nathan_douglas

I think the bigger problem is that we're not meaningfully grappling with the reality of what it takes to replace legacy government systems.

Another grain of sand on the beach of things that we're completely unequipped to deal with, I guess.

One of the interesting things about this is that, from my perspective, VistA's sort of a mesh of servers rather than the hierarchy we might expect from a federal system. Perhaps that's because of the complex interplay between federal and state and local laws. But anyway, there's probably a "station" for VistA near you that serves your area, and that's very similar (though not identical) to the "station" in the next neighboring area/metropolis/state/whatever.

But weirdly it seemed like the plan to roll this out was to replace all of the functionality at a given VistA station, rather than to do a strangler fig sort of thing and work on supplanting VistA's functionality in a specific functional area (whether locally or nationally). I don't know if that's because of the aforementioned complexity of laws, or the complexity of how the system(s) is/are administered, or other reasons that would elude me.

It's, uh, it's a fun situation.

Thank you for your comment. I had a very nontraditional path to engineering, even in an era of self-taught programmers, and I feel a lot of pain and despair and bitterness and, uh, a vicarious feeling of disappointment, I guess... so discussing this sort of journey does me some good.

> I feel like I learned "Discrete Math", but in the sense that all the lessons were discrete and I couldn't draw connections between them.

Very reasonable takes. I think you're spot on. I do have a lot of trouble with the abstractness and disjointedness of it. I'm hoping that repetition will improve it. So far I'm still struggling with the same things I struggled with in college - combinatorics, for whatever reason, just seems to slide right out of my brain.

By "modularity" I meant that I could squeeze in 10-15 minutes here or there without having to commit multiple hours to a single concept, and that I could take a day off without destroying anything, but that's probably connected to the "discreteness" you mention, without a holistic, oceanic kind of cohesion or connectedness.

I'm actually working on a project now, an educational site that's kind of along these lines but focused on areas of CS I've always struggled with - Lambda Calculus, Type Theory, Lisp, that sort of thing. I think I have some good ideas. I hope I come up with more, because I definitely want to build a rich mesh of knowledge rather than a catalog of disconnected facts and tools without any underlying meaning.

    Location: Ohio, USA
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to Relocate: Complicated (see below)
    Technologies: Pretty much anything DevOpsy/Platformy/Infra-y, Backend-y
    Résumé/CV: https://bitterbridge.github.io/resume/resume.pdf
    Email: strong.dot4349@tenesm.us
    GitHub: https://github.com/ndouglas
    Homelab: https://clog.goldentooth.net/

I'm spending a lot of time outside of work tuning up my math skills with the eventual goal of getting a PhD in Complexity Science, CS, or pure math. Careerwise, I'd love to get into HPC or MLOps/AI/ML research (not necessarily GenAI).

If you're seeking a stable guy who'll grow and develop with your organization (I've never been employed less than four years), I might be the guy.

EDIT: Nice, got a scam email... en français. Thanks for the opportunity to practice :P

I feel the same about Inform 6 vs 7. I wrote some very simple games in Inform 6 thirty or so years ago, just for personal amusement, but never did a thing with Inform 7.

I guess I'm skeptical of "literate programming" in general, where I have to learn a special way of phrasing English just to interact with some magical process that I don't and can't understand... all so I can avoid typing a few square brackets and semicolons. I think there's an underlying symmetry to the conceptual structure of interactive fiction and the way it looks in Inform 6 that is much easier to reason about... but eh. I'm a couple decades late to the argument.

A6 is hiring an Enterprise Engineering Strategist! Pay's $207,132.

https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/agilesix/jobs/7518746003

Agile Six is a people-first, remote-work company that serves shoulder-to-shoulder with federal agencies to find innovative, human-centered solutions. We build better by putting people first. We are animated by our core values of Purpose, Wholeness, Trust, Self-Management and Inclusion. We deliver our solutions in autonomous teams of self-managed professionals (no managers here!) who genuinely care about each other and the work. We know that’s our company’s purpose – and that we can only achieve it by supporting a culture where people feel valued, self-managed, and love to come to work. *TL;DR*: We're a federal contractor.

As an Enterprise Engineering Strategist at Agile Six, you will leverage your deep expertise in software engineering, emerging technologies, and applied AI to strengthen and evolve engineering practices across the organization. This role combines hands-on project work with enterprise-level coaching, focusing on how AI-informed tools, patterns, and approaches are redefining what it means to design, build, and deliver software. You will help Agile Six navigate this transformation – guiding teams as engineering roles, workflows, and required skills evolve – and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of engineering and applied AI practice at Agile Six.

Feel free to drop me a line at strong.dot4349@tenesm.us if you'd like more information about what it's like working at A6 (it's pretty great). I can't exactly refer you if I don't know you and haven't worked with you, but I can make sure your résumé gets seen by fresh eyes.

    Location: Ohio, USA
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to Relocate: No
    Technologies: Pretty much anything DevOpsy/Platformy/Infra-y, Backend-y
    Résumé/CV: https://bitterbridge.github.io/resume/resume.pdf
    Email: strong.dot4349@tenesm.us
    GitHub: https://github.com/ndouglas
    One of my innumerable projects: https://clog.goldentooth.net/

I'd love to get into HPC or AI/ML research (not Gen AI). If you're seeking a stable guy who'll grow and develop with your organization (I've never been employed less than four years), I might be the guy.

I wish I still had one around, just to degauss it occasionally.

I've been meaning to get back into it and just ask ChatGPT to straighten me out on a few things, e.g. "am I barking up the wrong tree or is this what he wants, but don't spoil me."

> Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new products and production methods replacing old ones in a never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic growth, which results in a better standard of living, health and quality of life for people around the globe.

> However, this was not always the case. Quite the opposite – stagnation was the norm throughout most of human history. Despite important discoveries now and again, which sometimes led to improved living conditions and higher incomes, growth always eventually levelled off.

...

> The link seems to be broken though.

Yeah, I'm a world-class infra engineer. smdh. Changed how the DNS record was created but didn't push my changes so they were reverted by a scheduled job facepalm

Think it's back now...

I'm rebuilding my homelab [1] too, actually, but deprioritizing it while I stave off a wee spot o' burnout.

I'm excited to see that you're building on Talos; I am too! I used to use CoreOS back in the day, like 8-9 years ago or smth, on PXE-booted VMWare VMs, and I've always missed that cleanliness.

That's a large part of why I'm rebuilding right now - I based everything around Ansible + Terraform, and that's workable of course but working iteratively on a homelab leaves so much cruft around, can lead to incidental complexity, etc etc etc.

Anyway, I'm pumped to keep reading!

[1] https://clog.goldentooth.net/

    Location: Ohio, USA
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: DevOps/SRE/Infra/GitOps stuff, cloud (mostly AWS), backend (mostly Node and Python), a little embedded/lowlevel (mostly C and a few different assembly languages), Rust (favorite language, relegated to hobby/project work). Jack-of-all-trades except Java.
    Résumé/CV: https://bitterbridge.github.io/resume/resume.pdf
    Email: On résumé or in my profile.

I'd love to get into ML if there's a scientific/research slant, e.g. simulations, optimizations, etc. I'm very interested in HPC and have played a little with Slurm/Lmod/Singularity, but haven't managed to break in. I want to do work that benefits humanity, or at least a nontrivial subset thereof.

My major lifelong fascinations center around artificial life, computability, computational social sciences, GOFAI, etc, but I tend to shift focus a lot and do a lot of deep dives into random spots on the CS/IT landscape.

My weaknesses: in-depth knowledge; I'm really not an SME of anything. I haven't scaled things to millions of requests per minute. I don't spend time grinding LeetCode. I'm probably not suited for early-stage startups, either temperamentally or professionally; I lean toward sustainability, pragmatism, and care, eating my own dogfood, and sticking around long enough to learn from my own mistakes. I tend to write too much.

My strengths: I'm curious, easy to get along with, focused on continual improvement, and probably some kind of workaholic. I'm a good researcher and I've developed some good instincts.

I enjoy instruments that, for whatever reason, seem to have been discarded by progress - viola da gamba, mandolincello, etc. It's amazing how rich all of our musical traditions are, that we have so many delightful variations on so many lovely ideas.

Or do you mean that optimization by definition must include intent, and evolution as a mindless process has no intentionality?

I'm just not sure what you're driving at.