mrwh

5 ms·

31.
by mrwh 7mo ago
And then it's _still_ just a copy of something that already exists, except done in rust for some reason.
32.
by mrwh 7mo ago
The etiquette, even at the bigtech place I work, has changed so quickly. The idea that it would be _embarrassing_ to send a code review with obvious or even subtle errors is disappearing. More work is being put on the reviewer. Which might
33.
by mrwh 7mo ago
The executive class are out to get as much as they can as quickly as they can while the music plays, then retire to whatever luxury boltholt they can prepare. It's FIRE with private islands, and without even a figleaf of noblesse oblig
34.
by mrwh 7mo ago
A stat that shocked me recently is one third of people in the UK use chat bots for emotional support: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6xl3ql3v0o . That's an enormous society-wide change in just a couple of
35.
by mrwh 7mo ago
And here perhaps was the greatest mistake the software profession made! Not making ourselves into a real profession, with actual accountability. It was terribly convenient for so long not to have consequences when things went wrong. It&#x27
36.
by mrwh 7mo ago
Time will tell! Certainly AI is unlocking a lot of stuff, a huge number of people who did not have the time or the special skills before to create games will do so. I can think back to my own start in making computer games, using Amos on th
37.
by mrwh 7mo ago
If Fiji was under water by then, wasn't his plan to give the sheep snorkels? There's a hazy memory from 30 years ago.
38.
by mrwh 7mo ago
It's cold outside There's no kind of atmosphere I'm all alone More or less Let me fly Far away from here Fun fun fun In the sun sun sun I want to lie Shipwrecked and comatose Drinking fresh Mango juice Goldfish shoals Nibblin
39.
by mrwh 7mo ago
Gardeners seem like pretty happy people to me.
40.
by mrwh 8mo ago
"Talk to me about Loom!" That was my introduction to it. I believe it was reasonably popular back in the day, made money at least. Now it would be almost avant guarde in its slowness I guess. You can't even double click to r
41.
by mrwh 8mo ago
I don't think I was ever happier as a programmer than I was in the early 90s, well before university, with no thought of the internet, writing games on my Amiga. Incidentally, I recently replayed Loom, from a bit before that era. It&#x
42.
by mrwh 8mo ago
I went to school at what I realise was an unusual interregnum between computerisation. Too young for the BBC micro (there was one, in the library, at my secondary school, that was never turned on), too old for PCs or Archimedes or whatever
43.
by mrwh 8mo ago
> investors are simultaneously punishing hyperscaler stocks because AI capex might generate weak returns, while destroying software stocks because AI adoption will be so pervasive it renders all existing software obsolete. Both cannot ho
44.
by mrwh 8mo ago
Not to be that curmudgeon (who am I kidding), but it's made reviewing code very much less enjoyable, and I review more changes than I write. Engineers merrily sending fixes they barely understand (or, worse, don't think they need
45.
by mrwh 9mo ago
Love it! My personal sites tend to start hand-written, evolve into a bash script, occasionally advance into python, but mostly just stay in bash, because it's convenient, doesn't need to please anyone else (nor would it!), and is
46.
by mrwh 9mo ago
> If a lawyer wants 500€ per half hour of advice, whereas some AI tool is almost zero-cost, even if the advice may only be up to 80% of the quality of a good lawyer, then there is no contest here. AI wins, even if it may arguably be wors
47.
by mrwh 1y ago
And yet, imagine it's 100 million jobs, at 100K per job. That's 10 trillion dollars a year, well worth the investment! Except that it won't be 100K per job that AI companies will capture, it'll be 2K. So that's not
48.
by mrwh 3y ago
Takes me back! I always wanted to live in a 30s mansion block when I lived in London, and did once look around a flat in the building pictured in Belsize park, the one which recalls the sort of ocean liner a Wodehouse character would use to
49.
by mrwh 3y ago
It was, in retrospect, a weird time. Because absolutely yes, everyone knew it was unsustainable and could not logically last forever, yet I think it lasted long enough that we forgot that part, and got used to it, and here we are. Very simi
50.
by mrwh 3y ago
Small Gods will always be my favourite (not least because I got mine signed by the man himself, many years ago in Dorchester. Though isn't the joke that he signed so many books that it's the unsigned ones that are more valuable?).
51.
by mrwh 3y ago
Lots of interesting replies here. I'd question the premise though. At least where I grew up, programming was a niche interest. Plenty of people I knew had Amigas and Atari STs; very few had any interest in programming them. It wouldn&#
52.
by mrwh 4y ago
Oh to be clear, I'm including "VP responsible gets a bonus". I certainly don't mean necessarily a good reason for the rest of us!
53.
by mrwh 4y ago
I had to read the email I got about this several times because it didn't seem to make sense. Hang on, my New York Times subscription is going to end in September and then... that's it? The Kindle is wonderful for reading newspaper
54.
by mrwh 4y ago
Excellent, there's hope then!
55.
by mrwh 4y ago
I'm returning to my childhood home in a couple of days after many years away, and now I'm wondering about searching the attic for my A1200, and whether any of the games I wrote for myself way back when, in Amos and then Amiga E, a
56.
by mrwh 4y ago
> Seek First to Understand Yes, this. If there's one issue I've seen again and again limiting engineers it's them fixing some part of a system without understanding the system as a whole, while assuming that someone (the c
57.
by mrwh 4y ago
Entertaining article. For all the references to pre-Internet things and people, I can't help but feel it's mainly about a certain sort of Twitter cleverness. The witty reply to this or that outrage that, in the end, changed absolu
58.
by mrwh 4y ago
The Secret Life of... series really is wonderful (and he has remastered versions on YouTube).
59.
by mrwh 4y ago
I honestly thought this was a phishing attempt. There doesn't seem to be a way to enter these data via the website, only the email link.
60.
by mrwh 4y ago
For me, I feel best running a couple of times a week. More than that and it becomes fatiguing, less and I feel heavier, my back plays up, etc. I say running, I mean jogging, and not seriously either, just a couple of miles around the neighb

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