michaelrpeskin

9 ms·

1.
by michaelrpeskin 20d ago
I don't think it's as much as opening up what we _could_ do, it's opening up time so that more can be done. Slop is too generic of a complaint. Do LLMs write code exactly how I would? No. Is my way right? Probably not. But w
2.
by michaelrpeskin 22d ago
I resemble that remark. The trouble is that I'm now too old and if I ever lose my job, I'll never find another one. No one hiring in tech wants the greybeards.
3.
by michaelrpeskin 2mo ago
Thanks for the wording on your first sentence there. I've been trying to figure out a way to get that thought expressed succinctly. I think with AI coding, what we call "good" code changes. Lots of abstractions really only
4.
by michaelrpeskin 2mo ago
I said this in another comment a few weeks back - but, at least for me the "joy" of software development was describing what I wanted and getting it. That used to mean fighting with code and trying to be clever and clean or follo
5.
by michaelrpeskin 2mo ago
I've also been doing this professionally for about 30 years, plus another 10 as a hobby/learning before then, so I think I have much of the same experience as you, and I do agree. Although, I think with the advent of LLMs, progra
6.
by michaelrpeskin 3mo ago
Rather than "managerial" I tend to view it as more "professorial". Maybe it's my academic training (but I got out before I became a professor), but I tend to like to think about my problems in terms of abstractions
7.
by michaelrpeskin 3mo ago
I think the trouble is living wage means different things to different people. I look back to my time in grad school. My wife and I were lucky that we were able to get fellowships so we were able to focus directly on school and didn't
8.
by michaelrpeskin 3mo ago
My (probably unpopular here) opinion is just the opposite. We need more of an apprenticeship model where you're not paid a bunch because you're still learning, and you probably bring negative-to-zero value initially. When a fres
9.
by michaelrpeskin 4mo ago
What does the N in NP stand for? I'm a bit joking, but we've been working in deterministic computation for so long, we don't even think of there being another way. But seriously, I do view AI as the input to a deterministic m
10.
by michaelrpeskin 5mo ago
In my experience, I'm using LLMs as my abstraction to "junior engineer". A junior engineer isn't deterministic either. I find that if you treat the LLM output like a person's output, you're good. Or at least
11.
by michaelrpeskin 5mo ago
Recently I did something similar to this on a small part of a project that has built up organically over a couple of years. One developer was getting the output of one program (that we didn't control) into one of our systems. So he w
12.
by michaelrpeskin 5mo ago
Is more code really bad? For humans, yes we want thing abstracted, but sometimes it may make more sense to actually repeat yourself. If a machine is writing and maintaining the code, do we need that extra layer now? In the olden days we u
13.
by michaelrpeskin 8mo ago
How much of "good engineering practices" exist because we're trying to make it easy for humans to work with the code? Pick your favorite GoF design pattern. Is that they best way to do it for the computer or the best way to
14.
by michaelrpeskin 8mo ago
I agree with all of those statements - I always told my wife that I'd get our kids a underpowered manual so that they're always busy rowing gears and can't text and drive. But in the bigger picture, where does it stop? You ha
15.
by michaelrpeskin 8mo ago
I was having almost this exact same discussion with a neighbor who's about my age and has kids about my kids' ages. I had recently sold my old truck, and now I only have one (very old and fragile) car left with a manual transmiss
16.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
This works wonders. I did it accidentally. In March 2020 when my gym closed, I started working out every night in the garage. After a couple of weeks a neighbor who I only ever said "hi" to wondered by and asked if he could joi
17.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
This may just be me, but I hold the opposite view. When I lived in a rural area with a few acres of property, I was much more social and engaged with my community. Now I live at the edge of the city in a medium-high density townhouse area w
18.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
One of the things that the tracking taught me was to be allergic to subscriptions. I only have a few where significantly more convenient because I know I'll use it. Outside of our phones (and the kids don't get phones), we have
19.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
Yeah, I only read the abstract and looked at the plots, but this is what I hate about public health papers: They say the prevalence of virus is down. They don't say that the cancer rate is down (granted too early to tell), nor do they
20.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
25 years ago when my wife and I were poor grad students we had to do this. I tracked everything religiously and she cut coupons for the grocery store. We were generally positive about $100/month at best. Tracking it allowed us to no
21.
by michaelrpeskin 9mo ago
Funny you bring this up, I was just talking about this to someone else in a different context. I'm a pretty old dude for programming, I've been hacking in the field since the early 80's, and professionally developing for the
22.
by michaelrpeskin 11mo ago
We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want
23.
by michaelrpeskin 11mo ago
Actually, I think it should be the inverse of that. A CS student should come into CS!01 after hacking for years as a teenager and know how to use something like Linux from a practical standpoint and then college course should be all about
24.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
But I think he's the only one to have done it right. I've never seen velocity tracking correct for measured inaccuracy in each developer's estimates. I've tried so many times to implement his EBS approach, but no one w
25.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
For extra fun, in C you can write i[a] since addition is commutative *(i+a) == *(a+i)
26.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
Yes. I do this a lot when writing linear algebra stuff. All the math texts write things in 1-based notation for matrices. The closer I can make the code match the paper I'm implementing makes life so much easier. Of course there&#x27
27.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
Sorry, you're right. It's been so long since I used it, I forgot that it wasn't a .com domain.
28.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
One trick that I always fall back on is to make a dependency graph. In meetings I used to pull up yuml.com but now I use mermaid. You can just start typing text and arrows and it renders in real time what depends on what. It's great
29.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
> I don’t think Java makes people into bad programmers, but I do think it selection-biases for intellectually unambitious engineers. They learn exactly enough Java in college to pass their courses, and then get a job at a BigCo that does
30.
by michaelrpeskin 1y ago
Obamacare/ACA has this too. The "Medical Loss Ratio" or "80/20" rule says that 80% of premiums have to be paid as claims. There's no downward pressure on claims payments because they raise rates and take

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