foo42

People interested in the history of the internet may enjoy the book "Where wizards stay up late". I'm sure there are other good books on it too (perhaps others can recommend below), but that's the one I read and enjoyed.

A side effect of the non-deterministic behaviour is that, unlike previous increases in abstraction, the high level prompts are not checked in to the code base and available to recreate their low level output on demand. Instead we commit the lower level output (ie code) and future revisions must operate on this output without the ability to modify the original high level instructions.

The tradeoff of higher velocity for less enjoyment may feel less welcome when it becomes the new baseline and the expectation of employers / customers. The excitement of getting a day's work done in an hour* (for example) is likely to fade once the expectation is to produce 8 of such old-days output per day.

I suspect it doesn't matter how we feel about it mind you. If it's going to happen it will, whether we enjoy the gains first or not.

* setting aside whether this is currently possible, or whether we're actually trading away more quality that we realise.

I write with my hand below the line to avoid smudging. A consequence of this is my pen meets the page at quite a shallow angle which I find is perfect for fountain pens but scratchy with ball points. These days I do very little hand writing and find my traditional pose (described above) causes hand cramps, but I don't know if that's specific to the odd way I write or if all poses would when so out of practice

you might want to check out eyg lang (eat your greens) as I think the idea is explicitly that syntax is user preferences and the ast is the _real_ language

you can get the same issue with icons too. The one that gives me anxiety is the microphone with a line through on a button. I _am_ muted or I should click to _mute_. If my kids are arguing in the background and it's an important call it can feel like a high stakes thing to get wrong and often times it only becomes clear what state I'm in by toggling a few times. Does the icon change to a mic without a line when I click or does the previously shown mic with a line now get coloured in, what does _that_ mean?

you can do anything at Zombocom!

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For me, using a keyboard with more keys around the thumbs and configurable keymaps with layers solves this. I have space, return and esc all easily accessible on my thumbs and my most used punctuation across the easily reached keys (such as home row) on a layer, also activated with my thumb.

fwiw I use a moonlander but many keyboards could work equally well I'm sure

curious if you have any more details on your hacked up smart dehumidifier?

what the heck has skin pigment to do with anything?

Thought this was about the language learning app https://yakk.app/ for a brief moment looming at the URL!

I've been considering trying to get to a similar result, but considering making my actual blog _be_ a (minimal) ActivityPub sever with a si gle user/actor such that posting to the blog is publishing an ActivityPub post, and have replies to that post coming directly into the blogs own inbox, then show up as comments.

Anyone else weighed up the two approaches, I'm still on the fence tbh.

This is one of those moments where you come across a tool _just_ at the right moment. I have a task for which this will be perfect

counterpoint: when you visit a site, do you want to be surprised and delighted, or do you want something predictable you already know how to navigate? Or perhaps I lack the flare to spot that as a false dichotomy

Previously I've always been very skeptical of rosy pictures of a possible future where "everyone has an ai that's there to accomplish tasks for them" - given that I imagined such ai (if it ever came to exist) being run by the usual big tech who have their own incentives not so cleanly aligned with our own.

Right now, with the availability of open weights for cutting-edge models, it feels like this wave of technological advance is pleasantly decentralised however. I can download and run a model and tinker with things which at least feel like the seeds of such a future, where I _might_ be able to build things with my own interests at heart.

But what happens if these models stop being shared, and how likely is that? Reading about the vast quantities of compute deployed to train them, replicating the successes of the main players with a community of volunteers just seems an order of magnitude less achievable than traditional OSS efforts like Linux. This wave feels so tied to massive scale for its success, what do we do if big-tech stop handing out models?

This is exactly why I (native English speaker) frequently trip over this spelling.

I worry about 2 main pitfalls for junior devs, one more tractable than the other.

Firstly there is the double edged sword of AI when learning. The easy path is to use it as a way to shortcut learning, to get the juice without the pressing, skipping the discomfort of not knowing how to do something. But that's obviously skipping the learning too. The discomfort is necessary. On the flip side, if one uses an llm as a mentor who has all the time in the world for you, you can converse with it to get a deeper understanding, to get feedback, to unearth unknown unknowns etc. So there is an opportunity for the wise and motivated to get accelerated learning if they can avoid the temptation of a crutch.

The less tractable problem is hiring. Why does a company hire junior devs? Because there is a certain proportion of work which doesn't take as much experience and would waste more senior developers time. If AI takes away the lower skill tasks previously assigned to juniors, companies will be less inclined to pay for them.

Of course if nobody invests in juniors, where will the mid and senior developers of tomorrow come from? But that's a tragedy of the commons situation, few companies will wish to invest in developers who are likely to move on before they reap the rewards.

perhaps the "attacks" relate to the condescending tone with which you relate your superior skills.

I think most people's amazement with lsp relates to the practical benefits of such a project _not_ being thrown away but taken that last 10% (which is 90% of the work) to make it suitable for so many use cases and selling people on the idea of doing so.

Perfect timing, I've been playing around with winnow this week. it'll be good to see how others are using it

In the UK we have various types of pedestrian crossing, but they're an optional convenience. You can use them, or you can find a safe place and time to cross yourself.

impressive! On a practical note, do you have any tips for fitting these projects in while being a parent?

There's a good episode of the "Developer voices" podcast with Ginger Bill about Odin.

(There are many other good episodes too - it's one of the best developer podcasts about imo)

I've always disliked how my tongue feels when eating pineapple (so I rarely do) this explains it!

Thanks for the recommendation. I've enjoyed a lot of Sanderson books (although not all of them clicked with me) and I'm always looking for a new podcast

I never knew anything about this. I love discovering this sort of thing!

fwiw I refuse to work on such things, as in sure many others in HN do. It probably doesn't make a difference, but I can sleep better at night at least

I believe the whole project, and the talk of stores in particular, is humour. At least that's how I read it. I appreciate not everyone has the same sense of humour so that may have passed you by.

not OP but for me it's Live Share for remote pairing. I can barely function without vim-mode enabled but have never fully made the jump to (n)vim.

I have a t420 in my drawer I've been considering doing this with. Years ago before it was old I used to dual boot it with mint and the power management wasn't great. How's your experience been? mind you that was with original spinning drive. what spec SSD did you install? sorry for all the questions.