zbentley

7 ms·

91.
by zbentley 2mo ago
> As much as possible try to minimize the number of changed lines when implementing a feature Great way to get LLMs to start making an endless profusion of methods instead of adding parameters to or switching to a richer return type from
92.
by zbentley 2mo ago
That comes across as arrogant and rude. Assuming you actually want to engage, I discussed some of the reasons that this can be hard here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411927 The link in the top comment further exp
93.
by zbentley 2mo ago
It’s theoretically possible to do that kind of planning on the client, but difficult and not worth it compared to letting the database do it. Especially for reporting, there’s another disadvantage: many query planners use runtime statistics
94.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Eh, it’s valuable advice to a lot of people. Titles are bullshit and all over the place, true, but “how to approach the changing responsibilities that come with growing out of the kind of roles you’re used to” is useful to people regardless
95.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I’ve experienced this. The critical realization for me was that most of those problems which I know I can solve quickly, without even having to write a Jira ticket or groom them into a sprint or whatever, are problems I should let someone
96.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I don’t think that extreme is compatible with the reporting/analytics use case of SQL DBs. Even though entire roles/companies may never touch that kind of SQL, there’s a massive quantity of it out there. I once worked on a medical
97.
by zbentley 2mo ago
The difficulties that even experienced programmers have with SQL are far more than just the syntax. And, given what most people need the database for, that difficulty is pretty disproportionate to the complexity of the task. I think the “it
98.
by zbentley 2mo ago
> Does Signal save history? Or does it save your encryption keys in a file? Even on Signal Desktop, retrieving things from an outside app is very-hard-to-impossible depending on configuration and what you're after. There's a re
99.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Not “not ugly” either. The flexibility is too high and standardization of UX is too low. Technically, we’re missing adoption of default standard toolkits like swing or GTK, and politically a11y/compliance checkers are a far cry from so
100.
by zbentley 2mo ago
> Those two are not contradictory statements I really think they are. The reason for terminals’ ubiquity is precisely their age, and their age results in them standardizing and accumulating bizarre behaviors. Even in the microcomputer er
101.
by zbentley 2mo ago
That ubiquity is the reason for the limitations of terminals/TUIs discussed in grandparent. Those two are not separable: they’re everywhere precisely because they target the lowest, oldest common denominator (teletype console behavio
102.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Sometimes, but measure the number of people like that against the massive number of people who blow their whole leg off by trying to second-guess the compiler. If I had a nickel for every “performance critical” (which it never is) weird b
103.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I was narrowly responding to the point about Qubes using VMs. I have no problems with Wayland’s design; I agree that it’s a step forward.
104.
by zbentley 2mo ago
My desktop apps can’t trace other apps because they don’t have my sudo password. Some of my desktop apps run in containers/snaps or whatnot and other user processes can’t get to their internals without pivoting to root. Apps can’t read
105.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I feel like the sheer volume of OS LPEs and escape CVEs in container runtimes indicates that, at least for now, the security boundary capabilities of containers are inferior to those of VMs. Which is ironic, given that a lot of the tools th
106.
by zbentley 2mo ago
It’s not about multi-user security. I would not like a compromised video player to be able to see my Signal chats just because both apps are in the same window system.
107.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I’ve found generics useful at handling database-backed objects at the write boundary. Since the layout of those objects is generally pretty important, having middleware-ish things that handle interface/supertypes but return generic con
108.
by zbentley 2mo ago
There are plenty: D, subsets of C++, go, nim, zig. The problem is inertia and C programmers’ stubborn insistence on ABI compatibility and “performance” (which is rarely materially at stake), not a lack of alternatives.
109.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I don’t think you have to reach for something as invasive as a borrow checker to handle most of these conditions. Bounds checks, for example, are rarely skipped intentionally in the vast majority of C programs; rather, they’re just skipped
110.
by zbentley 2mo ago
I honestly don’t think those are going to get you flagged as mostly-AI or with high confidence. On anything longer than a sentence I’ve found the false positive rate to be perfectly reasonable.
111.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Yes? I’ve made that mistake, it’s not particularly hard to do. Stash an Arc in something that lives too long, or forget to clear its inner data structure when you should, and you have a leak. That’s not like … a design flaw or something, ju
112.
by zbentley 2mo ago
People who don’t want to run out of memory?
113.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Say more? I’ve found it quite useful and not a source of fear. It’s effective at calling out disrespect (human to human communication where one party stops participating as a human), and has been effective for me in writing my own communica
114.
by zbentley 2mo ago
All very true! Immich, unlike a lot of apps, does have a pretty friendly UI for managing/restoring backups, though: https://docs.immich.app/administration/backup-and-restore/ It's definitely still a lot
115.
by zbentley 2mo ago
That type of system is actually still in use in a lot of industries—either as a primary factor or a fallback for folks who might need to log in without a working device. Think healthcare workers who forgot their phone but need to order a su
116.
by zbentley 2mo ago
By default yes, that’s true. But while there isn’t a reliable don’t -flush-this-page system, there definitely are ways to force the flush of specific ranges in an mmapped file. But you’re generally right. I think that’s why most databases
117.
by zbentley 2mo ago
My hunch having looked at the journald code as an amateur is that this write amplification is coming from scattering, with a few possible sources: 1. Writes try to compress away duplicate metadata at the application layer, which causes them
118.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Agreed. And in my experience , most large cloud providers’ Linux systems I’ve worked on (either their VMs as a tenant or their underlying hardware as an employee) log locally and ship additionally.
119.
by zbentley 2mo ago
What do you mean? That has described the vast majority of Linux systems I have ever touched, professionally or personally. Even corporate environments with log aggregation tail system logs rather than having them directly shipped elsewhere.
120.
by zbentley 2mo ago
Say more? Sounds like a good story

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