hnlmorg

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271.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
…and my comment was in reply to someone who stated they’d never met a programmer who values attractive code over shipping a product. ;)
272.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
Agreed. I really wish Dang would explicitly add that to the rules.
273.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
It’s impressive but it’s not “pure bash”. Even just in the first section, the author talks about using hexdump and dd. Though I did also notice they didn’t claim it was pure bash themselves. That’s a flare you added.
274.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
That maybe true, but the reason we are having this conversation was because people made those kind of comments. Which lead me to defend Bellard’s POCs.
275.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
To be honest even the cloud models are a hot mess at times. This week I’ve spent more time rejected code from OpenAI models than I have approving it. In fact it really feels like OpenAI models have taken a nose dive this week compared with
276.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
I don't think you're being very charitable in your reading of my comments. For example: > You may have worked with people whose meaning of "code quality" encompassed things that you found inconsequential and a waste o
277.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
Yeah, a lot of businesses definitely do push things too far the other way and advocate releasing _anything_ regardless of how well it works. I'm strongly against the "move fast and break things" mentality. But there is a happ
278.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
The comments about Ballard's code is very subjective. But if we take their comments at face value: > which would not be well-factored and would impede someone less talented from comprehending it or being able to change it effectivel
279.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
> But the code quality is speed No it’s not. Code quality is just code quality. It's a subjective measure. eg how do you define one thing is of greater "quality" than another? Is it CPU ops? Memory footprint? Code readabil
280.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
You’re ostensibly arguing the same thing I am though. Focusing on building the thing rather than designing the code to look pretty.
281.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
I think developers sometimes get too obsessed with code quality thinking that smarter code makes them a better developer. In fact I’ve seen developers fall into the trap of mistaking their code as the product and thus spend so much time b
282.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
WebKit (as used by Safari) was a fork of kHTML (written by the KDE team). And Google forked WebKit. Now we have dozens of Blink forks including Microsoft’s own browser: Blink. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that forking the code is a lo
283.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
Quoting/linking is a client feature, not a server one. IRC servers do also support profiles. I think the real “issue” with IRC is that its users generally prefer the minimal UI. So there isn’t an high enough demand to make prettier UIs
284.
by hnlmorg 4mo ago
There is a massive difference between using LLMs as coding agents, and using them to analyze PII like healthcare data.
285.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
I'm not advocating this development approach, but I also think some of your reasons aren't particularly robust when scrutinized. > can't reuse a stylesheet, script or image on a different page (each has to have their own c
286.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
You work for mainly Windows shops though don’t you? My experience was very different in the 90s. Solaris, FreeBSD and Next were very widely used. The only times I saw NT was in edu, government, and a random publishing house (which ran pirat
287.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
I’d be more scared of a data leak due to LargeCo being hacked than I would about LargeCo prying into the data. What I don’t trust LargeCo with is personal information. I’ve heard too many horror stories about Govs and LargeCos swapping cust
288.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
> and also a noteworthy mention was the fact the BSDs were basically sabotaged by AT&T via their nefarious set of lawsuits, which nipped in the bud any semblance of advantage they had People keep saying that but I saw zero evidence o
289.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
Thanks for sharing. That’s a nice read. I’m glad I asked :)
290.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
I think people commentating here are missing the point. The cost of that pi is for the 16 GB of RAM. Which in fairness, is a lot of RAM for a device of that type. You can still buy a Raspberry Pi on a budget if you don’t need that much me
291.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
This is probably a dumb question, but do we actually know that pi has an infinite number of decimal digits or are we assuming that it does because we haven’t developed a sufficiently powerful computer to calculate the last digit of pi? I’m
292.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
You’re sidestepping my point that FreeBSD was in widespread use in the 90s. My point about SCO wasn’t clear though. I was just saying FreeBSD wasn’t as embroiled in the UNIX wars as the others, ie referencing SCO vs Linux to demonstrate how
293.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
Even in that case, it was one suit and it was settled before FreeBSD was ever released. Which simply wasn’t enough drama to persuade businesses on smaller budgets away from using FreeBSD.
294.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
Sorry, I don’t think my point was very clear. I wasn’t saying that SCO sued Linux in the 90s nor that the UNIX wars had zero impact. Just that FreeBSD was still used a lot in the 90s and managed (at least from what I experienced) to dodge m
295.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
You’re talking about architecture but I was talking about development culture. Linux encouraged people to fork and experiment with it. Whereas the FreeBSD was a carefully maintained ecosystem.
296.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
386BSD and its derivatives (eg FreeBSD) weren’t really attacked by SCO like other UNIXes were. In fact SCO filed more lawsuits against Linux than they did (for example) FreeBSD. FreeBSD was also used heavily in the late 90s in ISPs and simi
297.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
I’ve never argued against the negative psychology of the minority. And understand the how it affects substance dependence. In fact I’ve talked about the psychological effects of addiction many times before on HN and have studied it in detai
298.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
That’s not true in computer terminology. “Retro” has a long history (“vintage” you might say haha) of referring to old hardware and software. Just type the word “retro” into YouTube (for example) and you’ll see thousands of videos from hund
299.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
There were already better free options than Linux when Linux first started gaining traction. The reason Linux grew in the 90s was because it was part of the hacker culture. Not because better options didn’t exist. Kids liked the fact that L
300.
by hnlmorg 5mo ago
Whilst that’s definitely old in computer terms, even “retro”, is it old enough to be “vintage”? Personally I’d have said it isn’t. But these terms are subjective.

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