pianoben

5 ms·

31.
by pianoben 11mo ago
complexity in software is invisibly-preceded with "unnecessary", and usually indicates software that is difficult to maintain or even to verify its behavior. A really cool software architecture can scratch a similar itch as a goo
32.
by pianoben 11mo ago
Gemini was so much fun during lockdown - I loved the distraction of a new simple protocol, and the challenge of writing a gui client for it. Can't say I'm surprised that it hasn't taken the world by storm, but it's still
33.
by pianoben 1y ago
Lol I "love" that the first benefit this company lists in their jobs page is "In-Office Culture". Do people actually believe that having to commute is a benefit ?
34.
by pianoben 1y ago
The trouble I have with this approach (which, conceptually, I agree with) is that it's damned hard to do anything with the parse results. Want to print that email_t? Then you're right back to char*, unless you somehow write yo
35.
by pianoben 1y ago
I don't mean to say one of us has better bona-fides, only that there is an existence proof to the contrary of your post. You claim that rails' lack of discipline promotes unmaintainable code shepherded by empire-builders; I claim
36.
by pianoben 1y ago
One of the largest codebases I've ever worked on, generating billions in revenue every year to this day, is in Rails. Over a thousand hands have touched it, and none of the original people are still around to hold an empire. I'm
37.
by pianoben 1y ago
Of course that's only half the story - Microsoft invents amazing things, and promptly fails to capitalize on them. AJAX, that venerable piece of kit that enabled every dynamic web-app ever , was a Microsoft invention. It didn't
38.
by pianoben 1y ago
I don't know that they ever used it internally, certainly not for anything major. If they had, they probably wouldn't have sold it as it was... Can't explain TFS though, that was still garbage internally and externally.
39.
by pianoben 1y ago
Yep! A formative experience of my childhood was working out how to type SMTP commands over telnet and sending mail from billg@microsoft.com to my dad. Such "opportunities" vanished decades ago. Fun times :)
40.
by pianoben 2y ago
They were a YC company from a while back: https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/parallel-universe-spacebas... They had an MMO-targeted database called Spacebase, and a bunch of awesome JVM technology. Their foun
41.
by pianoben 2y ago
The website and naming (and product space, sorta) remind me a lot of Parallel Universe. Any direct inspiration there, or shared personnel?
42.
by pianoben 2y ago
"Medical (vibe) Coding" Oh lord, that is a phrase I did not need to think about today
43.
by pianoben 2y ago
> in the ancient times > 2014 Rage successfully baited - that was like three months ago, tops! I wonder what ever happened with Grid - they were indeed very hyped, but fairly-obviously vaporware too IIRC. At least in terms of marketi
44.
by pianoben 2y ago
The way I see it, the problem being addressed here is that there is structured data (for some definition of "structured"), and we are in search of a useful visual representation of that data in various aggregates. Lisp is a fantas
45.
by pianoben 2y ago
I think they just invented Microsoft Access :)
46.
by pianoben 2y ago
Instacart had an engineer presenting at Rails World 2024 just a few months ago; they're still heavily invested in the platform.
47.
by pianoben 2y ago
They aren't trying to replace us in earnest, yet. They are using the threat to beat down wages, and to more generally tilt the power balance further in favor of ~capital~ employers. "Replacement" is smoke and mirrors at th
48.
by pianoben 2y ago
Neat! I've always wanted a tool like this, but never wanted to build one. The most "good enough" solution for validating license headers I've ever used is just to grep for the copyright line: https://github.c
49.
by pianoben 2y ago
To this day, the best random road-trip discovery of my life. What an amazing place that was! Bummer that it went under so quickly.
50.
by pianoben 2y ago
The flexibility of HTTP has advantages, too; it's simple to whip up a `curl` command to try things out. How does Google meet that need for gRPC APIs?
51.
by pianoben 2y ago
And here I thought this was about the programming language!
52.
by pianoben 2y ago
We're "all in on AI" at my job, and lots of people are drinking the koolaid. I regularly see design docs that are almost entirely written by ChatGPT, code implementing those designs written by copilot/cursor/chatgp
53.
by pianoben 2y ago
If they had good intentions, they wouldn't be conducting all of their business on FOIA-proof Signal (or so I like to imagine).
54.
by pianoben 2y ago
Not only is it hard to get started with Bazel, it's hard to continue with Bazel even once you do. Unless you are using Google practices (say, vendoring and compiling all dependencies), you will certainly end up mired in poorly-maint
55.
by pianoben 2y ago
...for the next four weeks, anyways. Good effort nonetheless!
56.
by pianoben 2y ago
When they were on X, people on X had no incentive to go to other places for Guardian content. Now they do. I don't believe that they'll meaningfully change people's behaviors on their own, but's a step.
57.
by pianoben 2y ago
If for no other reason, this is good news in that it encourages a larger number of platforms with a diversity of information and opinions. Being centralized on any one platform serves no one except for the platform's ownership.
58.
by pianoben 2y ago
I mean, I share your opinion personally but plenty of people find it pleasant to read and write. If it was really a bad language, it wouldn't have the adoption it does.
59.
by pianoben 2y ago
I think it's not just you, but certainly not everyone. Kotlin with Java 21+ is my go-to choice for an I/O-bound service, or really any service. It's just so ergonomic, and with virtual threads the code can be as simple
60.
by pianoben 2y ago
Same experience here; I moved us to Gradle six months ago, and like magic all the whining in Slack about our build system just... went away. Turns out, when your build system doesn't occupy 5-15% of your teams' working days, the

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