> The confusing part is that modern physics is so unbelievably successful and useful for technology - if the underlying theory was way off, how could the tech work?
Who says "way" off? It's not complete to explain everything, but it explains a lot correctly enough to use it for calculations, predictions and practical effects. Same way Newton was and remains useful, and how people have been using maths and technology to solve problems for a long time since before Newton was born.
Enforcement should live in CI. Into people's dev environments, you put opt-in "enablement" that makes work easier in most cases, and gets out of the way otherwise.
> The problem is, I don't recognise it has ever been a big thing.
This is not a problem. Or rather, it is not a problem in the way that I think you mean.
Em dashes do not need to be a big thing to be useful, which they are; they also do not need anyone's personal recognition to do their jobs.
The problem may, in fact, be that they used to be more of a niche punctuation mark that people were not very familiar with. Now that LLMs have fallen in love with them and throw them around like candy, if people have hardly ever seen them used in well-written text before, they might treat them alone as a much stronger signal for LLM generation than they should — which is precisely what is bringing em-dashes under fire these days, and hence results TFA.
So, yes, indeed, in some ways the problem is, that you don't recognise it has ever been a big thing.
> It’s pretty easy so I’m always baffled by people who have thousands of emails in their inbox.
Because it's easiER to have thousands of emails in your inbox.
Half-jokes aside, it's not as easy for everyone. I can speak only for myself, but maybe I can explain.
My mind abhors chaos, but it abhors dealing with chaos even more. It doesn't like dealing with emails, triaging them is a pain when I could be doing something interesting instead. My mind gets repelled by my email inbox, I have to force myself, and I mean FORCE myself to do things with it.
Then there's the chance of getting sucked in by an email that is not that important but takes a lot of time, but somehow my mind latches onto it and needs it done right now. So, even just dipping in for a quick check can escalate.
Some days it's easier, but it's heavily dependent of other circumstances that keep changing.
All of this (and more) makes it very hard to establish a routine around it. And because dealing with emails repels me so much, for work I usually go through periods where I start with a clean inbox, then stuff accumulates until I get fed up enough to put on my rubber gloves and clean it again. My personal email just accumulates.
That being said, I still get things done, of course. It just looks messy, which btw is very different from the code that I write and like to surround myself with, which is sparkly clean.
I hope that shines a light on why other people's inboxes might be different from yours.
I also find myself baffled by other people's habits and behaviors sometimes.
I think these differences often boil down to that different people find different things easier or harder than others. But it's quite hard to keep that in mind, let alone what it might actually feel like to be in somebody else's brain.
These words are so funny and so sad at the same time.
Sorry for going off on a tangent, but seeing them used together unironically always has a fingernails-on-chalkboard effect on me.
I know you didn't invent them, it's probably what that role really is called where you work. I've worked there, too, in places that have a "customer success" team.
It doesn't have to be universal, but at least in my experience, in places that use these names, customers aren't successful, at least not by conscious design and effort, and their "success manager" ain't no manager, either.
It's one of these icky corporate euphemisms that make everything around them a little sadder. But it's also a bit fun, because of the immense silliness.
Our CSMs honestly are some of the hardest working and sweetest people I know. They take a sooo much guff from customers, and yet all they can actually do is lobby the product group to plead the case for what their customers are asking for (or beg for someone like me to figure out some weird bug/bad data etc.)
Absolutely, customer support are usually quite busy between a rock and a hard place, without much power to affect change. But, hey, slap a "success" and "manager" label on, and everything is automatically better, isn't it? That's what I mean.
Merry Christmas to you. You are not entirely alone, in the sense that other people have gone through loss and hardship and have come out of it eventually, better, happier, and stronger. Also, there are strangers like me who wish you well. I hope that things will work out for you soon. For now, here's a warm greeting and a smile for you. :)
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