

Kære Computer,
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Welcome to my new newsletter! I think this is going to be a not-so-newsworthy place where I delve into things that aren't necessarily in the news-cycle just now. There will be no listicles! No hot takes on the latest and greatest!
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This will be a place where I collect my thoughts on topics that inspire me to be technical, to learn, teach and build things. To be critical of tech ecosystems, tools and paradigms. Every newsletter will be a selection of things I find meaningful and gives me energy at present. A deep-dive into an area that always fascinated me or unpacking a theme that I find particularly exciting.
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Kære Computer is Danish for _Dear Computer_. I am typing this letter on/to my device. Writing code is a kind of conversation with a machine. Like talking to someone who has no sense of humor at all. Computers are a tough audience to write for. Often I'll mumble under my breath, while trying to make something work: Dear Computer, please work! 
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This newsletter is for anyone interested in technology and I aim for making it beginner-friendly for readers not yet well-versed in programming. 
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![flickering computer screens gif](/posts/1-1.gif)
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whoami? I'm a fullstack programmer, currently working mostly with React and Typescript. I wasn't always, though. I was late to discover my interest in computers, and I'll tell you the story about how it happened in one of the next letters.
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Thanks for reading along / subscribing.
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♡Nynne


Intro


I've been thinking a lot about [HTML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML) (Hyper Text Markup Language) lately. It is a markup language for structuring the content of websites. Its syntax is in fact so simple that a lot of folks on the internet will get [_very_ upset](https://www.google.com/search?q=html+isnt+a+programming+language+meme&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiGos6NpufvAhW0UOUKHfy9C54Q2-cCegQIABAA&oq=html+isnt+a+programming+language+meme&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1DU2ANY_N4DYIfjA2gAcAB4AIABOYgB_gGSAQE1mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=XxxrYMb2K7ShlQf8-67wCQ&bih=962&biw=1654&hl=en) if you call it a programming language. I don't care. I need to collect zero nerd point over this. This is a sincere fan letter to HTML.
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![90's internet-dialup graphics](https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/15080107/original_0b49e545ae2af8addfff31febf140282.png?1644343727?bc=0)
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Are you [older or younger](https://howoldistheinter.net/) than the internet? I grew up with it, and I think that is why the early stages of www feels so nostalgic to me. Pure HTML is how the internet looked when I first encountered it, and at a time when it was simpler in a lot of ways and felt like a more [pure place](http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/index.php) to hang out than it does today. A perfect example is the very first website to ever be made. Did you know it is preserved for your enjoyment? [Here it is in all its glory](http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html). This is what HTML gives us: content (headline, paragraphs, links, images, tables) with no styling whatsoever to make it pretty. Functional brutalist and beautiful!
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Modern web development is constant flux. As a web developer, I need to keep up with a staggering amount of changes to the languages and frameworks I use for work. I also need to learn a couple of new ones every few years or so, in order to keep my skills current. In a world that is always changing, HTML is forever! I mean, isn't it incredible that the first website ever created is written in such a simple and powerful markup language that it perfectly renderes in every browser known to man today — some 30+ years ago.
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![]()
### Beginner-friendly

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HTML is what you use to organize the content of a website with tags, such as headlines, paragraphs, links, images and lists. It is as versatile and box-shaped as LEGO bricks, simple and relatively beginner-friendly to learn. If you're excited about learning how to build websites, [this is the place to start](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-html-handbook/) and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkzbI1Tv_rQ). There is a finite number of tags you need to learn in order to create your very first website and see it render in the browser.
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![cartoon with three cats working on connected desktop computers](https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/1965212/original_15a28e3e37b325c3f1f1ba4bb5ff7fbd.gif?1522276401?bc=1)
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![]()
### Accesible
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When building for the web, you need to keep inclusion and accessibility in mind. Just like a responsible architect should include ramps and escalators so that the finished building can be used by people with disabilities, [web accessibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility) is about making sure web projects can be used by people with disabilities such as vision impairment, 
blind, deaf or people who can't use a computer mouse. HTML, particularly [semantic HTML](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/HTML) is structured in a way that automatically makes it work for screen readers and enables keyboard navigation. 
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A lot of the challenges to make websites accessible, is that we keep adding more and more complexity. A lot of it is nice and makes your experience on the internet more interactive and visually immersive. Some of it is pure evil and centered around tracking your every move and selling you toothpaste. The simplest [motherfucking website](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) made with HTML will be the most accessible any day. Web accessibility is a big and really exciting topic in and of itself. I might dedicate a whole newsletter to the necessity, purpose and [poetry](https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/) of it.
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![Mondrian painting made with pure html scroll-panes](https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/15075618/original_25cef302240e23188109a28cab336596.png?1644332427?bc=0) 
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![]()
### Beautiful!
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What initially caught my interest in HTML was encountering a bunch of artists and designers that challenged me to think of it as an _aesthetic_. It all started When Johanne made me aware of the prolific artist, interaction designer and Princeton lecturer [Laurel Schwulst](https://laurelschwulst.com/). Listening to the interviews with artists and designer in her podcast, [HTML Energy](http://html.energy/podcast.html), reminds me how much fun it is to be able to draw something that fills the screen in my browser. It makes me question why technology have to be so hard. I am also inspired by designer [Mindy Seu](https://mindyseu.com/), artist [Agnes Cameron](https://agnescameron.info/), among many others. 
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I started to think that pure HTML [can be beautiful](https://htmlonly.tumblr.com/). Shoutout to Pernille who found [this pretty HTML page](http://faergejournalen.dk/) in the wild. 
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Thanks for reading.
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♡ Nynne
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![gif of spinning globe](https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/7789788/original_78801dc8e52e155f6ed530f2c7da32fb.gif?1593154700?bc=0)
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![animated e-mail logo](https://d2w9rnfcy7mm78.cloudfront.net/7789668/original_0e4553b7b3397cc3cb8b01ee5b1e1dc4.gif?1593154656?bc=0)

HTML


Kære Computer,
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Ooof it has been a minute since I started ye olde newsletter more than two years ago, never to be heard from again.
What did I do in the meantime? Well not much, except __**TWO ENTIRE HUMANS**__. Talk about a task I'm glad I underestimated beforehand.
In my extremely limited downtime, I enjoyed digging myself deeper into the rabbit hole of how to optimize the technical aspect of this blog.
I spent entirely too much time over-engineering a custom [static page generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_site_generator) for these Markdown posts,
building a custom continuous delivery pipeline with [Github Actions](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/about-github-actions/understanding-github-actions) that publishes the changes from every git commit to a cloud server instantaneously.
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![Question mark](/posts/huh.png)
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*Then* I finally got cracking on implementing the immaculately cute design for the blog that
[AK](https://www.instagram.com/annekatrineraahede/) made me, also two whole years ago.
Please please if you're reading this in the newsletter format, go to the [web](https://nynnechristoffersen.com/) and look at it there on **desktop**, to get the full experience.
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![perfect when I'm dead](/posts/perfect.png)
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One of the reasons I have postponed writing for this long, has perhaps also been some kind of trepidation, not wanting to come out with anything less than **perfect**.
A feeling that only grew as time moved on. With this meandering nothing-burger post, I hope to get over that, or at least shushhh the voice enough to get to writing.
Not necessarily with any kind of promise of frequency. But with the kind of open, curious and excited space in my mind I can only find if I manage to suspend judgment and
toss out all "plans for greatness". There are a lot of things I want to write about: imposter syndrome, raging against the computer machine, teaching, learning,
technologies I love and hate, people and projects that inspire me.
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![I contain the knowledge of 1000 blogs](/posts/blog-knowledge.jpg)
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 The internet really is going to shit. I feel like carving out a little corner of it and making it nice and cozy and delightful.
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Thanks for reading.
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♡ Nynne
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![computers connecting - the internet!](/posts/from-me-2-u.gif)



Hello World


Kære Computer,
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A common misnomer I remember hearing lots, way back when I worked at a university in Germany, is the use of the noun *learning* instead of *teaching* in a sentence. Like: "My favourite class is the one where the docent learned us (...)". Because in the German, its sort of the same word, just used differently to emphasize context. I really like this conceptual mixup! I have been thinking a lot about what it means to learn how to be a programmer recently. How teaching and learning is two sides of the same practise, for me. I get to think it over again while I'm preparing an intro class on programming for my new job as lecturer at the Copenhagen School of Design and Technology ([KEA](https://kea.dk/en/)), while simultaneously learning a new programming language again myself - Java.
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![ascii divider]( /asciidividers/asciidividers-02.png)
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Programming is a set of instructions that specifies to a machine how to do something. The computer must be told in *escrutiating detail* how to do anything. Machines are dumb as rocks and don't understand hints or humor. They can't imagine what you mean unless you express it exactly right. When you knit a sweater, you are the computer and the recipe is the program you run. 
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![Error!]( /posts/error.jpg)
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Computers actually can't do much. Here's a list of the instructions that are acceptable:

- **Input**
   Get data from a keayboard, file, sensor or other device.
- **Output**
   Display data on a screen or send it to a file or other device.
- **Math**
   Perform basic mathematical operations.
- **Secision**
   Check for certain conditions and execute the appropriate code.
- **Repetition**
   Perform an action repeatedly, usually with some variation.
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Every program you've ever used, regardless of how complex or sophisticated it appears, is made up of these small computational building blocks. **Programming** really is the process of breaking a large, complex task into smaller and smaller subtasks, until they are small and simple enough to be performed with the electronic circuits provided by the hardware. Everything must be translated to biip booop fluent machine.
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![Grace Hopper]( /posts/gracehopper.png)
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Grace Hopper invented the [compiler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler), which in a sense is the translator that we have in all modern (high-level) programming languages that turns human natural language instructions (computer code) into something the machine understands. She also coined the term **debugging**, at a time when a computer took up the space of an entire building, and running a program could be interrupted by a moth getting stuck in a relay! 
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![Why isn't my code working yin and yang]( /posts/whymycode.webp)
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Today a bug is what we call all and any *programming errors*, and debugging is the process of of tracking down the errors and *fixing* them. When you try to build something out of lines of code, you can be sure to get **plenty** of errors Debugging is one of the most valuable skills you can hone as a programmer. It can be incredibly frustrating to find the error and spend lots of time on it, especially if it turns out to be something dumb like a typo, unsaved file somewhere or a forgotten `npm i`. Not knowing how to make the thing work, can trigger the worst and most deeply held belief that I'm a dumb-dumb.
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![Man wearing INSECURITY t-shirt]( /posts/insecurity.webp)
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I always struggled with this. I don't feel like a natural talent. I didn't assemble my own computer when I was a kid, or build my own game in highschool -for fun-. I'm a slow learner and nothing has ever been easy breezy about building this technical career for myself. The only thing I have going for me is stubbornness, and sometimes even that fails me too. 
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![Did I hear negative self talk? Motivational frog is not having it]( /posts/urgreat.webp)
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Its one of the reasons why I love to teach intro to programming for beginners. I always found it easier to be kind, patient and encouraging of making mistakes when other people are making them. Something clicks whenever I am able to help/motivate/cheer/give the right tools to another person who is struggling. I *stil* struggle. But I found some comfort in leaning into good habits when I get stuck for too long and the dark clouds of self-doubt begin to gather above my head. Sometimes one of the best things to do, if you can, is take a break! 
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![ascii divider]( /asciidividers/asciidividers-03.png)
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Another incredibly helpful way out of the soup-of-despair is calling a friend. I saw Alma the other day to knit and drink coffee. But also ask her, with my laptop perched between us on the wobbly cafe table, how to simply run something in my terminal, after I had fallen into the deepest, darkest, toxic youtube pit of 10x-engineer-dude-splaining madness. The issue I've had the most with learning anything technical, has been about being patient and kind to myself. Most things that are worth getting good at, take time! Via Rusty Foster's brilliant newsletter, I learned that in 1991, songwriter Ron Miller wrote a set of affirmations for the practice of music, which Glitch user @thricedotted made into [a web app that can be adapted to any art](https://practice-guide.glitch.me/): "It is only code and I am a beautiful person."
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Thanks for reading.
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♡ Nynne
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![Butterfly gif](/posts/sommerfugl.gif)



It is only code


Kære Computer,
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I want add a guestbook on [my website](https://nynnechristoffersen.com/)!
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![butterfly divider]( /asciidividers/butterfly-divider.gif)
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Like a [lot of millennials](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/coming-of-age-at-the-dawn-of-the-social-internet), I am deeply nostalgic about the internet of yesteryear and love aesthetics that reminds me of discovering the web. I want to tap into the same curiosity and excitement I had about technology, when I was using the enormous Windows 10 machine in the living room to dial up the internet or play [Kings Quest VII](https://youtu.be/7rfVE2JvLqA?feature=shared) for hours on end.
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And so I think my [otherwise beautiful website](https://nynnechristoffersen.com/) needs a guestbook, in order to feel like one of the websites I created as a bored tween. I love the one computational designer and textile artist [Vera van de Seyp](Vera van de Seyp) has created as a beautiful letter type machine. I started an are.na [guestbook mood board](https://www.are.na/nynne-christoffersen/virtual-guestbook) to try and research both the aesthetics and functionality I'm going for.  
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Did you roam free on the aol internet of guest books and visitor-counters? Can you remember if there were any you actually used, or think of contemporary examples of guest books you've seen in the wild that you liked? Please let me know!
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![plz sign my guestbook]( /posts/guestbook1.gif)
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Thanks for reading.
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♡ Nynne
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![plz sign my guestbook]( /posts/guestbook2.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook]( /posts/guestbook3.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook]( /posts/guestbook.gif)



Guestbook


Kære Computer,
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![Sunrise GIF](/posts/sunrisegif.gif)
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The sun is out, finally. I survived the toughest winter of my life (again?) and its the [loveliest morning in a hundred years and I'm alive](https://youtu.be/4uMjlRkFnic). I feel like I have done nothing but be stuck in survival mode all winter. But that's not quite true. Here are some of the things I wanted to share that I made / taught / thought about / pushed to Github recently:
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![ascii divider](/asciidividers/asciidividers-04.png)
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I switched jobs last year, and have been a lecturer at the Computer Science degree at [KEA - Copenhagen School of Design and Technology](https://kea.dk/en/) ever since. It has mainly been difficult because I have two two-year-olds. I love teaching, and feel like it makes me grow skills that are both 'soft' and 'hard', i.e. I am constantly having to become both a better person and programmer, because I teach.  
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![Elon Fusk](/posts/elonfusk.jpg)
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I talked about Elon Musk (again?) with AK and Maia in [Cybernormer podcast](https://cybernauterne.dk/podcast/cybernormer-30-elon-donald/) (in Danish). It's a nasty topic, but at least we had a lot of fun while rounding up the absurdities and compiling an _insane_ amount of footnotes on all the evil shit.
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![ascii divider](/asciidividers/asciidividers-09.png)
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Until recently my personal website was over-engineered to the Nth degree. I had somehow cornered myself into creating a site using Next, Express, React and deploying to AWS via Github Actions. The project built static HTML pages from Markdown files, that were then sent on every commit to an s3 bucket in a kind of scrappy and much too complicated [CD pipeline](https://www.atlassian.com/continuous-delivery/principles/pipeline). I had been dead set on hosting this thing on AWS, because I wanted to improve my skills there and so it didn't matter to me that the whole thing was overkill. The point of it all was to learn!
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But early this year, I felt the need for a change and started questioning if the site really needed to exist inside this huge, heavy ecosystem. I talked to [Benjamin](https://benna100.github.io/portfolio/) about it and he repeated advice back to me that I had completely forgotten I gave to him years ago: do the simplest thing. Don't overdo it on the tech stack. If it can be solved with a static site, don't add any more bells and whistles just because you want it to impress technically. So I separated out all the parts of the project that were just the personal site pages and built a [motherfucking website](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/) for myself [with not much in it, except pretty colors, text and links](https://nynnechristoffersen.com/). A site that gets an impressive 99 point on Googles [PageSpeed Insights](https://pagespeed.web.dev/) (it's a tool for looking up a how fast a site is to load). It looks like I only lost 1 point because the SEO of the site is not great. Dear reader, I care not about SEO. 
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![Mushroom house gif](/posts/mushroom-house.gif)
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Something I do care about are GIFs! [_a lot it turns out_](https://www.are.na/nynne-christoffersen/grafisk-udskiftningsformat). I don't know how I'll turn it into a project just yet, but for now I just really enjoy collecting all the best ones I stumble across on the internet. Like a kid filling their pockets with stones and seachells they find the beach.
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![ascii divider](/asciidividers/asciidividers-08.png)
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A fault line through a lot of my work, thoughts and conversations with friends have been the trouble with generative AI, as it keeps inserting itself into every facet of our digital lives without asking us for permission. [I contributed to an article and made a podcast with Cybernauterne about it a while ago](https://cybernauterne.dk/blog/infodump-1-sprogmodeller-og-kunstig-intelligens/)(also in Danish). I was by far the most AI-optimistic person in the room, which I'm really not used to. Usually I am seeing overall enthusiasm and very little critique among programming colleagues in the field. I tend to think that writing code is one of the least problematic things you may use it for, and I do use it for that sometimes.
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I find the chat to be a manipulative, ego-flattering liar much of the time. But even if the chat often won't help me and instead will confidently serve the up the same wrong answer ad infinitum, it still manages to help me pull myself up by my own volition often enough. It can simulate just enough of a human conversation so as to function as a [rubber ducky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging). It forces me to describe my issue with a level of detail, that more often than not _will_ make _me_ think of a direction to go that ends up putting me on the right track to fixing the thing. That is to say, I use it to talk about my technical problems. Yikes that sounds sad when I commit it to writing. But I am thankful for the way it, as a tool, can force _me_ to think about my problem. 
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![Drool](/posts/drool.jpg)
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Generative AI is causing all sorts of issues for me in my role as a teacher. I feel much more _unambivalently unenthusiastic_ about the whole thing within the field of education. It is my responsability to provide the best possible setting for learning how to code to a class of fresh-faced 1st semester students. ChatGPT is basically a [homework cheating machine](https://ed.stanford.edu/news/what-do-ai-chatbots-really-mean-students-and-cheating), and [is known to make us dumber](https://www.404media.co/podcast-ai-is-breaking-our-brains/). I feel bad for the younger generation, whose brains have been deepfried by the dopamine hits of Social media since they were babes, are not used to reading paper books, poorly skills for analog anything and have all these easy options to cheat themselves out of learning the hard way. Or learning anything at all. It gets dark real quick when I start thinking about all the ramifications of AI, and I haven't even mentioned environmental impact or political consequences of it.
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This month I made my attempt at broaching these things with positivity and curiosity, at the course module I co-taught called 'Social Software'. I made [a site for it that is nothing but text, but she's pretty](https://nynnejc.github.io/socialsoftwarecourse/index.html). The course is about both looking at the terrible ways our social lives online are being [entshittified](https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2) rapidly by all the for-profit corps that own them. But also a hopeful and curious look at open source solutions and decentral social media alternatives.
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Lastly, but most definitely not least: I finally finished the guestbook. [Please sign, please](https://www.kaerecomputer.dk/guestbook.html)! I would be so delighted if you would prove my faith in humanity by leaving a cute message. 
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Happy spring!
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♡ Nynne
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook1.gif)
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![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook2.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook3.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook4.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook5.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook6.gif)
![plz sign my guestbook](/posts/guestbook7.gif)



Kære Computer

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