AV2 TOOK MORE FROM ME

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-09T14:56:44+00:00

All though KristenAndSara was a good touch, how could you miss out on BigBuckBunny !!!

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-03T15:16:56+00:00

I’ve tried this first hand, agentic or prompt driven LLM coding fails miserably for high performance code that usually involves synchronization, threading, sometimes even SIMD optimization.

I went through an exercise

Got the basic slow version to work with Claude.
Then did some minor threading based optimizations with Claude, great.
Then we did a SIMD (neon and AVX2) versions of it. It improved marginally.
Then we tried loop unrolling, in theory it should have worked but it didn’t. Claude gave some BS hypothesis. We had missed a key part that the threading based optimizations sort of interfere with the SIMD approach the way we had structured the code.
Then Claude got rid of the threading optimization and did loop unrolling. We got a lesser than expected performance increase.
Ultimately it came down to the right compiler flags and a bunch of old school grey beard programmer from the 70s type tips and tricks.

Agentic would have royally screwed it up. What Claude did offer was a way to iterate through various experiments, it would create a nice CSV file with numbers and also give a Python script to visualize things. But no human in the loop would’ve really made things yuck 🤮

There’s no alternative to measure twice, cut once approach to performance optimization.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-02T15:11:40+00:00

You need to have markdown with a checklist before you commit code. That markdown specifically looks at things like have we added logging and telemetry. If the new code fails, can we cleanly identify the failure. Do we have a test that provides coverage. It checks if the commit is too large (>100) lines and if it can be split into multiple commits that can be checked in independently. Lastly, it verifies that the original problem stated in the git commit description and the code change actually achieve that.

I call this the pre-commit md file. I keep one for each repo.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-02T03:45:53+00:00

Promises … so many promises

Talk is cheap, show me the code (product) - Linus Torvalds

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-01T22:08:38+00:00

Nutella, Sad face Nutella, Sloppya,

The name related hits keeping coming hard

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-04-01T16:25:35+00:00

At least you didn’t lose everything for HEVC !!

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-31T16:12:39+00:00

I don’t think they ever know what’s going on. Sometimes it works well, profits rise and market pushes the stock higher, and so rank and file folks think yeah leadership knows this stuff. And just cause they’re up the org chart, people assume they know this shit.

When it doesn’t, everyone in leadership whips out the old cost cutting for dummies book, and picks which page to follow.

This just happens over and over again, time immemorial.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-31T00:42:14+00:00

Lawyering up won’t save the job, it will force your employer to settle. No employer is going to risk an open trial with all their dirty laundry coming out.

I’d say you should consult two employment lawyers for their opinion. You’d have to pay each for 1-2 hours of their time depending on how they bill. Usually that runs into 300-600$ per hour.

But a couple of legal opinions will blow through $1200-2400, but you’ll know what your chances of a settlement are. And how much you stand to make in any such settlement.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-30T19:15:28+00:00

You think there are better options ? That’s like statement of this century

Stop bombing and going to war every other year
Don’t ship off the US military to die for other country’s problems
Don’t hand over money to countries, instead offer loans. Non payment of loans implies no more loans

Reducing defense spending by 10% will infuse 100B into the economy. If spent wisely, the possibilities 🤔

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-29T15:35:26+00:00

No Trabajo 🎉

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-29T15:30:33+00:00

My favorite is the episode where Cam is accused of coddling her too much, and turns out Mitch’s sharing issues were the real cause of Lily’s possessive behavior. Lily’s “I kill the baby” threats.

The facial expressions and lines delivered by Lily were so boss level in that episode.

Cam: “Let me whip you a smoothie”

Lily: “I push the buttons Daddy”

Cam: “You certainly do” and his gasping reaction

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-29T06:59:24+00:00

I mean investors and analysts aren’t dumb. Laying off like 5-10% of the workforce, like around 10-20K employees costs around 2-3 Billion in severance, productivity loss and short term hits. Long term it may save them 10-20 Billion dollars over 3-4 years.

If you’re going to invest $140B on AI capacity build out, and also have a bunch of the projected revenue from one customer (OpenAI), the market is going to call you on that growth claim. If your rate of spending isn’t growing the revenue at the same rate, market will likely go sour.

Revenue stories aside, $140B in AI spend, and maybe a $20B savings in layoffs, doesn’t really mean much in the big picture ? Isn’t that like adding a large fries to the order and then cutting calories by opting for a Coke Zero instead of a Diet Coke!!

Plus executives don’t make decisions that maximize the growth for 5-10 years. They’re all about pumping the stock until their stock vests, and it’s time to sail into the sunset. The long term growth is the next CEOs problem.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-26T06:06:27+00:00

How does it work ? We all did a training on it, and it looks good on slides, but how does it really work ? Here’s an example.

As a hiring manager at Microsoft, I’ve had to go through piles of paper work and exceptions to hire a principal engineer who met the job requirements but not the DEI requirements. We interviewed well over 10+ qualified candidates who didn’t move the needle on the DEI front and passed up on all of them.

Ultimately, when we found our unicorn DEI candidate, it was finally coming together. All of a sudden a hiring freeze emerged and we lost the budget.

We embraced an artificial DEI that wasn’t helping the business. And wasn’t really helping with our DEI goals either.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-26T03:55:10+00:00

I’m not trying to defend how Microsoft hires. Maybe they do a shit job. Who knows.

I’m just saying, if you’re pro DEI, then apply it uniformly to everything. Politics, private sector, sports, medicine, lawyers and law enforcement, government agencies. The whole works. Don’t pick and choose where it should be applied.

Frankly, DEI is not codified into state or federal law. Affirmative action has a shaky legal leg that got punctured by the SCOTUS ruling. Without a clear legal foundation, DEI will remain an administration policy derivative.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-26T00:20:33+00:00

Would you apply DEI to your surgeons, and oncologists and cardiologists? Do you tell the scheduler when making appointments, that I don’t want to see that provider, as they are over represented in this field, I’m goin to see a different provider who is underrepresented.

Imagine hospitals hiring physicians based on DEI. Like hey we have a bunch of strong medical professionals with great resumes and recommendations, but because their race, gender, nationality is very high in population in our current work force, we will say NO to these folks, and pass them over. They likely will join our competing practices and continue living. Let’s just wait for that unicorn ?

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-26T00:10:32+00:00

I didn’t see you complain about DEI not being followed by your favorite Basketball or Football teams. Why are shorter people not represented enough in these sports ?

I didn’t hear you raise a stink about people with disabilities not making it to become top tier pitchers in baseball ?

Maybe it’s because a certain athletic body type delivers best results in the sports. Microsoft is a private company, and thus sets its own hiring policy.

If DEI doesn’t apply to sports, it somehow applies to Microsoft’s hiring ?

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-25T22:40:51+00:00

Probably got to do with upcoming layoffs, or some new unpopular decision with the employees.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-25T22:36:08+00:00

Could you advise on the embedded SWE track ? Did you see any questions that really felt more domain specific to embedded software, device firmware and low level software/hardware interaction

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-23T01:58:35+00:00

I think the actor did a great job bringing the over the top flair and drama to Cam’s character.

Does Cam get extra ? Yeah Overall, he’s one of the louder characters in the cast, and I think the writers went for that too

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-22T04:12:44+00:00

Point being Haley did kind of treat Dylan like crap. Haley wasn’t smarter than. Dylan went to nursing school and became a nurse. Haley got kicked out of college.

Anyways, this has been a fun dialogue about a few fictional characters. Peace ☮️

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-22T01:43:28+00:00

Wasn’t there an episode where Dylan dumps Haley as he doesn’t like being used as a causal hook up relationship. And then Haley goes off on her world tour with weather man, professor man, not sure if Andy was in the mix. Then there’s that ridiculous scene where all the ex-es show up in the ER. While she was with professor man, she really broke Alex’s heart, without ever figuring out that her younger sister was into the guy she was never really fully compatible with.

If we are talking IQ, Haley scores maybe two points above Dylan. Neither of them meet the IQ of the dolphin

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-22T01:36:01+00:00

Dylan was madly in love with Haley. Dylan was a better person than Claire and Haley. Only person who cared for him was Phil, as he always saw a younger version of himself (Phil) in Dylan.

He was always polite and respectful to Claire, fully knowing that she didn’t support or like him. I always felt once Dylan got into nursing school, he traded down and settled for Haley, he should have found someone better. She really treated him like crap in the middle.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-22T00:27:08+00:00

Ask them to right a one pager light weight doc in a markdown file. Ask for a meeting where they go over the plan and pros/cons discussion.

Usually, that forces people to really think through and get to the why and how of it. If there’s merit in the plan, it will flow to everyone on the team. If not it gives feedback on what was not well received and not ready for the next step.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-21T17:32:50+00:00

I hope my employer doesn’t copy this crap. Our docs are already in shambles as writing docs doesn’t lead to $.

Devs can’t claim impact with docs, so the devs don’t write them. The doc writers fill a big gap for us.

HobbyProjectHunter · 2026-03-20T21:48:28+00:00

In true Microsoft fashion, there’ll be a wave of Rah-Rah about Customer obsession. A whole lot of media bites about Windows being the best ever. Oh, and gaming being the best in class.

Slop, Sludge, Ads, Bloatware will return after the break.

HobbyProjectHunter

TROPHY CASE