avg_dev

I read The Age of Spiritual Machines quite a while back and it was obvious at the time that Kurzweil’s predictions were pretty far fetched, but they were also very far reaching, thought provoking, and sparked much internal (and external) debate within me. I am not someone who takes much part in tech communities outside of this one so I don’t know what circles you are referring to. But yeah: Kurzweil makes some predictions that don’t come true. It’s been a long time, and it is quite possible that I’m misremembering, or viewing through rose tinted glasses, so please take my follow up question at face value: So what? What’s the harm? If one thing stuck with me from that book, it is that deep gut-level social understanding of the tech we create lags far behind the creation of the tech itself. In a world of personalization algorithms and addiction under the guise of engagement, isn’t that lesson more relevant than ever?

Edit: I’m reading some of the criticisms of Kurzweil’s claims in the article. It is clear that he was wrong about growth rates in many areas and about life expectancy growing unbounded. Perhaps my skepticism kept me from taking these claims at face value at any point. Perhaps it is dangerous for someone to be making these claims to the public. I am not sure.

> "The Measure of a Man" has been seen as highlighting themes of slavery and the rights of artificial intelligence.

This was hands-down my favorite episode of Star Trek. Perhaps it will be timely in the not-too-distant future. I don’t personally believe AGI is around the corner, but I’ve been known to be wrong a time or two. Regardless, this is a fantastic piece of sci-fi, and I wanted to share it with you all.

I very much enjoy this post. My first introduction to Robin Sloan was via the novel Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It featured Ruby programming as a central part of the plot. Ruby! Programming languages, and coding, in a novel? What a wonderful thing to find. I wish him great success.

I didn't vote and I'm surprised that I don't see a comment about this topic: it's heavily context-dependent, and at different stages in someone's career the pendulum may swing from one side to the other. I believe that I would enjoy working for myself, and I kind of did so for a few years as a contractor, but what I really would enjoy is providing a software product or service that people paid for and where I had full creative control. I believe that working at a job provides many benefits: If the company is big, you may work on problems at a scale or magnitude that is difficult to stumble into on your own. You may find mentorship, teaching, or growth opportunities when working at a company that will be harder to find when working for yourself. You'll find it easier to get your code reviewed when working on a team than on your own. You'll probably enjoy a much wider variety of social interactions in your day job if you're working at a big company than on your own. You will get a lot more independence and the chance to really own your success and your failure if you work on your own. You'll get a much bigger piece of the pie if you find huge success on your own. And finally (yeah right, this list could go on ad nauseam) you'll be much more likely to enjoy a steady paycheck, paid right when you expect it, if you work for a company.

Just took a close look at your post. That was quite clear. Thank you.

I find it interesting how stuff that was relevant for PCs in the 80s became relevant for early smartphones. I believe computing history often is cyclic in nature, so there is value in the old ways.

I remember back when I was studying programming at university the prof was demonstrating something or other on the board. He wrote a program in Java and it took about 15 lines. Someone said they could do it in 5 in Perl or something. The prof replied, “well I could do in one line of awk but that’s not the point…”

I’m watching the video now and Kernighan addresses exactly this point. He talks about using the right tool for the job, about matching only single patterns or else not using awk, the general propose nature of Python, and more.

As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding professionally for a long time, I can tell you without a shred of doubt that I am a far stronger software developer than I was five years ago. I was far stronger then than I was ten years ago. The list could go on, but then you’d realize I’m really old :)

Somehow I just learned about this company recently. I really enjoyed this post. I didn’t know much about supply chains before reading it and I don’t now I’d imagine but I know more than I did. It is written in a common sense and straightforward manner. I really identify with their values and I think they shine through here.

If I’m being entirely honest, I’m a software developer and I am not quite sure what they are selling. I wonder if their compute product compares to Amazon ECS, their storage to S3, and their networking to Amazon VPC. I am not entirely sure. I am new at my job and I would love to one day to convince my company to go with an ethical cloud provider but I believe that the agency required for such is still some long distance from my current position.

I signed up for their newsletter.

Finally a bit of fun by the author. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32513240

I don’t have anything to add, I just wanted to say thanks for this. It is one of my all-time favorite HackerNews posts.

It’s not new either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21169798

We used it at a job I had and it made sense for business continuity reasons. But it is centralizing the internet and they are the gatekeepers. Not a good thing

Somehow I thought they meant more. I’m sure my ISP is after all of my data but I’d rather them than CF. Upon rereading their claim I suspect it is just about IPs and hostnames. I can live with that. Also my browser uses DoH.

I’m confused by the first claim. Is it really true? I thought TLS prevented anyone from inspecting my traffic. Am I completely off base?

I’ve been typing for a long time, but I like taking notes by hand in a notebook. Just works well for me.

Can you please explain why this is an improvement over the parent comment solution?

I believe I will take this advice. Thanks for saying it.

Haha, I saw that as well, I was going to post that I expected a bit more from the Association for Computing Machinery (of all organizations), but it slowly loaded and I gave them a pass.

Indeed, and you are touching on a subject I think about regularly: I don’t know first-hand what most engineering disciplines are like, but I believe that much of software development is not engineering at all. Instead it is slapdash and haphazard. Codebases very frequently grow by accretion rather than design as convoluted patches are laid on top of already byzantine systems. There is often little forethought; rarely is serious consideration given to the maintainability, soundness, and security of the work we do, let alone the consequences of it to society at large.

I believe that software engineering is possible; I believe that I have seen it done and taken part in it. But in general, a scrappy, pivoting startup does not embrace anything approaching engineering practices. I wish this were more accepted and I think we can start by calling it software development instead of software engineering.

Our industry is still in its infancy but it has a huge impact on society. I would like to see more engineering in the industry, but I feel a very short-sighted approach to maximizing profit precludes this. I fear that until we have more death and more loss incurred by poor development practices it will not be the norm to practice true software engineering.

Thank you for bringing up this point.

:)

Hear hear.

On an unrelated side note, I don’t post my public twitter handle on this account’s profile page, but I did on the account that bears my real name. Some years ago you followed me on twitter and were to date the only person from HN to have done so. In gratitude, I followed you back, and I have been duly rewarded by your engaging content and your explanations of the ins and outs of auth. I particularly enjoyed your ELI5 thread on oauth. I have an appreciation for DevRel I would not developed had I not been reading your tweets.

To come back to the topic at hand: Tech is for the public good. Shout it from the rooftops!

I’ve never read this before and I’m glad you linked it. I read the short version and I really like it. I will peruse the full version at my leisure. It is immediately clear that not every software company follows these principles.

I am personally acquainted with some senior citizens who have sharp minds and continue to learn and grow (in some cases doing original academic research). I hope I continue to learn and grow well into my old age

It’s hard to have integrity when you are hurting for money. I am glad the poster was doing okay and was able to stand up for what they believed in

I am not through with it yet but this book has changed my life in a very positive way: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EH1OEO0/

Perhaps it could do the same for you.

I read a quote recently that I keep coming back to.

“Of human beings, none are good but all are sacred.”

Not presently per their FAQ.

> [...] The GitHub Copilot extension sends your comments and code to the GitHub Copilot service, and it relies on context, as described in Privacy below - i.e., file content both in the file you are editing, as well as neighboring or related files within a project. It may also collect the URLs of repositories or file paths to identify relevant context. The comments and code along with context are then used by OpenAI Codex to synthesize and suggest individual lines and whole functions.

- from https://github.com/features/copilot/#faq - see "How does GitHub Copilot work?"

Replying to myself to add some things I think are real boons to development:

- https://pvs-studio.com/en/blog/posts/ - I don't code in C or C++ but I love to read these posts with the limited understanding that I possess

- GitHub has another product which is good https://github.com/dependabot - similar in nature to Snyk, Renovate, etc.

- there was an HN thread yesterday about govulncheck which looks pretty nice as a Go-known-vulnerability-in-your-dependencies checker

- code review is invaluable

- continuous integration and a build that passes and expands to cover new bug cases is really helpful

I read the article and I have some skepticism. I think my skepticism is well-founded but it may well be the case that a machine will one day do my job. I don't believe that time is at hand, though.

First off, I don't see a link to the "HTTP server in JavaScript" task. It's really hard for me to place much faith in their conclusions when it's not even clear what the problem definition was.

Second, I believe that a lot of more senior developers and development managers who take secure development practices somewhat seriously will not be able or willing to use Copilot in any sort of proprietary setting. Here is a quote from the Copilot FAQ:

> [...] The GitHub Copilot extension sends your comments and code to the GitHub Copilot service, and it relies on context, as described in Privacy below - i.e., file content both in the file you are editing, as well as neighboring or related files within a project. It may also collect the URLs of repositories or file paths to identify relevant context. The comments and code along with context are then used by OpenAI Codex to synthesize and suggest individual lines and whole functions.

- from https://github.com/features/copilot/#faq - see "How does GitHub Copilot work?"

I believe this makes it simply a nonstarter in a lot of environments. I am wondering if there are a number of places that have restrictions on sharing their code with a third-party but don't know or don't care and so end up using Copilot anyway. I believe that short-sighted thinking like this is more prevalent in shops that have low-quality code, and I believe that the higher-quality the code, the less likely someone is to use Copilot, simply for the "I can't share my code, even if I use the most restrictive no-telemetry settings" reason. Give me a self-hosted Copilot, and I may try it out in anger.

Finally, I based some of my thinking on a recent Reddit /r/programming discussion of Copilot: https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/wsnend/since_g...

After reading those posts, and internalizing them with my own view of coding, I believe Copilot is not ready for my personal use. Again: licensing considerations aside (if you actually can feel comfortable putting them aside, see NoraCodes comment in this HN thread e.g.), it is simply a non-starter for anything proprietary in nature. I am also of the mind that any code that is of necessity very tedious to write is in dire need of real attention, most likely in the form of tests and quite possibly refactoring to reduce the boilerplate if at all possible. I believe in the value of linters and automated code analysis tools and in continuous integration that runs after every commit. Give me a self-hosted Copilot, and we'll have a real chance to see how it works out - until then it's not going to be a boon to programmers.

Something about that capture gave me a good chuckle.

> I'm a [Male] seeking [Everyone] between [18] and [45].

You have put a smile on my face today.