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jilles

432 karma · joined October 6, 2014

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jilles··on Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader
I did the exact same. Installed CrossPoint on it and when I want to grab my phone, I read a page in my X4 Pro. It's quite nice.
jilles··on Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage
No but you can use s3fs

(I have my Calibre library in iCloud Drive, but if I wasn't inside the Apple Ecosystem I'd use R2)

jilles··on Do your own writing
The author articulates perfectly what I think too. I’d recommend for everyone to read Writing to Learn by William Zinsser. It’s an incredible book showing that you can learn anything by writing about it.

With an LLM doing all the writing for you, you learn close to nothing.

jilles··on Protobuffers Are Wrong (2018)
The best way to get your point across is by starting with ad-hominem attacks to assert your superior intelligence.
jilles··on Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts
I fed the same prompt to Deepseek:

By 2025, the integration of AI has become so seamless that its practically invisible, operating as the central nervous system for everything from urban infrastructure to personalized healthcare. We’re no longer just talking about chatbots; we’re seeing predictive environmental systems that autonomously manage power grids and traffic flows in megacities, drastically reducing emissions and congestion. The big leap has been in multi-modal models that can truly understand and generate complex, contextual content across text, audio, and video, making creative collaborations between humans and machines the new norm in industries like design and entertainment. Its a shift from tools to partners.

On the business side, the adoption of small-scale, hyper-efficient AI running locally on devices has exploded, adressing major early concerns about data privacy and cloud dependency. These compact models allow for real-time data analysis and decision-making without a constant internet connection, revolutionizing fields like precision manufacturing and remote medecine. This democratization means even small startups have access to powerful AI capabilites, leveling the playing field in unexpected ways and fostering a huge wave of innovation that was previously concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants.

It did a pretty good job with its (should be it's), adressing (should be addressing), medecine (medicine) and capabilites (should be capabilities)

jilles··on You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
This is really well written. Great read.
jilles··on Bear is now source-available
I didn’t know this was a Django application. Love that. Totally understand the author’s point of view, too.
jilles··on A blog does not need “analytics”
I enjoy looking at my blogs analytics. It does make my day better knowing that people find my writing useful and read my posts. Do I need it? Probably not. But I don’t “need” a blog either. I just like it.
jilles··on That boolean should probably be something else
* led status: on, off, non-responsive * button status: idle, pressing, pressed

I'm with you by the way, but you can often think of a way to use enums instead (not saying you should).

jilles··on A mind–reading brain implant that comes with password protection
It very much is a brainer
jilles··on The Effect of Noise on Sleep
There might be some other factors in that situation that prevent one from having a restful night.
jilles··on Gemini CLI
Anyone else think it's interesting all these CLIs are written in TypeScript? I'd expect Google to use Go.
jilles··on Writing documentation for AI: best practices
It's similar for writing code. Suddenly people are articulating their problems to the LLM and breaking it down in smaller sub-problems to solve....
jilles··on Snorting the AGI with Claude Code
How does this compare with Apples or Orange?
jilles··on OpenAI: Scaling PostgreSQL to the Next Level
I've been using the Django ORM for years and it feels like an amazing piece of software.

But recently I started using sqlc. Which turns my queries into Go (simplification). I think this is actually the sweet spot between ORM and rawdogging SQL.

jilles··on Zod 4
When I see a repository with many files "updated 4 years ago" I'm usually inclined to think it's abandoned.
jilles··on Greek Woman Divorces Husband After ChatGPT 'Predicted' He Would Cheat on Her
Not sure if this is a controversial opinion but if the wife decides to divorce the husband based on what ChatGPT says, perhaps the husband is better off.
jilles··on The best programmers I know
Most projects should follow diataxis and we’d be in a lot less pain
jilles··on Show HN: JavaScript PubSub in 163 Bytes
Bingo! Having tons of `CustomEvents` with arbitrary handlers gets unwieldy. One way we "solved" this is by only allowing custom events in a `events.ts` file and document them pretty extensively.
jilles··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)
PortfolioSlice. It’s a website where you can share your investment portfolio and its asset allocations. Then other people can just follow that with an easy to use cash divider.

https://portfolioslice.com/

It currently just has my portfolio that I use (Innovation and Global Growth) and some other generated ones. I wanted to try out SvelteKit and Svelte to replace my Google Sheet into something cooler. Not sure if I want to monetize this.

jilles··on The Frontend Treadmill
I've been doing React for about 10 years. Just started playing with Svelte 5 a few days ago.

It's so simple to work with. Built a simple stock allocation app and what surprised me most was the bundle size... 9kb (gzip). That's better than any other framework I am aware of. That's even smaller than htmx which is somewhat "anti-js"

jilles··on A 10x Faster TypeScript
If you have to explain why something is not ambiguous it is by definition ambiguous.
jilles··on Deploy from local to production (self-hosted)
I did the same. Really enjoyed Coolify but at some point there was too much magic.

I’m now using Dokku and can’t imagine using something else.

jilles··on We replaced our React front end with Go and WebAssembly
Kotlin also has amazing concurrency support. Plus you get the additional benefit of the entire Java ecosystem.

I wish it got more love.

jilles··on Modern JavaScript for Django developers
I don't think Alpine.js and HTMX qualify as "Modern JavaScript". There is an approach that is rarely talked about: render templates in Django and hydrate using your favorite JavaScript framework.

For example the Django template renders a <template id="abc"><button disabled>open modal!</button></template>. Then your JavaScript bundle can "hydrate". For example ReactDOM.render(<OpenModalButton />, '#abc'').

You just have to be diligent to make sure that the template and your front-end have somewhat similar markup to not have layout shift. It's really not that hard and works for a lot of use-cases.

Not saying this is a golden bullet, but you should be able to figure out which parts are static and just render them using Django templates. The dynamic parts you can render/hydrate using whatever front-end framework.

I built a Django app with very little JavaScript and only using HTMX and it was... alright. It works. I can say "no fancy build step!" but I totally miss the testability of modern frontend. Creating an image upload component was a pain. I don't think I would use HTMX again and instead go for the hybrid approach I described earlier.

jilles··on How to delete your Facebook account
This is the only thing keeping me from deleting my Facebook account. I recently moved and wanted to sell some things. Listed about 8 things on Craigslist and got some shady replies.

I listed the same 8 things on Facebook Marketplace and sold everything within days...

jilles··on The Future of Htmx
With the BeautifulSoup tests I can run 1000s of tests in seconds. Cypress/Playwright are wonderful for e2e tests, but not comparable to simple unit tests you'd have in React/Vue. I find that the BeautifulSoup tests are a decent middle ground.
jilles··on The Future of Htmx
I've created a Django application using HTMX. Usually I'd jump to React or Vue. It was a great exercise and I can see where HTMX would be a great fit.

1. If you consider yourself a "backend developer" only and want to write the minimum amount of JS/TS.

2. If your application is simple. Yes you can do more complicated interactivity with oob swaps, but you end up with more complexity than you chose HTMX for.

For my next projects, I will still use Django but with React/Vue for pieces that need interactivity. As an example in my HTMX app, I wanted to add a profile image uploader. Lots of great frontend libraries exist to resize / modify your image before even uploading it to your server.

Finally, HTMX is just not testable the same way modern frontend libraries are. I've managed to write some decent tests using beautifulsoup, but it's night and day compared to vitest or jest.

jilles··on Rails for everything
If you replace the title with Django it still works. I’m doing the same as the author, but with Django.
jilles··on Writes and Write-Nots
If you haven’t read William Zinsser “Writing to learn” you’re doing yourself a disservice
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