StellarScience

The AI spreadsheet example in the linked article is interesting, but that occurs within a more specialized and constrained environment than general GUI design. I think of good UI design as involving a lot of human factors understanding combined with 2D spatial reasoning and layout, which I don't think AI is good at. (Today's article about Claude failing to reproduce an HTML layout to match a screen capture is one example of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46183294 )

But my pessimism may be unfounded or based on ignorance. At some point AI will probably get better at these things as well, either with better LLMs or by augmenting LLMs with outboard spatial reasoning modules that they can interact with.

> It's unfortunate that so many people end up parroting fanciful ideas without fully appreciating the different contexts around software development.

Of course that's true of both sides of this discussion too.

I really value DRY, but of course I have seen cases where a little duplication is preferable. Lately I've seen a steady stream of these "duplication is ok" posts, and I worry that newer programmers will use it to justify copy-paste-modifying 20-30-line blocks of code without even trying to create an appropriate abstraction.

The reality of software is, as you suggest, that there are many good rules of thumb, but also lots of exceptions, and judgment is required in applying them.

> it's much easier to remove and consolidate duplicative work than unwind a poor abstraction that is embedded everywhere.

It's not easy to deduplicate after a few years have passed, and one copy had a bugfix, another got a refactoring improvement, and a third copy got a language modernization.

With poor abstractions, at least you can readily find all the places that the abstraction is used and imorove them. Whereas copy-paste-modified code can be hard to even find.

I've been writing complex scientific UIs for more than two decades and still don't feel like I always get it right. We aim for "gradual reveal" and making the most common options easy to find and use, but it's hard to get that right for everyone.

Microsoft tried hiding less commonly-used menu options a decade or so with Office and it was so terrible they abandoned it - only to try the same approach with the Windows 11 Explorer menu.

I absolutely hate that rigid "Basic" vs. "Advanced" distinction, but one of our image processing UIs was so complicated a customer really pressed us to add that. We tried and tried and couldn't come up with something better, so we settled on an approach that I still feel is suboptimal.

So I welcome seeing what AI/LLMs may be able to contribute to the UI design space, and customizing per user based on their usage seems like an interesting experiment. But at the same time I'm skeptical that AI will really excel in this very human and subjective area.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Except for interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field. Masters or PhD is a plus. (Roughly 25% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and analysis projects use Python and C++. Some projects use Java or Typescript/React.

Apply online: at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Exactly. Unlike Java where every object inherits from Ojbect, in C++ multiply inheriting from objects with a common base class is rare.

Some older C++ frameworks give all their objects a common base class. If that inheritance isn't virtual, developers may not be able to multiply inherit objects from that framework. That's fine, one can still inherit from classes outside the framework to "mix in" or add capabilities.

I've never understood the diamond pattern fear-mongering. It's just a rarely-encountered issue to keep in mind and handle appropriately.

Thanks for your interest. Currently we require relocation. We're "hybrid" so some occasional work from home may be allowed, but not fully remote.

We paused hiring fresh grads, but still hire interns, and those who prove themselves get full-time offers. We've found internships to be a great pipeline to great hires over the years.

We've had several candidates with completed bachelor's degrees apply for internships, prove themselves, and get full-time jobs that way. This "back door" job hiring pathway might work elsewhere as well.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience, or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 25% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and analysis projects use Python and C++. Some projects use Java or Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience, or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 25% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and analysis projects use Python and C++. Some projects use Java or Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, some projects use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

I find AI helpful when coding in unfamiliar languages or topics, as it generates initial code that roughly works, that I can then iterate on.

Even so, I have to constantly hound the AI to write concise code, to reuse code, to consolidate duplicate code blocks. When I ask it to remove the useless comments, it also removes the useful comments, so I have to goad it back into adding back individual helpful comments.

I had AI write some Python unit tests and it showed me how to mock, which I had never done in Python. That's great! But when I examined the tests, they were so "white box" and brittle that almost any change in implementation would break the tests.

When coding in a familiar language (C++), I tried turning on the auto-AI assistant (for our one project where security rules allowed it) and while I was impressed that it would auto-complete whole blocks of text based on my actual code base, not once was I able to accept those blocks as-is.

So for me at this point AI is at best a net +2% productivity improvement, though I surely have lots to learn about other ways in which it could be useful.

Right, for example early LLMs were notoriously bad at math, as they had been trained on language. They'd get simple math right, likely due to "rote memorization", but couldn't do basic arithmetic with 3-digit numbers. The common AI agents seem much better now. I suspect they added separate math processing logic and trained the LLMs to recognize when and how to delegate to it, though I'm not certain of that.

Similarly coding-focused LLMs can access backend engines that actually run the code and get feedback, either to show the user or to internally iterate.

Having a whole host of such backend processors would be great. Users still only ever have to interact using natural language, but get the power of all these specialized tools in the backend. There are some tasks LLMs can do, but special-purpose algorithms may do better, faster, and/or with less energy usage.

With the latest Microsoft Word, if you open a PDF that is a scanned image of a document and convert it to Word format, it does a pretty decent job of not only OCR (optical character recognition) but also picking matching fonts for various sections.

I just tested this with my internet connection disabled and it still worked. Since it's doing local processing, I suspect it uses traditional OCR algorithms rather than LLMs.

As the article concludes, LLMs aren't magic, they're just one useful tool to include in your toolbox.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, some use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

You're absolutely right that "procedural", at least as I understand the word in 2025, is a poor label for 6.001.

6.001 taught 'define' and 'let' but didn't teach 'set!' until week 6 or so. So we learned functions, variables, scopes, recursion, lambdas, strings, numbers, symbols, lists, map, filter, flatten, and more - all without ever modifying a variable. That's very "functional".

Once we learned that it was possible modify existing variables, we learned object-oriented programming; objects were just lambdas with closures that took messages indicating which function to call. We then learned a fake assembly language written in scheme that had both an interpreter and a compiler, also written in scheme. While "procedural" feels wrong, I'm not sure what label one could apply to all this...

We have a user interface design rule that keyboard shortcuts and context menus must only be "shortcuts" for commands that are discoverable via clear buttons or menus. That probably makes our apps old-fashioned.

I recall learning that the four corners of the screen are the most valuable screen real estate, because it's easy to move the mouse to those locations quickly without fine control. So it's user-hostile that for Windows 11 Microsoft moved the default "Start" menu location to the center. And I don't think they can ascribe it to being mobile-first. Maybe it's "touch-first", where mouse motion doesn't apply.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5-6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, some use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com (sorry, summer 2025 internships have been filled) Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5-6.9, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, some use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com (sorry, summer 2025 internships have been filled)

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5-6.8, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, some use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, interns/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. AI/ML and other projects use Python, others use Java or Javascript/Typescript/React.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Ada was an impressive language for its day. But even with Ada, government never mandated its use generally - only for certain government projects, and waivers were available with justification.

And as industry took the lead in language innovation, government removed its Ada requirement.

> All in all, the open nature of Firefox causes it to be fundamentally built on trust, to a larger extent than seems possible in most proprietary software companies.

Nice! We're still small so we somehow can keep that level of trust, but I always worry about how things may change for the worse as we grow. Mimicking the open source model as much as we can, even within a small private company, has worked well for us so far.

> > ... clang-format and clang-tidy to automate some of the simpler things, also goes a long way.

> 100% agree. It's totally worth it even if you disagree with the specific formatting decisions made.

So true! 5-6 years ago we had to make open source contributions to both clang-format and clang-tidy for several months to get them to support closer to our preferred style before we could get the "ok, close enough" buy-in across the company to implement automated formatting. (Mostly bug fixes for evidently rare flag combinations, but also a few small new features.)

In retrospect it was completely unnecessary - simply relying on automated formatting is sooo much better than any specifics of the formatting. I'm still glad we did though, as it made both tools better. We earned the maintainers' trust with a few early PRs, and remained active contributors for a while, but haven't contributed much lately.

(Posted on Firefox mobile... Thanks!)

We used to buy Microsoft MSDN subscriptions, which got us constant upgrades of Visual Studio and other development tools. Those licenses were perpetual - you'd get a disk with e.g. Visual Studio 2007 on it, and you were legally entitled to use that version forever.

IIRC if we didn't think we'd need a new version anytime soon, to reduce costs sometimes we wouldn't purchase MSDN renewals.

I think Microsoft's licensing 20 years ago shows the prevailing view then was that companies wanted the certainty of perpetual licenses.

Great points, I'd just add:

> A lot of inconsistency is the result of unwillingness to fix other people's stuff

Agree, so we find it best to practice "no code ownership" or better yet "shared code ownership." So we try to think of it all as "our stuff" rather than "other people's stuff." Maybe you just joined the project, and are working around code that hasn't been touched in 5 years, but we're all responsible for improving the code and making it better as we go.

That requires a high trust environment; I don't know if it could work for Firefox where you may have some very part-time contributors. But having documented standards, plus clang-format and clang-tidy to automate some of the simpler things, also goes a long way.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, INTERNS/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. Some projects use Python, Java, or Javascript.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Thanks, we are familiar with (and were initially a bit concerned by) that SpaceX example. However their situation is slightly different.

They were able to hire Permanent Residents, but failed to mention in their ads that they could also hire a narrow subset of asylees and refugees who are considered US Persons despite not being Permanent Residents. (EDIT: I think the definition of "protected individual" at https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M... is the relevant one.)

Our jobs are in a different category that is limited to US citizens.

Unfortunately the latter, but welcome and please keep us in mind in about a year!

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, INTERNS/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, laser systems modeling, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, computer vision and image processing, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5, CMake, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Boost, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. Some projects use Python, Java, or Javascript.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.

Stellar Science | Hybrid (USA) Albuquerque NM, Washington DC (Tysons VA), Dayton OH | Full time, INTERNS/co-ops | U.S. citizenship required | https://www.stellarscience.com

Company: We're a small scientific software development company that develops custom scientific and engineering analysis applications in domains including: computer vision and image processing, space situational awareness (monitoring the locations, health and status of on-orbit satellites), image simulation, high power microwave systems, modeling and simulation, AI/ML including physics-informed neural networks (PINN), human body thermoregulation, laser systems modeling, high performance computing (HPC), computer aided design (CAD), and more. All exciting applications and no CRUD. We emphasize high quality code and lightweight processes that free software engineers to be productive.

Experience: Other than interns, we currently require a Bachelors degree in physics, engineering, math, computer science, or a related field, plus preferably 3+ years of work experience or a Masters or PhD in lieu of work experience. (Roughly 30% of our staff have PhDs.)

Technologies: Mostly C++23, Qt 6.5, CMake, Boost, git, OpenGL, CUDA, Jenkins. Windows and Linux, msvc/gcc/clang/clangcl. Some projects use Python, Java, or Javascript.

Apply online at https://www.stellarscience.com/careers/.