skydhash

15 ms·

301.
by skydhash 3mo ago
Not really. As the C language was created around 1972 and by 1973, Unix was rewritten in it. By 1975, Unix was released commercially. That’s like 3 years between design and commercial usage.
302.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> A spec is a higher level of abstraction than code, which is a higher level of abstraction than machine code No it’s not. Just like a quick doodle is not an higher level representation of the Mona Lisa. Sure for someones that knows the
303.
by skydhash 3mo ago
This is one of the reason I like a ticket tracker. I make my commit as descriptive as possible and I tag them with the ticket number. Also I add comments when Product says to cut corners. It's nice to spread responsibility around when
304.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> The absolute moment you find yourself thinking of putting conditional logic, or string substitution, or anything like that, in your pure config format, switch to a real programming language, before you end up managing several times the
305.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> I have grown pretty negative opinions of “using a programming language as a config language” Same here. I like the openbsd approach of small DSL (pf, doas) or just simple ini-like key-value config (sysctl, rc.conf). If you want more, j
306.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> no business context and regression suites that test every possible scenario due to the accumulation of bug fixes and context over many years. Spend time enough with a codebase and you’ll know stuff about its behavior that is not encode
307.
by skydhash 3mo ago
Processors today are very fast. If you are spiking it on rendering diffs, you’re doing it wrong. I can’t even stress it building openbsd’s kernel.
308.
by skydhash 3mo ago
That’s not really a big issue. In major OS like the BSD, SMP implementation are not that old. If we can have a full OS running in single core mode, we can have an application being performant too. I’m currently running OpenBSD on 4 cores an
309.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> If you want to build a cross-platform UI product that doesn't require installation and has Emacs-like levels of extensibility, JS is the end of the line in terms of language selection. There are no other candidates. calibre (with
310.
by skydhash 3mo ago
There are many things in life that are "fine" only when you take extreme care (knives, cars, industrial machinery,...). The thing is something like C has many usages and you can't just say "use Rust" and be done wit
311.
by skydhash 3mo ago
I'm not a rust dev. But I've been once asked to take care of a TypeScript codebase and the thing was littered with so many casts to `any`, you're wondering why they bothered with TypeScript in the first place. Some people do
312.
by skydhash 3mo ago
The issue is not capabilities (and never was). The issue is reliability. And that’s assuming you really need to do these type of tasks using an LLM. As GP said, and as you’ve proven, most people are trying to use LLM as an hammer for everyt
313.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> But it would have been a lot less sexy (actually important for the bottom line! That’s what the author have been saying. They do for nice demos which sell the illusion of having Jarvis in text format, but the usefulness is not really p
314.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> I disagree about the success of chatbots, if the problem is narrowly-defined and chosen properly. If you can narrow the problem down, then you could design a much better interface for it than a text box and free form text (unless that&
315.
by skydhash 3mo ago
Not really. Before google, we had (and still have) books. What the internet and later google changed was the availability of information (If I had to rely on libraries and bookstores, I'd never be a programmer today). The job was never
316.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> The difference is, your brain finds guardrails as you solve the problem, the LLM doesn't have this context, you have to give it upfront. Like, you know, a good manager would Not really the same feeling. It’s more like speaking a f
317.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> It doesn't have to be a single sentence, I write a whole paragraph or even pseudocode most of it and tell it to use the pseudocode as comments for the code it will produce. It'll give me a plan and I'll refine the plan
318.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> When a person becomes a manager, they do or do not have enough time and expertise to review all of the code that they trust the team to produce. > Managers usually get into automated testing; unit tests, integration tests, acceptanc
319.
by skydhash 3mo ago
Responsiveness is overrated. I use a phone with one hand (unless typing). I use a tablet with two hands (unless on a stand), and I use my PC with a mouse and keyboard. The biggest benefits for me is when the developer think about the layout
320.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> we have things like software architecture patterns that can be discussed at a high level without knowing the intricacies. Like you can be aware of load balancing and even use it but be unaware of how load balancing might work algorithm
321.
by skydhash 3mo ago
The benefits of knowing regex is not about the syntax (that’s what docs/google/books are for), but knowing when it’s right to use it. Immersion with the codebase is not about coding and syntax (which is actually very easy for me).
322.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> LLMs give no productivity uplift at all, which is much harder to defend It’s not really hard to defend. Because when people says that productivity is uplifted, they are talking about amount of work, not the ROI. That’s why you keep hea
323.
by skydhash 3mo ago
The unix subtrate of macos is fine for daily usage. It’s the administration side that suffers. Package management, service management,…
324.
by skydhash 3mo ago
I’ve studied Electronic Engineering (and interacted with the Civil Engineering classes). And the main difference is that physical laws are inflexible and failure cases may result in deaths, maiming, and material damages. Software constraint
325.
by skydhash 3mo ago
That’s basically LISP 101. Before solving a problem, you build out the spare parts and the tooling. And then the software building feels like assembling lego blocks. Building a DSL or a good set of symbols (functions/classes/const
326.
by skydhash 3mo ago
Take any long-running successful project, and you’ll find that they practice an engineering-like discipline to make it sustainable.
327.
by skydhash 3mo ago
I think there are methods and patterns to be learned. Engineering is mostly a succession of problems, with a somewhat illusory prize at the end. But a lot of people currently in software development are not trained well to withstand the jou
328.
by skydhash 3mo ago
If there’s one thing I would like to add is that engineering is a much of a mindset than knowledge. I have friends in software development and they do not enjoy the practice at all. Everything is just chores to them. I won’t say “follow you
329.
by skydhash 3mo ago
I do agree that merge conflicts are a signal of a deeper collaboration issue. > Merge conflicts are a necessary part of source control and sweeping them under the rug is one way with dealing with them, but in my opinion not exactly the h
330.
by skydhash 3mo ago
> I've had to deep regression analysis and archeology to make sure that regressions aren't recurring or stop recurring, because regressions can recur. An engineer that […] looking at the exact commit where it was made than the

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