Most people are not reasoning models.

They could train them selves endless on information without really understanding it and will just repeat. By the fact that they've trained SO MUCH you would actually believe they're reasoning models but in the end they've never crafted something themselves and probably not able to. Never really tried because the fact other exist that have probably done it better. Killing.

OK, quite dramatic, but I was considering writing another regex interpreter. It makes the warrior in your awake. Never fuck with people who wrote one.

Also a tip for people ever considering one. Define for yourself what regex is and how it actually works up front and mark your project done when that is achieved. Just making 'an' regex interpreter is not not a solid plan.

Writing a regex interpreter is pure reasoning, you can get very high on it.

Why new instead of refining the old one? Different approach and architecture?

the interesting thing is there's a difference between rote memorization and actually understanding something

I guess it makes me think of that more now with the AIs. understanding something gives you some magical quality of being able to pull answers as if out of a hat. your intuition somehow knows where to go

AIs when faced with this problem struggle. I wonder if that intuition is otherworldly? the soul, consciousness, perhaps? if the AIs can't mimic it despite people trying that would be an interesting way to test my hypothesis!

@iiii because those interpreters are very not generic written since that costs performance it takes almost a rewrite to make quite a fundamental change. It's written in C, not in python. The code is very written to be used in one way. No lame multi purpose stuff. Start writing one and you'll find out why you'll prefer to start over often. It's about the journey, not the result.

Edit: yes, just different approach mostly. Not primarily better, just different. Somewhere in the future you'll see advantages / disadvantages that you couldn't have calculated. I made a interpreter one bringing garbage collection for free while the other one seemed to be impossible to implement it.

I kinda hope that some people remember trough trough this rant how fun programming still can be. A lot of people lost their drive working corporate I guess. But writing such stuff gives me a natural high. Sadly it requires a lot of time that many people do not have.

exists: There are 10 competing regex standards.

retoor: We need another regex competing standard...

@Demolishun actually yes. I do. If i will make a new one, I will actually make it different on purpose. There are just some things i would like to see changed. But actually making the real regex including it's caveats is what makes it kinda challenging. IIRC my regex was most C# like. Ironically, a language where I do not have much regex experience with. My regex experience professionally were limited anyway, i copied and pasted that always from internet before. When i started to make an interpreter, i've also learnt regex. I really thought it would be relative simple project. My own regex could do some recursive stuff only the C# sharp one also could do. But IIRC perl has the most advanced?

@retoor when I do regex I find out what type is it (perl, js, etc) and then go to a regex playground website and tweak until it works.

Then I forget about it and forget what anything means. Then the next time I do regex I relearn regex all over again.

edit: https://regex101.com/

apparently it doesn't have perl dialect, lame

@Demolishun for me it was exactly the same for almost ten years. Fine i've finally learnt it. It's not that mutch but what a caveats it has! It's actually very easy to make mistakes with regex. But without writing the interpreter, I would've still not have learned it.

Regex reminds me about brain fuck a bit. It's just genius. Biggest difference is that regex has a FAT usecase where brainfuck does .. :P

> They've never crafted something themselves and probably not able to.

Well, that's just absolutely wrong, spend some time talking to any child and you'll see just how crafty and creative humans actually are.
We're just systematically "trained"(can't remember a better word) by various education systems to think and imagine less for the sake of not standing out.
But humans are crafty by nature. That's what we do, we figure shit out.

But even adults still are, just less than kids, but still very much are. Maybe if you spend some time actually talking and LISTENING to people(instead of just taking the role of the smartest in the room and trying to teach everyone) you'll see that everyone has at least a few unique ideas.

From my *personal* experience(which you already know me as someone who talks way too much and with pretty much everyone), pretty much anyone I've talked with a sufficient amount of times, had unique and crafty ideas that they came up with on their own.

@SoldierOfCode except me, because I'm a sick idiot

@SoldierOfCode agree on kids creative and then society beats it out of you

disagree on everyone is capable of being creative when adult. rn 7 years later I'm still trying to figure out if this guy who has a contentious relationship with me is capable of a single original thought. I have never seen one