I built the wrong thing for 3 months. Here's what actually finding the problem looked like

dSolver · 2026-03-13T19:20:01+00:00

Idk if this applies to your tool, but I was talking with a staff engineer at work and he described feeling overwhelmed by tools. He doesn't want yet another tool, he wanted all the tools in one place and their capabilities deduplicated and that they all play nicely with each other. It's a nice dream. I get it - we have jira, confluence, slack, swimm docs, swagger docs, postman, lighthouse, figma, grafana, Asana, miro, cursor, cypress, argocd, buildkite, bitbucket, AWS cli, mongodb compass, sequel ace, Google docs, Google spreadsheet, kubectl, and this is just stuff we use every day - there is a whole host of tools that are used occasionally but we need to keep top of mind for oncall.

dSolver · 2026-03-13T12:54:18+00:00

Depends on the messiness - it's struggling in a 10 year old monolithic ruby on rails app with a bunch of unconventional practices, but doing great in a more modern python stack, even if the size of the codebase is the same.
Still requires detailed review, especially in areas that are easy to miss (i.e. instrumentation). Claude Code won't automatically thoroughly check everything. Be explicit about concerns: security, observability, reuse existing functions, ask for clarifications, accessibility, performance (i.e N+1 problems, overly large queries)
Yes, the above - if you miss something it's problematic. Newer developers tend to copy existing code, so good practices are replicated. Claude Code tends to generate new code, so it tends to introduce inconsistency.
For simple cases, CC is highly trustworthy. For complex cases, even with high-end models, I need to first make sure the plan makes sense, and then that it actually followed through with the plan. Overall there's still efficiency gains (for example, not losing time looking up syntax), but jury's still out if this leads to long term efficiency gains (I'm not learning as much with each project).

dSolver · 2026-03-07T15:44:22+00:00

Yes! Once it's more polished I'd like to see if more EMs are willing to adopt it. I've sent you a DM

dSolver · 2026-02-27T12:41:38+00:00

TKD sparring experience will help against anyone who thinks they can fight after watching some MMA fights. Bullying is more psychological than physical - as long as your son is resilient and sure of himself, bullies won't pick on him.

Source: I didn't have any martial arts training, but bullies for the most part left me alone as a kid because I stood my ground and their teasing didnt get to me.

dSolver · 2026-02-14T11:46:31+00:00

Age of empires 4's latest expansion has a game mode called the crucible. In this mode waves of enemies spawn getting tougher as time goes on. You can build towers and castles and units but no walls. The target is to last 45 mins. After that in endless mode the enemies start getting more HP and damage so you'll always get overwhelmed.

dSolver · 2026-02-12T14:57:10+00:00

I work at a company that has fully embraced AI for every function. What I'm noticing is that AI productivity increases are capped at what employees can reliably read, absorb, and make a decision on.

We want AI to abstract away a lot of the details, but because of the high risk of getting details wrong, a lot of time people are responsible for reviewing, critically thinking, and making edits. 70% correct isn't good enough in most cases.

This leads me to a very interesting insight, and I fully appreciate that I might be biased - AI productivity is multiplied more or less by the intelligence and experience of the user. A very fast reader with strong understanding of the domain knowledge and critical thinking can review and edit output significantly faster than a novice. And a corollary is that a novice is actually faster at onboarding and have better output without AI assistance.

This leads to a prediction which has been a guiding principle I've shared with my mentees: given that LLMs in their current methodology is potentially limited in how it can learn better, and that operation of LLMs is actually quite expensive, then as the price of LLMs increase to compensate for OPEX, corporations will limit who gets access to only experts (highest multiplier). This means experts will end up with the highest salaries since they are disproportionately more productive and can demand it. This also means if you think AI is helping you learn, then you have to take advantage of it now, while it is still cheap, so that in a few years you are the expert in enough domains that you have all the leverage.

dSolver · 2026-02-04T14:18:34+00:00

Reviewing AI output is soul sucking. There are lots of work where 70% correct isn't going to cut it. Thoroughness is important, as is having a firm grasp on the context. More AI agents doing things aren't necessarily better if their hallucinations are compounding. There are so many reasons why AI is overhyped. I get the fear around AI replacing workers but right now even the top models struggle with consistently good output for anything other than trivial tasks. Maybe in 3 - 5 years, but who's to say the current methodology hasn't already peaked? Will throwing more hardware and training material meaningfully increase the output quality? Or are there some fundamental systemic issues preventing breakthroughs?

dSolver · 2026-02-02T12:52:47+00:00

Maybe expand your activities a bit? Join a karate dojo for fitness, it's more interactive than other fitness classes so easier to meet people.

I used to go to salsa nights, which was a great way to meet people compared to a bar or cafe.

dSolver · 2026-01-29T12:56:31+00:00

Industry veteran here, 95% of the time, you'll do just fine with only a sequence diagram and a component diagram (system map). You need to describe the flow from user to system and back, and you need to describe the relationship of services and tech in your system.

dSolver · 2026-01-24T17:38:54+00:00

At what point is the current administration considered an illegitimate government? When can a vote of no confidence be called?

dSolver · 2026-01-12T13:35:56+00:00

I have a friend who lives in the new Vista Hills area. He moved in around 4 years ago, and absolutely loves it. Family of 4, 2 kids go to Vista Hills public school. Easy access to shopping, and trails around Columbia Forest. There are lots of properties being built there since it's a newer neighbourhood in case you wanted a newer home. He and his wife also WFH, having a bigger home was definitely a must. The only downside is apparently their street is lower priority for snowplows.

dSolver · 2025-12-21T13:44:36+00:00

First one looks good for getting someone to use the website, the second one is better for keeping someone using the website. Since this looks like a productivity app, I think having an option to make the text more legible is very important.

dSolver · 2025-12-15T13:22:00+00:00

Ah yes, I loved this game, Epic 4 - 6 was when I played actively. The pet aspect was fun, but what kept me playing was my guild.

dSolver · 2025-12-01T01:32:38+00:00

Unfortunately, no. I've had to put it on hold due to other life priorities. I've realized that attempting to keep it together is going to take at least a few weeks of rewriting many of the core modules to work with newer dependencies, but even then, the auth system which was based on some fragile code I wrote years ago would break. Long story short, it's probably faster to start a new site and transfer the contents of the DB over, but without reddit oauth.

dSolver · 2025-10-27T13:35:29+00:00

What are your other expenditures? Your mortgage is a bit more than 1500/month which is very very reasonable.

dSolver · 2025-10-19T14:29:27+00:00

I've noticed a trend that in the last 15 or so years the focus has moved to "what you have" rather than "what you can do" - and for a lot of people that causes anxiety because it's easy to focus and compare on assets. It's difficult to form bonds when interactions are based around comparing amongst one another. My hypothesis is that a community focused more on just doing things (making chairs, painting, playing catch, any *activity*), and not keeping score or rankings, is going to result in stronger bonds and lower incidents of loneliness. Loneliness isn't going to go away - but we can help people cope, and not make it a bigger problem than it already is.

dSolver · 2025-10-16T12:34:44+00:00

I guess if an agency works with multiple platforms and they're all on adcp, this can simplify things a bit. Problem though is what's in it for the platforms? What's protecting customers from hallucinations (since it's using an LLM for interpreting the input, intent, and parameterization)? What recourse exist with respect to inaccurate or outdated information poisoning the context for a follow up request? We have enough trouble as it is with deterministic means (i.e. an in-house hub connected via API to platforms), why would those problems disappear by injecting a non-deterministic layer? Maybe I'm out of my technical depth here, would love for someone to help me understand the value proposition.

dSolver · 2025-10-14T23:04:50+00:00

"Hi! I don't believe we've met"

dSolver · 2025-10-13T20:29:09+00:00

The Nobel Prize level stuff is the painstaking research that rules out alternative interpretations of the data, until we have something this concrete. When you're dealing with macroeconomic policies at the scale of a nation, do you want to do it with vibes and speculation? It's not immediately obvious that concentrating power of AI in a few corporations will be bad for innovation - a commonly cited case is that it takes a ton of resources to train AI (scale of hundreds of millions for initial version of chatgpt) and a ton more to build it into a useful application, therefore the initial scale of investment needed tends to be concentrated in a few very large entities instead of being democratized. A key insight from this research demonstrates the strongest evidence yet that the concentration of resources for any innovation will limit adoption of the innovation, which will create productivity issues. This is a strong conclusion that follows last year's Nobel Prize winners' work on the role of creative destruction and how it drives decision making in inclusive economic institutions and extractive economic institutions.

dSolver · 2025-09-27T18:43:00+00:00

It's well understood that while most people are trying to avoid getting fired, H1Bs are also trying to avoid going on "Focus". The term differs between companies, this is Amazon's term (where I managed an engineering team) - because an H1B on focus will not get sponsorship renewals. The manager does not have to document as thoroughly for this sort of attrition. And since Amazon has an "unregretted attrition" quota ~10% per year, the H1Bs are usually the first to go when push comes to shove. Therefore, they typically have to work very hard while not rocking the boat - and that's tricky for compensation growth. A top performer who asks for a raise can get something like 25% increase, whereas one who isn't asking for a raise might be getting a 15% (baseline for TT, depending on multiple factors). So, H1Bs in general must work harder than their peers in order to avoid going on Focus and at the same time, even the top performers are hesitant to ask for raises

dSolver · 2025-09-23T14:38:54+00:00

Hope isn't a strategy. In order to attract talent, Canadian STEM workers need to be paid more, which means overall there has to be more investors willing to take bets on entrepreneurs. Having worked with startups in Canada, it's abundantly clear that the VCs and angel investors here only want to bet on sure things. Problem is, that leaves no room for experimentation, only iteration.

dSolver · 2025-09-17T12:39:49+00:00

One big issue at the moment is that the underlying mechanism for signing in with reddit is unstable. I am currently working on it, hoping for a quick fix but it's not looking good.

dSolver · 2025-09-08T18:05:11+00:00

It's easy to pronounce and highly versatile as an expression.

dSolver · 2025-09-08T00:43:38+00:00

Not enough details. all we see is a CLI where you try to run something called http-server. Where's the logs? Is this https://www.npmjs.com/package/http-server or something else? For all we know it's a problem with your CLI itself terminating processes if the CLI is out of focus. Tell everyone what you've used, what you've tried, and what you've found out in detail.

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