> I do feel Rakuten's website is "horrible"

You could contribute to open source. This can take a few forms. A few small PRs on well known projects can go a long way. Many projects are looking for docs and better test coverage, these can be easy ways in.

You can make something on your own and open source it. I'd suggest something small but complete with some sort of interesting novelty to it. Make sure any projects have interesting READMEs. Don't just follow a TODO list tutorial in language X and stick it up GitHub.

You could volunteer your tech skills somewhere. Even contacting charities and seeing if they need help with anything.

You could try write a blog, but with a specific focus on an area that interests you. I was out of work for a while and planned to do this for horizontal database scaling for example.

Any of these things look infinitely better to a potential employer than a blank space.

Finally, it's really important to own the narrative. Put on your CV you've been out of work but looking for a new opportunity. List the things you've been doing. Maybe there's a framing you can put on it, like a career break. Don't be ashamed by it, stay positive. Good luck.

I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old.

> "Can you run the SQL update in prod?"

Vs

> "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?"

The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is fed up giving the instruction.

I'm also starting to get really sick of emojis everywhere. I don't think they added to this article at all. I hope it's just a temporary fad we are going through and this isn't the future of written communication.

Buy from a book shop.

I find this hard to agree with. A game engine is a "shortcut" too, I can imagine people saying at some point anything developed with Unity would "tend to be shit games".

Associating quality with visual fidelity anyway is wrong, look at Terraria, I'm pretty sure anyone semi competent with AI generation could produce better assets, but it wouldn't help them produce a better game.

People will use gen AI art in good games, and people will use gen AI art in terrible games.

> NewsGuard has a clever way to identify these junk AI-written websites...For example, one site called CountyLocalNews.com had messages like “Sorry, I cannot fulfill this prompt as it goes against ethical and moral principles …

`if str_contains(body, "Sorry, I cannot")` thanks NewsGuard, you've solved the problem pats NewsGuard on head while giving them an encouraging smile

Good to see this is finally catching up with them in some way.

My understanding of the value of codespaces was instant start up, literally zero to download locally, and centralised definition. Does this mean I would go back to have to downloading everything locally, albeit in a nice sandboxed package with a neat definition language and convenient command?

https://godotengine.org/

It was an interesting deconstruction though. The bit about the different trailer variations they needed to create is a great example of the value a good publisher can add. It seems like this team did a lot right though, just not the right game at the right time.

The root cause behind all of this drama is Reddits need to maximise their valuation, and the impact that has on their decision making.

For some reason, we hired an "architect" from a large Bank that used Java. He used to make proclamations like "we should write tests", but never actually got into more detail than that. One of his preachings was about aspect oriented programming and how it was going to be future. He did a talk on it, and I remember someone asking "what else does it apply to apart from logging and Auth?"...no answer.

Not long after, I left. 2 years there, probably over 15 engineers, I don't think we built anything close to a functioning software product.

EDIT: I strongly recommend to click through to the actual video and not just the article: https://youtu.be/l5MoOh4LkSs

> The work was the only thing that kept me out of my anxiety.

I know it's a trope for knowledge workers to romanticize physical work, but I find the opposite when programming. The work increases the mental anxiety.