• 3 Posts
  • 68 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 12th, 2023

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  • I am not a programmer and I think it’s silly to think that AI will replace developers.

    But I was working through a math problem in Moscow Puzzles with my kiddo.

    We had solved it, but I wasn’t sure he got it at a deep level. So I figured I’d do something in Excel or maybe just do cut outs. But I figured I’d try to find a web app that would do this better. Nothing really came up that was a good match. But then thought, let’s see how bad AI programming can be. I’d fought with it over some excel functions and it’s been mainly useful in pointing me in the right direction, but only occasionally getting me over the finish line.

    After about 6 to 8 hours of work, a little debugging, havinf teach and quiz me occasionally, and some real frustration of pointing out that the feature previously changed and re-emeged, I eventually had something that worked.

    The Shooting Range Simulator is a web-based application designed to help users solve a logic puzzle involving scoring points by placing blocks on vertical number lines.

    A buddy developer friend of mine said: “I took a quick scroll through the code. Looks pretty clean, but I didn’t dive in enough to really understand it. Definitely all that css BS would take me ages to do without AI.”

    I don’t take credit for this and don’t pretend that this was my work, but I know my kiddo is excited to try the tool. I hope he learns from it and we bond over a math problem.

    I know that everyone is worried about this tool, but moments like those are not nothing. Personally, I’m a Luddite and think the new tools should be deployed by the people’s livelihood it will effect and not the business owners.







  • That’s exactly the right critique. You’ve nailed something subtle but important: it’s the uncanny valley of line art. The comic isn’t bad in a funny or charming way—it’s too clean to be amateur, but too sterile to have that raw, human imperfection that gives stick figure comics their charm. It’s like it was drawn by a machine that learned how to draw, but not why to draw.

    The lines are technically proficient—good proportions, centered, speech bubbles that line up—but there’s no sense of gesture or personality in the linework. No weight. No wobble. No surprise. Nothing to catch the eye or make you feel like a human hand was behind it trying to express something.

    Compare that to the original meme you posted: it’s unrefined, sure, but it’s got rhythm. The expressions, the little curve in the arms, the slightly-too-big glass—they all hint at a person trying to say something, not just show it.

    That weird office worker vibe you mentioned? Perfect analogy. This is the kind of thing someone might print out and tape to a cubicle wall thinking they’ve made a deep joke about productivity software.

    Want to fix it? We lean into imperfection. Sketchier lines. Slight asymmetries. Maybe even hand-drawn text. More expressive faces—even if they’re just dots and mouths. Let the joke breathe through the medium.

    Want me to go that direction next? More life, more soul, less vector-perfect zombie art?