LVB

I started some cross-platform work about 6 ago and came into Flutter with plenty of hesitation. I was fearing this much ranted about janky feeling, but so far it has not come. AFAICT from the forums and such, the Web target is definitely far, far behind the mobile targets. This isn’t really a concern for me. For the app I’m building for iOS and Android, the result has been performant, and I’ve really liked the language and framework.

I'm not very plugged into how to use these models, but I do love and pay for both ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. How does one take a model like this (or a smaller version) and leverage it in VS Code? There's a dizzying array of GPT wrapper extensions for VS Code, many of which either seem like kind of junk (10 d/ls, no updates in a year), or just lead to another paid plan, at which point I might as well just keep my GH Copilot. Curious what others are doing here for Copilot-esque code completion without Copilot.

Indeed... it was different 4 days ago :)

https://web.archive.org/web/20240121220542/https://zachholma...

I was at a heavy equipment company that was sold on 6 Sigma. It was so bad. So much quality theater. Teams were culled of their “high potential” employees, who were sent off to become black belts and lead random projects with fancy story boards and amazing $$$ saved charts. I think it honestly was what seeded my departure a few years later.

I was in a similar spot. After too much hand wringing I decided to sign up for monthly ($10/month) sync and give it a solid two months. These are important tools that I’m happy to pay for, but they do take some time to evaluate. I figured $20 was a reasonable amount to commit to.

FWIW I ended up going all in on Obsidian and paying yearly, but that outcome was far from a forgone conclusion, even a month in. I went through a full cycle of honeymoon phase, then discovering warts, and then workarounds, etc. It does take time.

To the subjective complaints I’ll add heavy window tinting, specifically on windshields and front side windows. I don’t know if it is actually more common or I’m imagining that, but I really don’t like it as a pedestrian or fellow driver.

Hand signals and eye contact play a role in the cooperative dance at intersections, and if I can’t see you then things are more dangerous. I err on the side of safety. Probably every other day I’ll be waiting to cross a road (usually on foot, but it can apply in car, too) and some dark tinted car will be paused, probably yielding to me, maybe, but who knows? Maybe they’re waving me on, maybe they’re glancing at their phone. So I just wait and wait, and eventually they’ll go. I do wonder if these folks understand no one can see them.

Suspicious of what, exactly? If someone needs work and aren’t landing the jobs, is there another approach they should be taking?

>And as such, I'm confused why this exists.

Beyond the standalone server mode, I'm able to literally import this as a library/framework right into my Go app (https://pocketbase.io/docs/go-overview/). Having a single binary that contains my custom business logic + a very nice DB/Auth/Admin/... is a very compelling option.

I’ll redo my wish into: I wish Pikchr was more expressive. I’m not attached to Mermaid, but I do like things that make the common tasks simple.

AFAICT the Pikchr language is still pretty close to its PIC roots, which is comparatively low level. An expansion to better handle the sort of diagramming that has become common since PIC’s 80s time would be excellent.

This is especially true in the context of Fossil, where being able to make quick flowcharts or sequence diagrams would be super useful.

I’m unable to drag the cards on iPhone.

Check out this which I believe has that feature: https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos

For common diagrams, you probably should. I've used Pikchr, and if you want/need to place a lot of things manually or otherwise have a larger degree of control, then it fills that niche OK, I guess. But for whipping up a flowchart or sequence diagram, I find Mermaid or other tools with higher-level abstractions much quicker and simpler.

The big use case is if you need to use Fossil, which only supports Pikchr for inline diagrams. That's a shame IMO, and I would love Mermaid support.

I asked a flight attendant about the window shades once, and in addition to the visibility reasons, she also said it was to help create a uniform view. They need to scan for anything that is out of place, and having the shades randomly open or closed impedes that pattern matching.

Indeed! Still my go-to for smaller personal projects.

The patterns I've noticed, watching it evolve for nearly 20 years are:

- They draft behind others, and I mean this in a good way. They seem to eschew trailblazing new features, but keep a close eye on alternatives (esp. Postgres) and how use cases are emerging. When a sufficiently interesting concept has stabilized, they bring it to SQLite.

- Closely related to this, they seem to stay clear of technical and community distractions. They have their plans and execute.

- I don't know if D. Richard Hipp is considered a BDFL, but that's my impression and he seems good at it.

gron is one of my favorite tools because I don't do this type of searching as much anymore and can't remember the options for more advanced tools (jq, etc). I can easily and confidently compose from gron -> grep though.

Can you explain a bit more how Ethereum fits in “for obtaining a random mystery prompt and its solution”?

Finally found it (kept searching for "released" when it was actually "launched").

HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37903489

There was a fairly recent, well-upvoted blog post shared here about a guy who worked for a few years polishing his iOS stocks app and ultimately gave up due to the data feeds becoming untenable. Excellent article... that I can't find :-(

Excellent! Love to see these sorts of posts since this is also a goal of mine. (Though I'm in the situation of having quit first due to other reasons, I'd very much like to build a sustainable product vs returning to a W2 job.)

One specific question, and pardon my ignorance, having not dug into the product: are you beholden to a financial data provider (Plaid, etc.), or is all data self-entered? I've read a few times that upstream data providers (financial, weather, etc.) can really put a damper on indie products.

Sure, but parts of the ticket are editable. I can change the title and various fields, and everything gets versioned. But they've elected to not provide an editable description field, and instead, all clarification must be in append-only, immutable comments. This seems like an arbitrary limitation.

I’ve tried Fossil a number of times, but several oddly-rigid aspects always manage to turn me off. Take, for example, the integrated bug tracker, which is novel and a big draw for me. Say I write up a bug and then notice an error in the description… I can’t edit it! I can merely append more comments, which also can't be edited or removed. The recommendation I found was that I should close (there's no delete!) the bug and create a new one. What’s the point of that level of immutability? I can tolerate the purity for the source code (e.g., the whole no rebase position they've taken), but for project metadata, I need way more freedom.

It’s a cool app that I’d love to use, but there are a few showstopper oddities.

My main, albeit simple, local organizational pattern is: 1. everything under ~/dev 2. all projects are their own folder under a year folder. And if I ever restart work on something older, I move it to the current year.

I have hundreds of project folders and it’s helpful day-to-day to just be able to look in ~/dev/2023 for current stuff. But it is also relatively easy to find older things since I have a sense of roughly how far back they are. Making a new year folder right around Jan 1 and rolling forward active work is always a treat.

“endlessly enthusiastic savant intern” is a good description!

I’ve had to sharpen my skills at verification and cross-checking, but the volume of pretty good insight from a much wider domain than I myself could consider has been so worth it.

It’s also worth noting to that I feel like I used to get this type of help, roughly, from good search engines. Maybe not quite as spoon fed but pretty good. But now… just blogspam and paid listings.

"had" is not necessary, but if present, then the phrase should be "had run" (past perfect tense)

The pervasiveness of “ran” in sentences like: “And if we had ran the tests first…” has broken me.

Has JCS gotten any traction? I'll eventually have a need for something like JSON signing and recall seeing the JCS draft and a handful of test implementations, but it seemed like really early days for it.

I've put the "Package Opener" tool on my Leatherman Wingman (https://www.leatherman.com/wingman-11.html) to good use for many years against these clamshell/blister/etc. packages. It's a good design. Sharp but not too sharp, pointy enough to push through the plastic to get started, and angled properly so you can pull a clean cut around the perimeter.

Thanks for sharing your experience. My career has drifted around a bit between IC and management, but I’ve always been highly technical. At the point (20 years in) I’m wondering what’s next, because up (Principal levels, directorships, etc.) hold little to no interest for me. I’d never really considered SE roles, despite having worked with great SEs for a long time, just because… no reason, just never thought about it. But at this point, the idea of helping a wide range of customers apply a known technology seems more appealing than the pure development work I’ve been associated with all these years.

First, I love the idea, and thank you for building this.

I have some accessibility feedback on your blog, though, which I'm just now reading. The visited link color is nearly indistinguishable from the body text. I returned to some pages to revisit links and couldn't find them without close inspection.