The fact that we're using AI killer robots to wipe each other out in droves doesn't bode well for that future does it...

A TODO comment can't do that because the syntax conflicts. For a regex the conflict would look like `//* TODO *//`, and for a comment it would look like `// /* TODO */`. Both have an existing meaning, and in neither case is that the meaning I want.

If I could have a magic "stuff goes here" character this would be solved. I often use · to represent the idea of this magic character. That gives you /·/ and //· at least, but of course it isn't safe to assume that no language will ever assign meaning to the · character so we can't literally use it as the universal gap. To get something universal, you need to move from using a sentinel token to using embedded/encoded data.

By the way it finally occurred to me who I should ask to do the deep dive: Gary Bernhardt

I may not have any money at the moment, but what I do have cannot be bought.

If you would like me to list a single concrete technical idea, I am pleased to oblige. The idea is: universal gaps. Our syntactic-semantic documents can have holes in them, places where we know some content is missing. That allows a document to behave like a template which lets us fill in the blanks. In a text-editor-based IDE there is no equivalent, which means that when I go to make a new sticky regex in Javascript I type //y and the IDE thinks I meant to comment out the rest of the line. It has no way of expressing the concept that between those two slashes something is known to be missing, which is exactly what I want to be able to tell it so that it can understand the difference between the state when I'm about to write a regex body and the state where I'm about to write a comment body

And fortunately I don't need anyone's permission. It's just too late to stop the wave of change that's coming now. After 5 decades, the punchcard is finally going to be retired as the primitive at the heart of all programming.

The way I think about it, if I make a backwards compatible product I might end up with users who never really wanted any change at all, and those people would be almost impossible to make happy. Those are the "faster horse" users. What I need is to find the people whose life would be changed by a car!

Sure some people will rule me out for superficial reasons, but I also get some benefit in screening out people who want to kick the tires but aren't interested in building a real relationship, just like companies do when they screen job candidates.

The point of them being there isn't discovery, it's to try to discourage anyone who wants try to understand and protect the planet that we all rely on for life

I wouldn't say the username is a hill to die on. I can't hide that this is the online identity I used while working on this project. Trying to hide it would just feel sketchier, no?

And yeah, for 17 mil I'm willing to talk about most anything, but I still see a conversation with investors like going on a date. The red flags can go both ways...

The specific problem is that all the competitors to Github have to use git, and that limits how different they can really be than Github and thus how aggressively they can compete to win users

I badly want someone to take that deep dive given the work I've put in to be ready for it

The nature of developing standards is that you can't have people start adopting them until they're done.