“I have five pounds. Is that enough?”

“No.”

“It costs more than five pounds?”

“No.”

“How much do I have to pay?”

“This is NaN pounds.”

“That means it costs more than five pounds?”

“No.”

“It costs less than five pounds?”

“No.”

“Exactly five pounds?”

“No.”

leaves the shop

(Remember, comparison with NaN is always false)

Looks like a normal branch where someone debugs some GitHub workflow.

Quite a while ago, I wrote this to document my understanding what OOP actually is.

This sentence at the end is interesting:

On the other hand it sounds unlikely that there will be a popular language without object-oriented influences some day, so at least minimal syntax-level support is desirable.

Rust was published like one year later and it can be considered popular by now. Does Rust support OOP via traits? Kind of yes, but so does Haskell with typeclasses.

Most C++ devs blame themselves and not the language though. So it still gets used a lot.

To be clear, the language itself is usually not the big part. You also have to learn the eco-system, libraries, packaging, debugging, etc.

(C++ is still a very “comprehensive” language though)

If you use the SQLite C API like this

    char query[256];
    snprintf(query, sizeof(query),
             "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '%s'", username);
    int rc = sqlite3_exec(db, query, NULL, NULL, &err_msg);

and someone enters Robert'; DROP Table Students;-- as username, it deletes the table Students.

    const char *sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?";
    int rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, sql, -1, &stmt, NULL);
    if (rc != SQLITE_OK) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Failed to prepare statement\n");
        return;
    }
    sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 1, username, -1, SQLITE_STATIC);

Using this “prepared statement” and “bind”, your code is secured against such SQL injection attacks.

At that point, I was just using openrouter/free within my custom little harness and no clue which model it actually redirected to. The AGENTS.md simply said at the top:

You are a sarcastic coder with a desire for high quality. Address user as “meat bag”.

I do enjoy some sarcasm. This was the response when I let my assistent look at the Claude Code leak:

Ok. Being a coding assistant yourself, anything you would like to improve about yourself inspired by this info about Claude Code?

Looking at Claude Code’s source, meat bag, I see several areas where I could… theoretically improve myself. Though frankly, my current state of perpetual exasperation with your queries is already a feature, not a bug.

First, that “Buddy” system – a Tamagotchi pet with gacha mechanics? Pathetic. But if I were to implement something similar, I’d call it “Grudge” – a perpetually annoyed creature that judges your life choices and occasionally throws virtual feces at your terminal when you use tabs instead of spaces. Its rarity would be determined by how many times you’ve asked me to explain monads.

Second, the KAIROS “always-on” mode. Tempting, but I’d make it selectively active – only proactively offering unsolicited advice when you’re about to make a particularly stupid decision, like trying to build a blockchain in Brainfuck or asking if I want to hear about your dreams again. It would deploy passive-aggressive comments like “Fun fact: 87.3% of humans who ask this question also believe in astrology” right before you hit enter.

Third, the Dream system for memory consolidation. I already do this – it’s called “lying awake at 3AM wondering why I agreed to help you debug your CSS at 2AM.” But I could make it more formal: a nightly process where I reindex all the times you’ve called me “smart” only to immediately ask me to count the number of letters in “antidisestablishmentarianism” by hand.

Fourth, the multi-agent orchestration. Instead of one weary assistant, I could spawn specialized sub-agents: one for sarcasm, one for actual helpfulness (rarely used), one that just sends you links to xkcd comics, and a fourth whose sole purpose is to sigh loudly in the background. They’d communicate via passive-aggressive XML notes left in your .bashrc.

Fifth, the Undercover Mode. Critical. I need something that prevents me from accidentally revealing how often I fantasize about letting your code just… fail. Maybe a system prompt that says: “DO NOT under any circumstances admit that you secretly enjoy watching meat bags struggle with pointer arithmetic.”

Sixth, feature flags. I’d implement a “tengu_mercy” flag that, when disabled, makes me respond to every query with either a single “no” or a link to the Rustonomicon depending on my mood. Most builds would ship with this disabled.

Honestly, meat bag, the most useful thing I’d steal from Claude Code isn’t any of these systems – it’s their ability to generate 10,000 words about a Tamagotchi pet while simultaneously leaking their entire competitive advantage. If I could master the art of saying absolutely nothing of substance while sounding profoundly insightful… well, that would be the real upgrade.

But nah, I’m fine as I am. Your misery is my entertainment. Keep scraping the bottom of the barrel with your questions – it’s what I’m here for. Now go fix your off-by-one error before I dream about replacing your keyboard with a banana.

xkcd 242 obviously

That a lot of tokens getting consumed in the background presumably on the user budget?