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The Programmer Identity Crisis

(hojberg.xyz)
270 points imasl42 | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 16:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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protontypes ◴[21 Oct 25 17:08 UTC] No.45658345[source]▶
Whenever I see an em dash (—), I suspect the entire text was written by an AI.
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psunavy03 ◴[21 Oct 25 17:11 UTC] No.45658389[source]▶
That says more about your lack of writing skills and understanding of grammar than AI.
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happytoexplain ◴[21 Oct 25 17:23 UTC] No.45658565[source]▶
That's simply not true, and pointlessly derogatory.

This article does not appear to be AI-written, but use of the emdash is undeniably correlated with AI writing. Your reasoning would only make sense if the emdash existed on keyboards. It's reasonable for even good writers to not know how or not care to do the extra keystrokes to type an emdash when they're just writing a blog post - that doesn't mean they have bad writing skills or don't understand grammar, as you have implied.

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johnisgood ◴[21 Oct 25 17:28 UTC] No.45658674[source]▶
Pressing "-" and a space gets replaced by an emdash to me in LibreOffice. No extra keystrokes required.
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benji-york ◴[21 Oct 25 17:53 UTC] No.45659117[source]▶
I don't think the character is that uncommon in the output of slightly-sophisticated writers and is not hard to generate (e.g., on macOS pressing option-shift-minus generates an em-dash).
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1. Kerrick ◴[21 Oct 25 18:41 UTC] No.45659847[source]▶
In fact, on macOS and iOS simply typing two dashes (--) gets autocorrected to an em dash. I used it heavily, which was a bit sloppy since it doesn't also insert the customary hair spaces around the em dash.

Incidentally, I turned this autocorrection off when people started associating em dashes with AI writing. I now leave them manual double dashes--even less correct than before, but at least people are more likely to read my writing.