So, I've just received two almost identical offers from two companies. One is a profitable large firm, and the other is a start up that's just been acquired and is yet to become profitable. Both firms or similar tech stacks and will train me on my missing skills.

The differences are that the smaller form has "promised" me a lead position in a few months. I know from experience that future promises like this don't anyways pan out.

At the end of the day, I need the skills and I want to make sure it keeps my CV interesting for the future.

I have to decide in a couple of hours. I need advice.

Tries to be an ass to someone annoying, somehow ends up being nice to them. *facepalm*

--next day--

Tries to be nice to someone, ends up being an ass to them. *sigh*

Trying to re-type a massive essay I lost because the app refreshed for some reason. I'll try to keep it short (spoiler: I lied).

Recently, I had a conversation with a couple of non-tech people about AI and the fear of computers making humans obsolete. I have some strong (borderline ranty) opinions about this, and thought I'd post here to see what reaction is get.

This is not a "machines will destroy us" post, it's more about the very legitimate great of losing jobs.

- AI is a tool. It's main use would to be help optimise the more complex routine tasks and free up people's time to be more creative in their jobs. Basically, it's the next step of automation.
- Human intuition can never be replaced. Sometimes, things just seem a bit off. Sure, an AI would avoid ever getting in that situation, but only if it had learnt it in the past. A human will always have to be at the helm of any such system.
- Achieving true intelligence and sentience is like trying to travel at the speed of light. The closer you get, the more challenges you face.
- Getting hyped by sensationalist news that claims the end is nigh because two computers optimised the language they used to communicate when trying to reach a goal is stupid. All this shows is that the tech is working as expected and the systems can optimise on the fly. To me, this was a pretty awesome moment.

Now, I'm not saying dystopia is impossible, neither am I saying that it is inevitable. Just like any tool presented to us, if we use it responsibly, we can make life and society a lot better.

Just typed a 2000 word passionate story about AI and the app refreshed itself before I managed to post it. I wanna cry :(:(:(

Sigh, I'll try again.

In my first job another junior dev and I (junior at the time) were assigned the task of designing and implementing a user management and propagation system for a biometric access control system. None of the seniors at the time wanted to be involved because hardware interfacing in the main software was seen as a general shit show because of legacy reasons. We spent weeks designing the system, arguing, walking out in anger, then coming back and going through it again.

After all that, we thought we would end up using each other, but we actually became really good friends for the rest of my time there. The final system was so robust that support never heard back from the client about it until around 2 years later when a power outage took down the server and blew the PSU.

Good times.