bake in the first place.

Programming, and other activities are not very different. We now have machines that can do it faster, at a fraction of the quality many people deem good enough. If you hate coding, that is probably all you need to use, and learning a new language might just be a frustrating experience not worth subjecting yourself to. But if you enjoy coding then it should make you better at it, even when you use the machines.

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upvoteby f1shy15 hours ago|
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This. The question can be seen like “should I learn to solve sodoku, if a computer can do it better?”
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upvoteby underlipton15 hours ago|
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As always, it is good to be aware that many people are too anxious about more existential issues to comfortably an consistently expend effort on intellectually-taxing tasks that aren't perceived as directly related to their survival. If it's an issue with social values, it's less of one related to learning as it is to perpetuating artificial scarcity.
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upvoteby Barrin9214 hours ago|
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>to comfortably an consistently expend effort on intellectually-taxing tasks that aren't perceived as directly related to their survival.

the average person spends 6(!) hours a day on their smartphone, the average TikTok user spends 100 minutes on the app alone. This isn't about artificial scarcity, it's about the average person looking like the Wall-E people

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upvoteby Avicebron14 hours ago|
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Escapism and making a concentrated effort on something are two different things. Yes it would probably be good if you could flip a switch and use the small windows of time we look at our phone per day to study OCaml, but it's not really realistic..

People who are asking these questions are saying "will me spending my time learning OCaml help me land that job that pays six figures and has health insurance so I can not rot away living on the margin". They aren't saying "I only do things that will make me money".

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upvoteby Barrin9213 hours ago|
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>use the small windows of time we look at our phone

again, it's not a small window. It's six hours. That's almost half your waking day. People spend virtually their entire leisure time rotting away on low quality entertainment.

>will me spending my time learning OCaml help me land that job

that's a pointless question for one you never know if something will land you a job, new opportunities don't open up before you do something, secondly the relevant question is, should I stop doing X and start learning Ocaml, or Chinese, or take a welding class because all of that even if it doesn't work out beats scrolling through Instagram.

I don't even take offense with the idea that you engage in activity that makes you money, because pure selfishness on that front would be an improvement to what most people are doing now.

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upvoteby cellis4 hours ago|
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“Low quality entertainment” is a very elitist thing to say. Most don’t have time or luxury of even being introduced ( via an east coast liberal arts college ) to read Tolstoy or appreciate the finer motions of Tchaikovsky. Instead the Druski memes will do just fine, mixed in with the AI slop. Or maybe they’re physically or physiologically incapable of enjoying the outdoors or sport. Point is, my gen played strategy games and first person shooters and listened to Eminem, this one marls TikToks until their thumbs have RSI.

As for OCAML vs not, I think the vast majority of even intellectual and studious people would be better served trying to AI max and build some kind of agent serving businesses than trying to get a job at, uhh, Jane Street. 1% of the best engineers in the world get to work in that language, so yeah the parent makes a valid point

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upvoteby underlipton9 hours ago|
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Even if those statistics are correct, I do think you're ignoring that smartphone apps are specifically engineered to be low-friction and highly-addictive, and pushed specifically to the people who are anxious about spending money on other pursuits (free time often being necessary but insufficient), as they contend with the artificial scarcity (which this is absolutely about) of affordable housing, affordable food, affordable transportation, affordable guided education, etc.
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upvoteby 14 hours ago|
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upvoteby _HMCB_15 hours ago|
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This ^
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