It’s also not a solved problem unlike what the article claims, unless ‘solved’ doesn’t mean ‘works all the time ‘.
1,709 karma · joined December 19, 2017
I changed my mind after playing with cursor 2 ( cursor 1 had lasted all of 10 mins), which actually wrote a full blown app with documentation, tests , coverage, ci/cd, etc. I was able to have it find a bug I encountered when using the app - it literally ran the code, inserted extra logs, grepped the logs , found the bug and fixed it.
Where I am, 3 year old is greenfield, and old and large is 20 years old and has 8million lines of nasty c++. I’ll have to wait a bit more I think …
I think it’s unlikely it will succeed at that task with a real world , old, large codebase.
Now, the next release might work !
- it’s very likely you haven’t mastered all layers of the stack - you maybe have mastered the parts you’ve come across though. Would you include Linux kernel development, program proofs, HPC , math-oriented software, compilers, firmwares, fpgas, database internals ( I mean, writing a full database engine ), big iron infrastructure , actual research etc in the list of things you’ve mastered? That’s what I did for many years ( not necessarily these topics ) - keep exploring , the field is massive. In my experience, the more you look around the more you realize that you haven’t seen it all, and even less mastered it.
- now, in my case, after doing just that ( trying new technical things) I realized I was getting increasingly interested in the overall technical strategy and interplay with people more so than the purely technical side of things. I had vowed I would never get into the higher spheres … but I am now essentially a principal engineer ( or whatever you call that but basically I lead some technical stuff ) for a very large org. This is not management , and I really like it. I keep learning about people and business, about how changing something big is hard and human , and balancing technical problems with human ones . It’s fascinating, and above all grounded in technical knowledge so I don’t feel like I’ve thrown away a significant chunk of my career.
In particular, if you feel that you’re not being listened to but would like to, maybe you’d be interested in that kind of job. If you’re saying you’re not always succeeding at persuading people , it probably also means there’s growth for you here, and satisfaction down the line.
- actually get into management , which like most topics is actually interesting once you get into it. It’s just different. I thought I didn’t like it - I actually do and that was a colossal surprise to me.
Whether it’s technical leadership or management, these skills can be learned, and they make the bits that you don’t like much more palatable, and the bits that are ok very enjoyable. I was lucky enough to meet very good people who taught me properly. I think this is very important. I can cook at home, but if I get proper training my food will be better and I will enjoy the process a lot more ( try chopping vegetables with no training - you’re slow as hell and it ruins everything)
- do something unrelated ( cooking etc ). To be honest, at some point I did my job but the more fulfilling exploration part of my life was at home and revolved around food. I did consider changing career completely but decided it was too risky.
To a large extent, there is limited value to your extensive knowledge if you remain at the bottom because it will always have limited impact. You seem to want the power and influence ( for good reasons !), but don’t seem to want to learn the skills that are required . ( at least management, you seem interested in technical leadership). I guess you have to choose. It’s very hard, but liberating.
You mentioned family - I also made sure I was in a good place at home when I switched. I found it hard but support from my wife helped tremendously.
Best of luck !
I’ll do all the things if ever needed, but I get that if a cloud act request happens , your cloud provider will be able to get your stuff.
I’m specialized enough in another field to know that I’m not a security person in spite of my interest in it ( I used to enjoy reverse engineering back in the days ) - I wouldn’t make that kind of decision without consulting a professional first.
The only issue left would be managed services though, which then I wouldn’t use, but I’d be able to run my own postgre safely on infra I’m renting.
I get that FHE is not realistic today, but can’t I use ( if it’s really critical) a combination of confidential vms and an external hsm ? I understand I’ll be limited to traditional workloads , and not managed services though.
I asked the wrong question, what I really meant was ‘if I run in a less trusted environment, am I not supposed to use all possible crypto mechanisms available to make that environment more trustworthy , so that I can’t be deceived by my cloud operator sending my data to the us government’
Much to my surprise (and granted, I have the means to do so) I will favor steam whenever possible, it’s just significantly better.
The git mental model is more complex than cvs, but strangely enough the docs almost invariably refer to the internal implementation details which shouldn’t be needed to work with it.
I remember when git appeared - the internet was full of guides called ‘git finally explained ‘ , and they all started by explaining the plumbing and the implementation. I think this has stuck, and does not make things easy to understand.
Please note I say all this having been using git for close to 20 years, being familiar with the git codebase, and understanding it very well.
I just think the documentation and ui work very hard towards making it difficult to understand .
The book says that ‘ To really understand the way Git does branching, we need to take a step back and examine how Git stores its data’ then it starts talking about trees and blobs.
At that point you’ve lost almost everyone. If you have a strong interest in vcs implementation then fine, otherwise it’s typically the kind of details you don’t want to hear about. Most people won’t read an entire book just to use a vcs, when what they actually want to hear is ‘this is a commit graph with pointers’.
I agree with you : the information is there. However I don’t think you can in good faith tell most people to rtfm this, and that was my point.
My view is that if you’re going to talk like a bored robot, then I need a transcript or a paper which is much shorter than a talk. I distinctly remember not going to classes at university because the teachers wouldn’t give me anything beyond reading a book aloud. I just read the book at home.
Now, if you’re able to indicate what’s important and not important, what’s interesting and what isn’t , and why you like it , I’ll be delighted to watch your talk.
I think it’s very difficult to be interested in something new if the presenter doesn’t seem to care about it. This is different from something written , where I expect something dry anyway.
It’s exactly like folks in 1995 telling you to rtfm when you’re trying to install Linux from a floppy disk. It’s doable, but annoying, and it’s not that easy.
Now, once you teach them it’s a commit graph with names, some of them floating, some people get it.
The thing is, not everyone is comfortable with a commit graph, and most people are not - just like people get lists and arrays but graphs are different.
So I agree with you on principle ( it shouldn’t be difficult), but most people don’t have a graph as a mental model of anything, and I think that’s the biggest obstacle.
I don't use these tools that much ( I tried and rejected Cursor a while ago, and decided not to use it ) but having played with GPT5 Codex ( as a paying customer) yesterday in regular VSCode , and having had Composer1 do the exact same things just now, it's night and day.
Composer did everything better, didn't stumble where Codex failed, and most importantly, the speed makes a huge difference. It's extremely comfortable to use, congrats.
Edit: I will therefore reconsider my previous rejection
I understand your statements as you mean them - I default to giving you the benefit of the doubt, and automatically assume that black and white statements are shortcuts. Only, and only if you seem to not understand nuance then I will adjust my stance, but I usually assume you do!
While it may look reasonably clean in the link below, I’ve always found it integrates badly with an existing codebase, the primary problem being that the ‘boundaries’ of the objects are not clearly visible.
https://learn.adacore.com/courses/Ada_For_The_CPP_Java_Devel...
I will add that the existing non oo features are excellent and I would even argue that in many cases you don’t need OO.
If I were you, if you like fpc, I’d actually look into Ada ( the OO part is a bit odd granted but works ). You’ll get extremely high control over low level stuff ( it’s used in the embedded world ) along with high expressivity and excellent performance.