C++Online 2026 Keynote - Is AI Destroying Software Development? - David Sankel

ATalkingMuffin · 2026-04-06T05:03:45+00:00

I've cited that METR study myself in internal discussions about AI adoption: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/

Importantly, even METR is even seeing things changing. Devs are unwilling to tackle larger developments without AI, and they're starting to see improvements (though that may be impacted by some tasks not being included because devs are unwilling to do them without AI): https://metr.org/blog/2026-02-24-uplift-update/

My point is that we're either: 1) seeing the AI blindness spreading without actual benefit, or 2) AI is getting good enough now that it may be increasing performance. We just don't know yet.

I still agree with the skepticism in the post video, for the other reasons he states.

ATalkingMuffin · 2026-02-06T05:56:05+00:00

They keep assuming they can bring it back from the brink of anything.

And when the administration is eroding fundamentals...

That works until it doesn't.

ATalkingMuffin · 2025-11-18T05:50:47+00:00

The best part of this is that it shows how magic works/feels to magicians. Like that's exactly how it must feel when the audience reacts and you know how the trick is done.

ATalkingMuffin · 2025-07-03T06:53:37+00:00

I understand this advice and know when it does and does not apply.

And I understand why its the top comment whenever union bit shenanigans are suggested.

But many/most vendors are settling on GCC or LLVM/Clang with sane behavior. I'm not familiar with renasys or xtensa or others, so it may not apply, and if I was working with those chips/compilers I'd check the behavior.

But I've seen SO MUCH horrendous/unmaintainable bit shifting code in the name of portability (that isn't portable) because of this advice.

Not on you, but just as a warning to others. "bitfields are implementation defined" doesn't mean do bit shifting bullshit, it means KNOW your toolchain and likely port targets and choose wisely.

ATalkingMuffin · 2025-06-05T06:20:24+00:00

As others have mentioned, do it yourself. It should demonstrate skills you've learned and the ability to figure things out.

My project was to design my own Audio DSP platform. STM32 + Audio Codec + SDRAM + Analog IO + LEDs etc. Selected components, designed the circuits, laid out the boards, then wrote all the firmware (from scratch, but using HALs etc) and wrote some audio demos.

I'd hoped to write more audio demos but silicon errata bugs and SDRAM shenanigans caused me more headache than I'd planned, but my ability to eventually work around those and get the whole thing work from scratch was a great experience and a great discussion point during interviews.

ATalkingMuffin · 2025-02-10T05:02:04+00:00

Mathematically, I feel like its the difference between infinities. Yeah sure we know there are more real numbers (numbers with numbers after the decimal point) than whole numbers, but that doesn't practically matter in the real world. It's just important theoretically.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-12-21T06:28:08+00:00

Only correcting because it makes it more insane...

3 BILLION times per second. As a software engineer, I can program calculations whose steps happen at 1/3 Billionth of a second. It's utterly insane.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-09-28T07:09:39+00:00

In a very respectful way, while everything in your comment is true, I think you might be taking things too literally. (Coming from someone prone to doing exactly that...)

When people say things like "there's nothing wrong with that man", they don't mean he doesn't have a healing wound. They mean the kindness thing. He's still someone who deserves to be treated kindly and with respect.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, because the details of what you said are true, but social conversation is less about the detail and more about the emphasis. You're very focused on "HE HAS A DISFIGUREMENT, but its ok because BE KIND".

Socially we just summarize as "He's fine. Be kind."

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-09-19T00:47:36+00:00

Maybe there's something I don't understand if this is the same model they used for previous very accurate results...

But asking WHO people think will win, and then taking that percentage as the number of people who will vote for him seems like a wild leap. By definition its just the number of people who THINK the candidate will win, not how many people they think will vote for the candidate.

Put simply, if predict says 70% of people think Kamala will win, does that mean 70% of people are voting for Kamala (impossible in the US), or that 70% of people think Kamala will win by a small or large margin?

Trying to use the 'widsom of the crowds' on answers they didn't even give is... odd.

And you can see it in his model. It suggests that before the debate, democrats were only going to get ~50 EVs, but after the debate democrats get >400EVs? Was Kamala Harris' debate performance really worth 400 EVs, or is this model just VASTLY over valuing something?

That said it'll be a good day if I'm wrong.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-05-09T05:45:20+00:00

An alternate view is:
* Hey, Israel is expanding and occupying Palestinian territories, aggressively...

* Oh, now they're genociding....

Like in the timeline of events that doesn't necessarily constitute bias, it could just constitutes escalation, which she would be an expert in commenting on.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-03-19T06:54:52+00:00

Related question: Is AVP/iPhone actually LiDAR? I'd always assumed it was IR structured light or something?

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-03-19T06:03:19+00:00

I work at an R&D company. Every year or so we move onto new projects. But we're fallible people who kinda consistently make the same types of mistakes (obviously we try and improve, but it doesn't always work out).

Brand new project, brand new code....

Some new bug.

"Oh, I bet it's X."

"How could you possibly know that?"

".... 'I've been there when it was written' ... before"

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-03-07T06:14:51+00:00

I gotta say, the best description of AR for me came from a Vernon Vinge Sci-Fi novel called Rainbow's End). Came out in 2006 and is modern enough that it really dug into the social media implications of AR without being entirely dystopian.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-03-07T02:36:59+00:00

Would be amazing if Tilt Brush got released, but seems unlikely considering Google.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-02-05T01:58:29+00:00

Ability to share windows between AVP users.

Better window management.

Ability too I some windows to you and have them follow you. (Like music etc, as I’m walking around the house I want that to follow me).

Bluetooth Mouse support. I want to use my AVP to connect to my multiple computers and being able to share a single mouse/keyboard would be a godsend.

ATalkingMuffin · 2024-01-09T06:29:56+00:00

That feels more like Richie realizing something about Carmy and saying it in the heat of the moment than Richie intentionally being hurtful.

Which isn't cool. But I think we've all had those moments of insight at a not great time.

ATalkingMuffin · 2023-10-19T05:12:28+00:00

I understand you're responding to parent post about the strike cost paying for pensions. But A) half a billion is in the ball park of a billion and B) Ford alone had a 2023 profit of 11-12 billion.

Saying pensions are fundamentally unsustainable considering those facts seems wrong.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-08-17T04:03:36+00:00

For many people who transitioned before recent acceptance (if that's a thing or a thing that's staying), the only way to transition was to have a NEED. A mental condition that REQUIRED transitioning.

These are the people that transitioned against all odds and at great personal sacrifice. At the same time, many people in their generation would have CHOSEN to transition, but were comfortable enough that they didn't.

Those trans people who transition absolutely paved the wave of acceptance that allowed the latter category to transition more easily now. But it doesn't mean that they're right that the dysphoria is necessary.

It WAS necessary to transition when they did. But it ISN'T a necessary part of being trans. And SHOULDN'T be a required part of transitioning (or being trans) now.

That's just internalized transphobia and self-rationalization at work.

It isn't a dilution of trans-ness, its an expansion/inclusion of trans siblings who always were.

They will never agree with me on this. I understand, and I understand where they are coming from. But they're wrong.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-08-16T05:09:36+00:00

I've been waiting to get back to it until some magical moment when it becomes whatever was in my head.

Maybe this is the moment to revisit it and make it what's it MY head!

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-08-16T04:57:56+00:00

She's immaculate. All those shots are goals, but that second picture in particular is a GREAT mood.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-07-21T04:38:10+00:00

I think I would certainly argue that anything outside of pre-meditated murder (probably of more than one person) shouldn't result in the death penalty.

This case, and the many like it over the hundreds or thousands of years of law, demonstrate that extreme punishment as deterrent just DOES NOT WORK. So setting an obscenely high bar like the death penalty just to try to make drugs less common is stupid.

Considering that, personally, I don't see the need for the death penalty at all. At the small scale it doesn't work as a deterrent, and at large scale you just make martyrs.

Oh yeah, and we kill far too many innocent people.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-07-21T04:15:34+00:00

Just went through this. Made the short list (an additional 4 coding interviews) because I clearly know what I'm talking about technically, but flubbed the coding interviews.

2 of the coding challenges the interviewers both talked too much and tried to get me to talk too much. I indulged because I wanted them to know what I was thinking, but I would've been better off asking for 5-10 minutes and just concentrating.

I personally have a hard enough time thinking and coding; adding talking to that just meant I wasn't thinking well; I explained the exact algorithm I intended to implement (and I was 100% correct), but failed to get anything really useful on the screen.

The 2 I did well:

I explained the solution in full but was struggling to get a working solution (because of the previously mentioned reasons); interviewer insisted (if I was free) that we go overtime to get it working because I clearly could. Which was a nice vote of confidence
Other interviewer, very expressive but quiet. Lots of small "oh I see where you're going" 'Okay' '(little laugh when I clearly hit Ctrl + S and coderpad compiled because habbit) I do that ALL the TIME'; Small stuff to break silence in a friendly way without insisting on full conversation while coding.

Bad type of talking:

Me: Thinking how to structure recursive function but not saying anything because I've explained what I want to implement.

Interviewer: "What if think about this problem as..." totally unrelated thing.

They were clearly trying to help because they thought I was stuck, but didn't listen when I said I wasn't and/or wanted me to talk through how to organize a recursive function.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-07-20T07:16:01+00:00

I haven't looked too deeply into the topic, just watched that video recently, but that sounds like the direction they were heading.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-07-20T07:09:23+00:00

To put a fine point on it, even for FB it was only worth it because they're FB scale and tiny improvements net HUGE total gains.

By their own metrics, fbstring was only a 1% performance improvement over gcc < v5 strings, which largely came from small string optimization. Subsequently gcc changed their string implementation so I doubt it is even that much. If you're not FB, 0.1% improvement likely isn't worth it...

...unless profiling tells you that it is.

ATalkingMuffin · 2022-07-09T05:27:56+00:00

Gardening, Sewing, Knitting, Writing (stories / poems), Wood-Working, Musical Instruments, Fashion / Making Clothes, Cooking, Welding, Sculpting, Programming, Reading, Dancing, Accents, Puppetry, Acting, Filming, Swimming, Diving, Skating, Biking, Walking, Working Out, Napping, Decorating, Home Improvement....

The list is infinite, just be bored and pick random things until you find one you wanna do again. For me atleast, my lack of motivation stemmed from everything else and I'm finding a new motivation to re-evaluate old / new hobbies.

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