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keyserj

49 karma · joined August 18, 2023

Software developer, book reader, board gamer, cookie eater, contra dancer.

Building https://ameliorate.app to improve our ability to discuss, model, and understand problems.

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keyserj··on Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. an Experiment in Prototyping Productivity (1994) [pdf]
Does it say that the submission was sent back?

For the "suspicious" people, this seems to imply the code was final:

> It is significant that [people] were all surprised and suspicious when we told them that Haskell prototype P1 (see appendix B) is a complete tested executable program.

For the people critiquing "cleverness", that seems completely valid whether or not it's actual code or pseudocode.

keyserj··on Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. an Experiment in Software Prototyping Productivity [pdf]
I really like the idea of comparing languages in a real-ish scenario of development, written by independent expert-in-language developers! As a web dev, I'm particularly interested in the idea of this for comparing the various web frameworks (including "no framework").

Some thoughts on the experiment:

- To get a better idea of the impact of the language on authors' thought processes, it'd probably have to include submissions from more authors in each language. With just one (or so) submission per language, I could see there being variation in expertise.

- I'm curious to see what the documentation looks like here, that there's so much written in some of the submissions, and that the paper authors value it so highly. Is it used to explain what the code does, indicating potentially too-complex code, or is it explaining whys?

- In the "Lessons Learned" section, it's mentioned that other reviewers were not as impressed with Haskell. I'm curious if their reactions were included in the evaluation - to me, these reactions would reduce the success for the understandability (and learnability?) criterion. The paper authors seem to have written this off as "If functional languages are to become more widely used, various sociological and psychological barriers must be overcome".

keyserj··on My second year without a job
I'm in Illinois, my bronze marketplace plan was $247/mo this year, and the coverage was good (for what I used at least). 2025 plans look to be going up $50/mo or so which is annoying. Still a good chunk to have to pay, but nowhere near as bad as your situation.

Makes me curious how much marketplace costs vary per state?

In any case, as another person pointed out, the ACA plans also provide very high premium credits for low income households, covering up to ~80% of the costs (from what I've seen). But this also varies by state, I think.

keyserj··on How to Take Good Decisions?
I'm a big fan of the decision matrix, where you boil down a decision into options and criteria, then can score how important each criterion is and how well each option fulfills the criterion. I think it helps provide a way to make your intuitions a little more concrete, and to start reasoning about them.

Here's a very simple decision matrix web app https://www.ruminate.io/.

I'm also building a tool for analyzing problems, which includes functionality for a decision matrix: https://ameliorate.app/. Most of it centers around clarifying causes and effects of problems/solutions, which can also help you grasp a situation. Here's an example of a decision I've made with the tool for picking which ORM to use for building the tool itself: https://ameliorate.app/examples/ORM?view=Tradeoffs+scored+as....

keyserj··on Svelte 5 Released
I don't have a strong opinion on the whole, but as someone who's been building a diagramming app for 2+ years, I've found react-flow to be the most solid free & open-source node-based diagram component, by far. At least in terms of quantity/quality of features and UX/DX. Though admittedly I haven't thoroughly looked at alternatives in about a year.

It basically singlehandedly convinced me that the ecosystem was worth going with react when I started my project, despite really enjoying svelte.

keyserj··on FDA approves a novel drug for schizophrenia
Do you have a source that suggests that mental illness/drugs do not contribute to becoming homeless?

> 21% [1] of homeless have a serious mental illness that predates their living situation

This seems to suggest that mental illness does lead to homelessness. I would agree that financial strain is a major cause of homeless, but it seems likely that this is because it leads to other behaviors that then lead to homelessness. And those behaviors are probably not exclusively caused by financial strain.

Additionally, from the conclusion of your first link (my italics added for emphasis):

> SAMHSA utilizes its national surveys and grantee data to create effective programs and services to prevent and end homelessness among people with mental and substance use disorders.

Secondly, I agree that housing is an important first step for fixing homelessness because it seems like a precondition for stability.

But this:

> For many, having a safe home is the only resource needed to get clean.

seems misguided to me. "Housing First" != exclusively housing. From your second link:

> we move people into permanent housing as quickly as possible and then provide them with supportive services (like case management, health care, substance use counseling, income coaching, and more)

keyserj··on Why YC went to DC
I've also had the opposite experience. My workplace plan through COBRA was around $500/mo, while only the highest-end marketplace plans were around that range. I took a middle-end plan at ~$300/mo.

To be fair I hadn't looked closely at what all my workplace plan covered, but I was doing physical therapy when I switched that wasn't covered (had to reach high deductible) on my workplace plan and was covered on my marketplace plan!

(I'm in Illinois)

keyserj··on The best way to have complex discussions?
> I would put visuals (images, videos, diagrams) at the center of that forum and overcome the biggest issue with visuals -- that they are often hard to make for many people.

> Rather than responding to comments, you could organize comments around the associated component of the problem as it is described visually.

> This might even help avoid defensive behavior since the problem is the focus rather than a particular person's comment.

These comments echo my feelings exactly. I think that building a structure that represents the concepts being discussed is critical to improving how we discuss and improve our understanding of complex issues.

I'm working on a tool[1] that hopes to make it easier for people to build and work with such a structure, though it's focused specifically in the context of solving problems, and it's still missing some important features for collaborative usage (comments are particularly relevant here, they're coming soon^TM). The core ideas[2] seem to align with your comments, though the tool further distinguishes auxiliary concepts (questions, facts, sources) from primary ones (problems, causes, effects, tradeoffs, solutions, etc).

[1] https://ameliorate.app/ [2] https://ameliorate.app/docs/getting-started/core-ideas

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