Posted by Alen123 12 hours ago
I blame guitars.
All these kids got bad ass at playing Wonderwall, PHP was just slightly less cool than playing Wonderwall. So for 2-4 years they were sidetracked.
Playing Wonderwall at parties.
But if they had went straight from solving Rubik's Cube in 1 min to O(1) time complexity in a REST endpoint like peak 2-way communications (WebSocket, GRPC) these fuckers would be optimizing LLM embeddings at this point.
Karpathy? No, I want Steve from the Chess club who could recite any J.R.R. Tolkien writing, who has a Runescape character worth $4 million. Fuck LeCunn. Where's Steve?!
STEVE! I'm sorry I laughed at your Pokemon collection. I'm sorry Steve! I'm fucking sorry! PLEASE COME BACK
I had a friend - David - he could do it insanely quick. He's basically who I am thinking of in my post since he was also a genius at guitar, and could play beautifully. And he taught me basic PHP.
We spent a lot of time on your site on random Friday nights (him playing guitar) hahah, good times.
More of a yo-yo guy myself. I could walk the dog, pendulum, what-have-you. Around the world if I'm feeling saucy
Also: Gross, wtf happened to it???? If you can't say publicly, just blink 3 times
I think that's why I failed that Leetcode that one time - it was never in the cards
Somebody else figured out the algs. The speedcubers just rote memorize them and then practice becomes mostly about execution. (Oversimplifying a little, but I have gotten sub-60 myself with the Roux method a few years ago)
Interestingly I've never managed to pick up programming but learned the cube pretty well (as an adult), and my programmer friend can't seem to figure out the cube at all even with me giving him extra help on top of linking materials I learned from. I suspect it's a very different skillset and we're both weak in one area.
It's a different kind of thinking.
That said, if that "clicked" for you, you may find yourself surprisingly good at backend - algorithmic thinking shines in crypto, search, and LLMs. Get into Python or Node if you haven't for some random idea (ever wanted to make a web contact form or something?) - the LLMs will set you up for success. If you figured out Rubik's Cube, you will 1000% get it because I know you have the patience and learning ability.
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There is one algorithm I saw recently on Youtube, the bro pops one of the little cubes off and "cheats" by turning it around manually.
I consider this to be "freestyling" with the Rubik's Cube. Wtf is that all about?
would be cool permutations of moves instead...the visuals would be especially interesting to have as a raw Rubik's simulator