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u/BigGuyWhoKills

An interesting blog about disabling AI features when learning Python
▲ 0 r/learnpython

An interesting blog about disabling AI features when learning Python

Mark Smith from JetBrains (the makers of PyCharm IDE) posted a video about how to learn Python the right way. One unique thing he said was to disable (some) AI features while learning. At 19m25s he goes into details about how to learn Python (and programming in general) using AI (LLMs).

One of his points is to not let the LLM design your code. I only kind of agree with this. If you notice your program is a monolith, and you are still new to software architecture, I think you should ask AI how to split it up into a design that will be easy to maintain. Or even better: ask AI to teach you different software architecture paradigms.

I wouldn't say this is ideal for everyone, but crutching on AI could definitely hinder actual learning. Just a few years ago the industry used to tease programmers who "couldn't write anything if StackOverflow was down". Now we seem to hold vibe programmers in the same disregard.

Mark's video is about a half hour and I thought it was worth watching. I just listened to it in the background.

u/BigGuyWhoKills — 4 days ago
▲ 4 r/DebateFlatEarth

Most flat earthers believe the sun to be about 3,100 miles above the Earth. If that were so, some observations would be apparent. Here is one to consider...

On a flat Earth:

  1. For someone at the equator with the sun overhead, it would be only 3,100 miles away from them.
  2. For a 2nd person who is also at the equator, but far enough away for the sun to be setting, the first person would be about 6,000 miles away and the sun would now be 6,753 miles away calculator.
  3. But 6 hours earlier, the sun was only 3,100 miles away from person 2. That means it is now more than twice as far away (a change of 121%).
  4. Perspective requires that when something moves twice as far away, its apparent (angular) height decreases by half and its apparent (angular) width decreases by half.

But this apparent size change has never been observed. Nowhere in the world. This implies that either perspective is wrong, or the sun is significantly farther away.

On a globe Earth:

  1. For someone at the equator with the sun overhead, it would be only 93,000,000 miles away from them.
  2. For a 2nd person who is also at the equator, but 1/4 of the way around the globe (where the sun is setting), the sun would be 93,012,000 miles away from them (a change of 0.0129%).

That small of a size change would be almost impossible to detect.

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u/BigGuyWhoKills — 9 days ago
▲ 8 r/DebateFlatEarth

I live in a valley.

The West mountains are significantly shorter than the East mountains.

On clear days at sunset, the shadow of the West mountains climbs up the East mountains.

That shadow eventually reaches a point on the East mountains that is the same height as the West mountains.

Then the shadow continues to climb higher on the East mountains, to points higher than any of the West mountains.

That means the sunlight is shining upward.

That would be impossible on a flat Earth.

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u/BigGuyWhoKills — 18 days ago
▲ 4 r/DebateFlatEarth

I once debated a person who said:

> Gas always expands due to entropy to fill an available volume until equalization occurs. (Thanks to the 2nd law of thermodynamics)

That isn't exactly wrong, just incomplete. Okay, it's wrong in at least three ways. They were trying to say "gas expands to fill a volume until pressure equalizes". But even that is incomplete. A more complete wording of that would be:

> Gas expands to fill the available volume until its internal pressure is balanced by all acting forces.

One of the flaws in first version was that it implies gasses will always distribute to equal pressure. But that is not always the case. So why do we teach a simplified principle? Because high school students only need to learn the basics. And there's nothing wrong with stopping your fluid dynamics education at that point.

If there are external forces acting on the gas, the pressure may never equalize. External forces are what makes a gas centrifuge work.

The same principle is why we have lower atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes. A barometric altimeter relies on the pressure difference between the ground and their current altitude to know how high above the ground they are.

You don't even need to be in an airplane. Here is Wolfie6020 showing the pressure change as he takes an elevator down from the 26th floor of a hotel. I have a dozen Bosch BMP280 (and similar) sensors in my house, and they can reliably show a pressure change between the floor and the ceiling. If 'equalization' were an absolute law, my sensors on the floor and the ceiling would read the exact same pressure. They don't. They show a constant pressure difference because gravity is an 'acting force' that prevents equalization.

And finally, would Mt. Everest hikers take supplemental oxygen cannisters if they didn't need them? They need them because the air pressure is lower at the top of the mountain. And if the air pressure is lower, then gas is not expanding in the way the first quote above tried to imply.

u/BigGuyWhoKills — 18 days ago
▲ 8 r/DebateFlatEarth

If the sun sets because of distance and perspective, then the pattern of daylight on the AE map would always be a circle of light. But on the equinox, the daylight pattern is a straight line.

u/BigGuyWhoKills — 21 days ago