MangoCats

With an understanding of good practice, a proper development environment and a close eye on the junior devs, there’s no inherent issue to using it.

My feelings about C/C++ are the same. I'm still switching to Rust, because that's what the company wants.

Repackaging old technology in slick new interfaces is what we have been calling progress in computer software for 40+ years.

(asking GPT-5 to do your dynamic SQL calls is inviting disaster, for example. Requires hours of reworking just to get close.)

Maybe it's the dynamic SQL calls themselves that are inviting disaster?

In the beginning there were manufacturer's manuals, spec sheets, etc.

Then there were magazines, like Byte, InfoWorld, Compute! that showed you a bit more than just the specs

Then there were books, including the X for Dummies series that purported to teach you theory and practice

Then there was Google / Stack Overflow and friends

Somewhere along there, where depends a lot on your age, there were school / University courses

Now we have "AI mode"

Each step along that road has offered a significant speedup, connecting ideas to theory to practice.

I agree, all the "magic bullet" AI hype is far overblown. However, with AI something I new I can do is, interactively, develop a specification and a program. Throw out the code several times while the spec gets refined, re-implemented, tried in different languages with different libraries. It's still only good for "small" projects, but less than a year ago "small" meant less than 1000 lines of code. These days I'm seeing 300 lines of specification turn into 1500-3000 lines of code and have it running successfully within half a day.

I don't know if we're going to face a Kurzweilian singularity where these things start improving themselves at exponential rates, or if we'll hit another 30 year plateau like neural nets did back in the 1990s... As things are, Claude helps me make small projects several times faster than I could ever do with Google and Stack Overflow. And you can build significant systems out of cooperating small projects.

many people who are completely innocent will be impacted.

And motivated to make changes for the better, as opposed to ignoring the problems.

a very judgmental take

This is a very judgement based situation. Schools I attended in the 1970s left single adults alone with kids in all kinds of situations that make this kind of abuse possible. Changing how they operate, making less private spaces available for abuse on school campuses to occur in, placing less trust in the individuals and relying on larger groups to ensure that behavioral norms are followed... all those are things that should have been happening 50 years ago, but apparently didn't in this small town. Maybe now they will, or maybe they'll just bury their heads in the sand until the next case comes along and slaps them with another tax hike.

In what world does that make sense?

OK logic. I have to admit: school districts in the state would more likely ignore other potential problems without this kind of example being set. God knows that sending one offender to jail doesn't deter future offenders, it only heightens the thrill...

Over a thousand years of experience in legal maneuvering, they existed before the laws and watched them form over the years.

They've got the asset strategy down pat, what they've never had a handle on is their human factors - since we're all such flawed and sinful individuals, and they have a tendency to recruit from the damaged end of society to start with... denial is their weapon of choice against the Devil.

You don't get $4T in assets by giving it away to every altar boy who tattles...

This is a case of FAFO: the school system took on huge liability (in payment of the judgement) and the school system is funded by property taxes.

Agreed, unions level the playing field between large businesses and individual workers. If you're a single employee in a small business (say, less than 10 employees) you have a reasonable chance to negotiate with your employer. As a single employee in a business with hundreds, it's basically impossible - you have almost no leverage and the employer has too many incentives to not acknowledge your needs.

Unfortunately, union organizations are themselves "big business" and ripe for corruption.

Transparency is the real answer. We should all know and share what our working conditions, benefits, salaries, etc. are. Companies should be up front about what they are offering and how their employees are treated. If you're applying for work at a place that does 10% layoffs every 3 years, you should be able to easily see that from a reliable source, not just random scattered news stories and ex-employee anecdotes. If your prospective employer has been giving upper management 15% annual raises in total compensation for the past 20 years, while rank and file have been getting 1.5-2%, that should be readily available information.

so hypocritical that I was raised to act responsibly

Children are also raised to believe that life is fair, and they should not treat others unfairly.