As a dyslexic programmer, I often think about how I would never be able to do the job I do without syntax highlighting.
I don’t really know why it works so well for me, but I think it helps me skim and pattern match syntax much more easily without spending too much time reading every single word, which is exhausting for me.
Types and autocompletion in an IDE also help me massively reduce issues with spelling and ultimately free up my brain to think about the logic rather than stressing out about every single thing I type.
Really cool that some people don’t need it, but for me, I am grateful to those who have spent the time on great themes. Solarized Dark is a favourite of mine.
I had not thought about this perspective (I wrote this essay many eons ago). But now I have a good colleague who is dyslexic, and he said the same thing. He says, for him, the colours carry more meaning than the characters often.
See my other comment in this post. The reason I started thinking about creating a theme was because colour themes can sometimes saturate the ADHD brain, and so I’m going to try and dial back the colour to reduce the noise.
Hopefully when I’m done, you can take a peek to see if can help with your dyslexia
While I like using AI for assisting with repetitive programming, I can’t help but feel sorry for my producer and illustrator friends who are now having to compete with generated tools.
Is it snobby of me to look down upon art that is created using these tools as lesser because the human did not make every tiny decision going into a peice? That a persons taste and talent is no longer fully used to produce something and for someone reason to me what is what makes the art impressive and meaningful?
Something about art with imperfections still feels exciting, maybe even more so than if I see something that is perfect but if I see an AI gen picture with 6 fingers, I just write it all off as slop.
I am happy to allow my generated code to come from “training data” but I see the use of AI in art, writing and music as using stolen artists hard work.
I feel like as time goes on, I feel even more conflicted about it all.
Applying your logic, did you feel bad for seamstresses when industrial revolution took off? did you feel bad for hardware manufacturers in America when they were outsourced to China? Art is also a form of labor and whoever can produce quality at quantity wins. Idealizing art in some sort of religious idolation is just plain silly. We haven't had the Picassos or Mozarts or Oscar Peterson for quite some time now yet the world is just fine. People play playlists in front of millions of live crowd and get accolade for it vs real instruments. Times change, technology change and art changes.
You either adapt or go hungry just like everybody else and art shouldn't be exempt from the mechanics of supply and demand.
I almost agree with you that this is about quality, but I still feel that the context in which art comes from influences how I perceive it.
Take, for example, a track by Fontaines D.C., a band from Ireland that writes extensively about the lived social and political experience.
Knowing where they are from and the general themes of their work makes their tracks feel authentic, and you can appreciate the worldview they have and the time spent producing the art, even if it does not align with your own tastes.
Trying to create something of the same themes and quality from a prompt of “make me an Irish pop rock track about growing up in the country” suddenly misses any authenticity.
Maybe this is what I am trying to get at, but like I said, I feel some conflict about this, as I personally value these tools for productivity
You as a human chose to write this very common opinion and even include writing errors like the following
> That a persons taste and talent is no longer fully used to produce something and for someone reason to me what is what makes the art impressive and meaningful?
Human output isn't sacred. yes this is snobbery, a useless feeling of superiority.
Nothing is being "stolen". It never was. Copyright law grants you rights over specific works. It doesn't protect styles, genres, general ideas, methods, or concepts. And it most certainly doesn't protect anyone from competition or the unyielding march of progress. Nothing can protect you from that.
I feel the same, including code. I cannot justify it. I can easily counter my own arguments. Still, the further we automate human thought and creativity the worse it makes me feel. I am disappointed that so many are content with mediocre imitation.
I recently worked on a few client projects that used WP/Gutternberg.
I was pleasenetly surprised by how good the dev/editing experience has been compared to when I tried using Gutternberg a few years ago, some amazing work has gone into it.
Sadly I still have a lot of uneasiness around what has happened over the past year.
For most greenfield projects we have been using Statamic CMS
For those who still need word press, I recommend checking out the roots.io open source collective, they have done great work bringing modern PHP development practices into WP projects. Bedrock and Sage are a great starting point to any project.
I am a huge fan of Inertia.
I always felt limited by Blade but drained by the complexity of SPAs.
Inertia makes using React/Vue feel as simple as old-school Laravel app.
Long live the monolith.
My favourite projects are small, with very focused goals and features.
I have a Laravel project that I have maintained for a customer for seven years.
The app is straightforward and allows users to create portals that list files and metadata, such as expiration dates and tags.
Every other year, they ask me to add a new batch of features or update the UI to reflect the business's branding.
As the app is so small, I have the opportunity to review every part of the app and refactor or completely rewrite parts I am not happy with.
It is a joy to work on and I always welcome new requests.
This sounds like wonderful! Maybe one day I can have a few of these “babies” that I can lovingly raise, providing joy to both the dev and the customer.
For those looking for something similar in PHP/Laravel, I strongly recommend checking out Livewire:
https://laravel-livewire.com/
I still use React for more complex projects but it’s always a breath of fresh air to be able to write everything in Blade/PHP while keeping the reactive UI elements.
Edit: Although I have not used, I remember seeing this package which lets you render React/Vue components within Livewire when you need it: https://minglejs.unitedbycode.com/ an interesting escape hatch for when you want to pull in existing packages
I am a long time fan of Laravel.
A tool that I find to be extremely useful for building out CRUD front ends in Laravel is the product Nova[1] which has been developed by the core maintaienrs of Laravel.
Really fast for building maintainable admin/back office UIs quickly.
I don’t really know why it works so well for me, but I think it helps me skim and pattern match syntax much more easily without spending too much time reading every single word, which is exhausting for me.
Types and autocompletion in an IDE also help me massively reduce issues with spelling and ultimately free up my brain to think about the logic rather than stressing out about every single thing I type.
Really cool that some people don’t need it, but for me, I am grateful to those who have spent the time on great themes. Solarized Dark is a favourite of mine.