> Since then, I've purchased BBEdit licenses, but use other editors when I need to hard wrap text to window width. BBEdit is incredibly scriptable and extensible. You could have written a short script in AppleScript, Perl, Ruby, Python, etc. to perform this task without leaving BBEdit.
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Turns out that the strategy of saying something false in order to get the right answer works even better when the false statement comes from an LLM. I guess I'll keep that in mind.
I'm somehat worried about the incidental harm caused by people relying on GPT's word chain hallucinations as facts for something critical. Most laypersons don't understand that GPT is not a factual search engine. I'm increasingly seeing people who should know better also forget this now and then.
the problem is that the quality of data on the web is such you can't really trust what you get from google either, so you need to go back to the pre-google days of using specialized search engines, or accept that some of what you get back is likely polluted and you don't have the resources to verify everything.
Nail on the head.
The web is a swamp of hot garbage, in large part thanks to Google SEO incentives.
If Google hadn't poisoned the well, and if searching pulled up good content instead of ads designed to look like search results, and search results that link to web pages that take 5 screenfuls to convey one sentence of information, they wouldn't be looking down the barrel at an existential threat.
What data structures were used to represent the content in-memory and edits? Was it some sort of an immutable set of chunks organized into a tree, similar to Word?
FTA: "We’ve always had the utmost respect for the user. Every internal decision about look and function answers the questions 'What does the customer need?' and 'How can we help them be more productive?' (Not 'How can we give them what they’re asking for?' because that isn’t the right question to answer.)" I experienced this first hand when asking Rich to restore the "hard wrap to window width" feature in TextWrangle…
Was this intended to be a positive anecdote? It doesn’t sound like one - how is removing a feature users care about and refusing to add it back any evidence of “utmost respect for the user”?
2004-2005! Couldn't tell you the version though I'm afraid. I had nothing but issues with it, man it frustrated me haha. It's possible my memory has made the experience worse than it actually was however
I've no reason to doubt your experience at all, I'm really just idly curious. Was that on Windows though? 2004-2005 I think it was all but gone from the Mac, and people had moved to Project Builder (later Xcode), but maybe you were still working on some older project. AFAIK the current CodeWarrior is based on Eclipse, if they're still updating it.
I think it was, yes, and specifically for some embedded toolchain that required it. It would regularly lock up, crash, and lose my work. Though it’s quite possible the toolchain was at least partially the problem, and I wish I could remember which one it was. I might go digging through my old backups, I’m curious myself now
FTA: "We’ve always had the utmost respect for the user. Every internal decision about look and function answers the questions 'What does the customer need?' and 'How can we help them be more productive?' (Not 'How can we give them what they’re asking for?' because that isn’t the right question to answer.)" I experienced this first hand when asking Rich to restore the "hard wrap to window width" feature in TextWrangle…
Was this intended to be a positive anecdote? It doesn’t sound like one - how is removing a feature users care about and refusing to add it back any evidence of “utmost respect for the user”?
I read this as a positive. Practicing what you preach. Rich asked for a further introduction into the needs behind the users request. The user decided not to pursue that further. Perhaps the feature could have been re-introduced if the client had a very clear user story. We won't know. Is it fair to ask users for stories when you introduce UI/UX regressions. That's debatable. But Rick showed real interest consistent with expectations.