thomascgalvin

8 ms·

31.
by thomascgalvin 11mo ago
Writing a text editor is like writing a compiler; the point isn't adoption, the point is in the learning
32.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
> The modern Apple feels like their hardware teams way outperforming the software teams. There aren't a lot of tangible gains left to be made by the software teams. The OS is fine, the office suite is fine, the entertainment apps ar
33.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
There are a lot of people who prefer to fight from guard.
34.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
I use Mermaid and such for a lot of technical documentation, but this seems like it's going to be much more straightforward, especially for quick and one-off diagrams. Very nice.
35.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
For me, an important distinction is whether or not a human is reviewing the edits suggested by an AI. I toss all of my work into Apple Pages and Google Docs, and use them both for spelling and grammar check. I don't just blindly accept
36.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
My experience with GenAI is that it's a significant improvement to Stack Overflow, and generally as capable as someone hired right out of college. If I'm using it to remember the syntax or library for something I used to know how
37.
by thomascgalvin 1y ago
While this is generally true of a certain American political party, you see hard cutoff lines even in states like Massachusetts, where the majority of voters and politicians seem to be actively trying to make things better for people. The r
38.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
That's certainly part of it. Another significant factor is that many people have come to the conclusion that they simply cannot afford children. It costs something around $30k to give birth in the US, the cost of housing grossly outpac
39.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
The issue with GenAI is that is typically sounds correct, and presents its opinion in a way that seems authoritative, but might be wrong... and the only ways to know that it' wrong are 1. to try its suggestion and fail, or 2. to look
40.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
I'm still running an Intel-based MacBook Pro from 2019, and it's trucking along just fine. It's not as fast as the M* chips, obviously, but it's still perfectly serviceable for software development. I'm tempted by
41.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
> Tell someone in the 1600s about the concept of cellphones and they would say it’s impossible to ever instantaneously communicate with someone around the world. I don't know that they would. In the 1600s, they'd just invented
42.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
In Kotlin, an infix method can be called without the `.` operator, and without the parens surrounding arguments. 100 money "USD" is the same as 100.money("USD") `Number.money(currency: String): Money` i
43.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
> It's unprecedented and it's hugely beneficial to our species. "Hugely beneficial" is a stretch at this point. It has the potential to be hugely beneficial, sure, but it also has the potential to be ruinous. We'
44.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
Plus bonus compensation for the loss of skills while you aren't working.
45.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
Right to work is 100% anti-union. In reality, it's "the right to work without any protections." The idea used to sell it is that you don't owe your employer any loyalty, and they don't owe you any loyalty; either of
46.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
I generally don't even like syntax highlighting for Markdown. I find having the text jump around because it became bold or italicized distracting, and it's even worse when a header is suddenly a larger size and everything below it
47.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
I have used markdown to write books, and it worked just fine. Now, these were novels, not technical documents, but I never encountered something that couldn't be solved with markdown plus some occasional HTML. I've also generate
48.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
Recidivism is a feature, not a bug. Like most institutions, America's criminal justice system is bent towards self-perpetuation, not problem solving.
49.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
I kind of think we have proven that most people are not, and cannot be, capably responsible for their own retirement. The 401k was an experiment, and that experiment has largely failed. The answer is probably a more generous and better fund
50.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
There are only so many ways to write "C, but better," or "C++, with fewer warts." Any languages that want to be recognizable to people comfortable with the C-lineage are going to converge on a lot of points.
51.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
I agree that a lot of these components are more distracting than useful. I do like the animated border around buttons, though; that would be very useful to draw the eye towards the "default" option on a page, as long as it was the
52.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
The Wim Hof method is explained here: https://www.wimhofmethod.com/breathing-exercises
53.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
Java has always been conservative about maintaining backwards compatibility and introducing new keywords, but the java.* and javax.* packages have been growing larger and larger since day one. I do think Go and Kotlin have kicked the Java c
54.
by thomascgalvin 2y ago
A Link to the Past remains one of my favorite games to this day. I consider pretty close to a perfect 2D adventure game.
55.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
Inbox was a legitimate improvement on "normal" email, and I still miss it.
56.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
My initial reaction was also "if I can talk to your software, that's an API." Reading through the article, though, the author isn't advocating for "no APIs," they're advocating for minimalist APIs that use
57.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
This article is basically one long "be careful, that hammer can hit your thumb." While that's true , it doesn't mitigate the hammer's usefulness, nor does it propose a better alternative. Technology is hard. Good t
58.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
I would vastly prefer a couple of boring years.
59.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
I 100% understand why veterinarians are in a crisis. We had to let our pupper go a few weeks ago. The vet had to basically sit there and watch us while we processed the fact that we were about to pay her to kill our best friend. For us, it
60.
by thomascgalvin 3y ago
I think this is true of most open source projects, and probably all of the bigs ones. Software in general has a burnout problem. I am regularly stumbling around like a zombie by friday afternoon, and that's just for my actual, paid job

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