Games that had quite a bit of code that profited from the higher-level abstractions that C/Pascal provided, such as

- resource management (including dynamic asset loading/unloading)

- enemy AI

- pathfinding

- ...

of course typically contained a lot more C/Pascal code than games that were more on the "multimedia demo" side with a simpler game logic.

Indeed:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactus_Data_Shield

Additionally, I remember from this time (perhaps this was a very German thing) that bands and stars whose CDs used Cactus Data Shield or a similar copy protection system suddely got hated and abandoned by parts of their fanbase.

It depends: for the classic 8 bit home computers, games were mostly written in assembly. Later DOS games were commonly either written in Pascal or C, but quite a bit off Assembler code was often used for the more performance-critical code sections.

For those who are out of the loop:

> https://lwn.net/Articles/744840/

See also

> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chicken_bit

(click on "quotations") for a list of scientific texts in which this term occurs.

I believe that considering that AI is much cheaper than their service offering, and thus customers of Dymocks Tutoring and Talent 100 often ask them how much more they are actually offering for the much more expensive price has put this company under a lot of price pressure from customers.

So, I bet that Dymocks Tutoring and Talent 100 wants to change their main service offering to target parents from rich families instead who aren't so stingy.

:-)

(to make it clear: this was a joke, even though I'd actually be interested whether this works)

Riven is even better. :-)

Basically, software created by programmers who are more on the artisan side often deeply encodes what they value in life and what they don't.

So, finding a "good" programmer for a company means finding someone who is skilled in programming, and who has very compatible deep opinions about life and everything.

Also, many exceptional programmers are not good, obedient workers in a "software factory"; this is another consideration that you have to keep in mind.

They exist:

- In particular in the 90s and 00s, Tcl/Tk was really magic for creating user interfaces for small applications under GNU/Linux.

- Lazarus attempts to be an open-source analogue to Delphi

- LibreOffice Base attempts to fill the same niche as Microsoft Access

- Historically, in the time of Gtk+ 1.x and 2.x Glade [1] was an editor for clicking together user interfaces. Well, development ceased, and under GNU/Linux there is no attitude of retaining backwards compatibility with applications/libraries that are not maintained anymore (but which might be business-critical).

- ...

But of course Rapid Application Development is much more popular in the business world which is (at least in many European countries) a rather Microsoft-centric environment. Additionally, the typical developer that uses Rapid Application Development is often a subject-matter expert in some department who also knows a little bit about programming (i.e. is not in deep love with programming), and not a programming expert who also knows about some other specialized topics that are important for the business.

On the other hand, the open source environment typically rather attracts people who really like programming.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glade_Interface_Designer

Why?

"I guess I can't pay so much because such a huge fraction of the contract volume goes to my lawyer."

... or you don't care about these expectations, and give a big "f*ck you" to them.

This assumes that you care about (at least a little bit) what the other side expects from you.

This is something that you already realise very, very early in your career. The only hard thing is how to set boundaries and negotiate without infuriating the other side and burning bridges forever.

Rather: Someone should make the millennium problems for human alignment so the top researchers will actually try to solve that problem. :-)

There also exist other good reasons why projects don't want AI-generated code, in particular

- because of unclarity of copyright status and consequences of AI-generated code

- because the project leader simply made the observation than many programmers who hand in AI-generated code care more about "getting things done" and "pushing through their changes" (possibly to boost their CV) instead of deeply caring about code quality

It depends: there do exist some conjectures for which there don't exist any proofs, but a huge amount of results assuming this conjecture (which is very near to assuming that the conjecture is true). Examples are:

- Riemann hypothesis [1]

- Generalized Riemann hypothesis (GRH) [2], and potentially also Extended Riemann hypothesis (ERH) [3]

- Standard conjectures on algebraic cycles [4]

- perhaps Schanuel’s conjecture [5]

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Riemann_hypothesi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Generalized_Riema...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Generalized_Riema...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Standard_conjectu...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schanuel%27s_conj...

While this is correct, I want to add a point:

Many hackers are not per se opposed to taxation (how else should public services be financed), but deeply distrustful about the red tape involved (the taxation laws in Germany are insanely complicated). Basically, their attitude is: if the government wants to tax "my" cryptocurrency, it is the government's responsibility to make the taxation laws as elegant, privacy-conscious and hassle-free as humanly possible.

In other words: if the government does not create taxation laws that are as hassle-free and privacy-conscious as possible (in a very strong sense: if in terms of effort (including the time to understand and apply the laws), it is much easier to ignore the laws than to turn in your taxes, the government failed its job), the government failed its job, so it does not deserve a concession from the cryptocurrencies' developers side.

I would claim those people from Germany who are very privacy-minded indeed have a huge distrust of these data collections exactly because they know that sooner or later someone will crack these systems.