One other helpful frame: I consider LLMs simply to be very flexible high-level 'language' Compilers. We've moved up the Abstraction Chain ever since we invented FORTRAN and COBOL (and LISP) instead of using assembly language.

We're 'simply' moving up the abstraction hierarchy again. Good!

A non-deterministic, slow, pay to use, compiler for a language that is not precise enough for software. What an amazing abstraction!

You are just salty and old. If you're young and hip you don't need to know what you're doing just do the thing.

I want to be in your camp, and am trying hard. But the OP's blog entry should at least give us a moment to "respect the dead". That's all he's asking, I think.

And all that time spent doing leetcode? Yeah, THAT was time Well Spent.... ;-)

Exactly. On a yuuge project, I first identify the Risks. Then, evaluate the risks -- can <ZZ> actually be done? In XX time? For YY dollars? with acceptable bugs on 1st version?

It's sort of the old General Eisenhower quote: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

RX-01 DEC / IBM 3740 compatible was 77 tracks, single-sided, 128 bytes per sector and 26 sectors per track. Total 256,256 bytes. FM Modulation. 360 RPM. Disk to drive buffer: 4 µsec per data bit. Track-to-Track Seek: 6 ms. Head Settle Time: 25 ms. Average Access: Approximately 262 ms. 8" diameter diskette

One of these was used to load the microcode into the VAX-11/780 upon boot.

My old PDP11/73 (now in a museum) had two RX02, never had an RX01. Surprisingly fast! It also had two RL02s and a couple of RD54s in.

Building an RT11 system disk onto an RL02 off another RL02 made the downstairs neighbours complain quite a lot, even though the floor slab in my flat was about 40cm thick concrete. They didn't muck about with these 1960s tower blocks but it was no match for a pair of pint glass sized head actuators and a pair of washing machine motors.

Interesting history, which does seem to be true: In the Beginning, the reliability of floppies was really quite good. Over time, as the mass market developed, however, quality went down as people shaved pennies and fractions of pennies. Storied brands such as Sony ended up being bad sector magnets (well, you know what I mean...).

My big secret for those of us still using floppies (USB floppies are a steal!) --- get Maxell NOS; they're about $3 per diskette now, but I have beat them hard and they keep going. Of course, I also had a batch of poorly-stored floppies that would not even turn (!) from one vendor (cheap, tho...) and they almost ruined one drive.

My rule now is: once a single sector goes kaput, make a new working copy from your backup (you HAVE a backup, right???), mark the bad sector of the failed disk, and put it in the 'BAD' pile. I have not yet had a sector on a Maxell 1.44 diskette go bad. Several SONY diskettes however are in that pile.

Note that the head drags on the surface of a floppy, so you're always losing a little; what that closeness does, tho, is allow phenomenal bits-per-square-inch. The coatings are very good, binders are good, magnetic properties are excellent. And the head widths (both sides, after all) are small. So you get formatted 80 cylinders of 18,432 bytes per cylinder MSDOS-compatible capacity, at that 5 revolutions per second ( 300 RPM, but gosh, RPS is a better unit here...) speed.

The floppy drive is an incredible chunk of engineering. It's unfortunate that Zip 100 and Zip 250 arrived so relatively late in the game.

RAID-sneaker with human-attended repair ;)

I was partial to Verbatim because those seemed to be pretty consistently good from the early 80's through the mid 90's.

Zip drives sold like absolute mad mid/late 1995.*

* In 95, I placed around the top for the high school virtual portfolio investing contest ROI with 90% in IOMG +150% (2.5x) in 2 weeks. I also happened to be selling Zip drives at my night/weekend job as fast as they came in. My high school econ teacher mentioned his investing club invested and sold it before sales took off stonks-style and so they lost money on it. These floptical/-alikes went poof as soon as CD+/-R(W) drives and discs came down in price.

;-) looks like they are right, taking the slightly longer view! ;-)

Help me understand this: why would anybody buy a Tesla car today, unless it was incredibly well-priced with respect to the competition? Seems to me, yes, this kills Tesla cars.

uh, cuz Model Y is awesome?

and FSD is complete?

I looked at a recent football (US) game, and I could not believe the pictures of the grease bombs they were pushing as 'food'. I literally felt ready to gag when I saw some 'chicken nuggets' or whatever was in the fried outer coating.

I want one the size and shape of the HP-200LX. Oh, in that case, please add a 4K color OLED screen and 5G radio. Lenovo stick for mouse.