Probably simply a case of "show me a picture of X with their fingers in the cookie jar".

A better idea is to put them on Mars, so people actually think before they send a stupid question.

I'm thinking if we send them out to catch the Voyager probe up, people might have time to write stuff themselves before they ask the computer to do it for them :)

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80

And also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcR7kqOb3o

> apart from ML stuff

More and more applications need to use ML these days. So Python use will only grow.

Not anywhere near Mathematica, but a good replacement for Matlab. From a daily user of all those.

I forget who said it, but Python isn't the best at anything but it's decent to good at nearly everything, and that's why it's become so popular.

I do a lot of what I need symbolically in SymPy for dynamics analysis. Past that, I can't speak for it. At University I used Mathematica, but I just don't need all it can do at this point, so once again Python has proven to be "good enough." Matlab will be a similar story (e.g., I've never seen a good alternative to Simulink in Python).

But for everything else outside very specific domain tasks? Mathematica and Matlab are terrible for a lot of reasons. So I'll go out of my way to stay within the Python ecosystem, though I'm not afraid to pull out the specialty tools when I just can't make Python do the task near as well and/or nearly as quickly.

You are right in a way, but don't completely dismiss SymPy. Though I can see why you would never try it properly if you have a Mathematica license.

I'm actually interested in doing that.

What would be the most favorable model/company to move to for scientific programming and engineering questions?

I'd suggest using OpenCode (via Go sub or just API credits). It will give you access to more than just one companies models and you can experiment and find one that works best for you.

I really like GLM and ended up subbing to both OpenCode Go & z.ai. Mistral, Kimi and Mimi are all also options as well. I have been eyeballing the Kimi Pro sub for a while now and contemplating cancelling my ChatGPT sub for it.

Note that people can also abuse it as a tactic.

Does it allow you to do things like: take this font at 20px, outline it with a stroke of 2px, turn that stroke into a path, then use that path as a clipping mask, then render this image using that mask.

When you specify the stroke width of 2px and then turn it into a path, are you expecting the outline of the font to expand? Is the 2px stroke centered on the original glyph path, so 1px is "in" in the glyph and 1px is "out"?

I take your question to basically mean "can it expand or shrink a path?" and "can it use a path as a clipping mask?"

Or did I misunderstand and you want to only show the image within the 2px sliver itself?

Don't worry about the specifics, I'm just asking if it can do modern 2D graphics well.

I personally think we'd have more success with a purely functional way of approaching GUIs. Our machines are fast enough now and we can use C++/Rust for the "inner loop" performance.

But what do you do if you can't stand the faintest smell of nepotism?

The sibling commenters are correct but I will add with the benefit of being an old guy that this ebbs and flows. GP said "I have never seen tech be less about engineering", and I agree.

But it can't get much less about engineering before rich people become poor in large numbers, and that will start the pendulum back the other way.

Rich people losing money that matters in large numbers is like a soft civil war, everything changes.

Struggle harder than you otherwise would, sadly.

Then you're fucked :)