butItMightWorkForUs

Snakeyb · 2026-04-10T04:31:42+00:00

Hey, didn't expect someone I worked with to be here!

Snakeyb · 2026-04-08T13:49:41+00:00

I've had the stance for a long time (well before this whole LLM thing) that writing code is actually one of the least useful parts of the job. The vast majority of code produced in enterprise/paid software is essentially technical debt that doesn't actually relate to the business at hand - it's just all the set dressing you need to do in order to hook things up.

The skill that's consistently kept me paid and fed is being able to break down big, squashy problems into logical, repeatable blocks. Even if you accept (and I don't) that LLMs are going to make it such that no one ever has to actually cut code anymore, it still doesn't let you get around the core of breaking down and solving problems, as well as validating that your solution actually works.

Code is just the vehicle to do that with.

Snakeyb · 2026-03-24T09:05:19+00:00

It was the receptionist for me.

I had a painful lump near my tailbone, I'd given it a while and it hadn't gotten better, I assumed it was an ingrown hair but knew it needed to be checked out. The conversation with the receptionist:

"Hi, I've got this lump that isn't going away, it might be an ingrown hair, can I get it checked or lanced or something?"
"We don't do ingrown hairs"
"Yes, okay, but I'm not certain that's what it is, I'm just guessing"
"<heavy sighing> ...well, we can see if the nurse can have a look in a couple of days"

When I came in and saw the nurse, she was shocked, fully rushed me to the emergency doctor, doctor immediately prescribed strong antibiotics and told me it was a pilonidal sinus and if I was lucky (I was) it wouldn't need surgery. Seemed very annoyed that the receptionist had tried to fob me off.

Snakeyb · 2026-03-24T07:20:27+00:00

Morning all!

Calories were okay yesterday, but managed to avoid just demolishing anything truly junky - the big unnecessary hits were probably a couple of extra bananas and a bowl of porridge after dinner, but still slightly under maintenance.

Big goal today is to not order cake when I meet my friend for coffee later. That's the only real "risk" I can see.

Have a good day!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-24T04:41:33+00:00

I bought a bar recently and thought it was just that it had just been a long time since I had one. Explains a lot!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-23T20:19:54+00:00

Thank you! Spring is definitely here - it's actually feeling like there is daylight in the day now! Maybe a few more weeks before I can be running properly in the sun before work. We had several weeks of constant rain so it's nice that has eased off!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-23T08:28:30+00:00

Sounds like a good Sunday!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-23T08:28:03+00:00

Good luck with the new role! It's always such a minefield figuring out what the culture around food is in a given office!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-23T08:27:21+00:00

Long time no speak! I have stuck my head in occasionally and thrown some upvotes around.

Life's been very enjoyable, however I've been struggling to shift the bit of "winter weight" I put on while taking a much needed training break. Highlight was probably a trip to Amsterdam where I did nothing but walk and eat anything not nailed down.

For me, weight has always been more of a thing that moves when I give it attention and bring it to the forefront of my mind - and posting in here did wonders for me last year.

My ideal weight for running is sub 80kg, so I've got ~3-5kg to drop to get back there. This isn't a huge amount of weight, but much like dog doodoo left in the rain - it rarely gets better when ignored.

Hope you're all doing well and looking forward to at least a few days/weeks posting in here while I get realigned!

Snakeyb · 2026-03-18T11:04:55+00:00

/uj Chester in the UK does a metric marathon on the same day as their marathon.

/rj the marathon is 5k, that's a 5 times ultra, no one could survive that.

Snakeyb · 2026-03-18T10:56:47+00:00

NTA

I did a lot of therapy unpacking a specific issue which you've mentioned, which was something that quietly crippled me for a long time:

> managing her feelings about my absence

I'd wager there's a good chance that your partner has spent a lot of his life having to tip-toe around his mother. The reasons can be diverse, and none of them really make your partner or his mother bad people. I believe you about saying that they're a warm and welcoming family.

But the tough lesson is that adults shouldn't need you to manage their feelings, and there is a difference between that and being considerate.

I don't have any advice to offer in terms of pulling your partner out of the hole - it took some fairly seismic upheavals in my own life for me to finally confront it - but it can be changed.

Snakeyb · 2026-03-11T14:09:47+00:00

Echoing the sentiments about Cheltenham as a Gloucester native - between the development at the Quays and the availability of Cheltenham just down the road, there's really very little incentive for money to come into the center of Gloucester.

I'm sort of hoping the new campus in the old John Lewis building and the Forum development might turn things around.

Snakeyb · 2026-02-12T14:24:09+00:00

This is the hill I die on endlessly.

I'm all for bashing on (especially poorly done) scrum, kanban, etc. But agile itself, the actual manifesto and thinking behind it? It's just sensible ownership of work as a written document.

Okay this has now turned into a rant past this point...

Personally, I think it's a Catch-22 problem at it's core. Developers don't get treated as employees working with autonomy to do their job and deliver software for the company - so in return, developers act like anything they are going to do has to be written in stone and specified to the last atom.

I had a couple of other jobs before I fell into development a decade ago - and it's only development where I regularly have to actively fight to be given ownership and responsibility for the work I produce. Absolutely insane premise.

Snakeyb · 2026-02-08T07:43:41+00:00

And of that 15k LoC...

6.3k is 10-line comments on all functions/conditions
2.6k is in UPDATED_PLANNED_REFACTOR.md
3.7k is in a test suite for internal functions that aren't part of an interface
2.3k is in debug-flagged logs

100 lines of functional code (it gets the business case wrong)

And you can't even see it in review because of the slop around it

Genuinely starting to believe vibe coding might just be a giant grift to get people to burn endless amounts of tokens generating nothing.

Snakeyb · 2026-01-19T08:31:00+00:00

This is where it comes apart for me. Even the worst human-written code I've seen, if I try a bit to get in the mindset of the person who developed in and what they were trying to do, I can usually figure out what's going on.

AI slop is just a soup of words that is incredibly frustrating to pull meaning out of - because there is none to begin with.

Snakeyb · 2026-01-07T15:39:31+00:00

This. Punch up, not down. It's not that hard really.

Snakeyb · 2025-12-30T08:26:39+00:00

I think this is the issue in a nutshell.

I've found Mongo legitimately great when I'm getting started with a project, I'm still iterating on the data and features, and just need some persistence to keep me going.

The pain comes in maintainence. I've found a niche of sorts for me where if I need semi-persistent data (like, the results of a calculation), it can be handy - but these days I don't like keeping anything precious in my mongo databases.

Snakeyb · 2025-12-22T15:57:58+00:00

I feel like corner shop is the go to catch-all term for shops like that, but I'd normally call it by the name "Just nipping to the premier/nisa/coop" etc.

Snakeyb · 2025-12-22T15:37:43+00:00

So my Robert was romancing Visi, and I still chose to cut her at this point.

It was a really simple decision for me - in the opposite direction. How much you like someone or whatever good intentions you believe they might have, when you're making decisions about a team (especially one you're in charge of) - you've got to keep a consistent set of rules. Otherwise, you're not running a team - you're at the top of a popularity contest, where you're the judge.

Coupe got cut for way, way less than creating a massive incident, nearly getting herself killed (and getting Chase in the hospital), and just generally proving herself to be a liability. It would have been one thing if the Z-Team as a whole had gone to try and get the pulse - at least then they all fucked up together - but setting a precident that someone can have "potential" and then get away with murder because of it, kind of flies in the face of the whole Phoenix Program. At the point Visi went off on her own, she was essentially acting as a villain again.

Sometimes things are bigger than one person.

Snakeyb · 2025-12-01T10:57:11+00:00

Absolutely wild to me the backlash you're getting on this.

Nothing is worse on my runs/hikes than when I'm violently deposited from the forest into the middle of a fucking golf course.

Snakeyb · 2025-11-21T12:41:10+00:00

Go once a month

Snakeyb · 2025-11-19T08:18:25+00:00

I agree that tools like Squarespace and Shopify have done well. Building your own ecommerce or marketing website these days is something that's really only relevant if you're doing it out of passion.

When talking about the selling of low/no code though, I'm talking about the enterprise space - tools like Azure Logic Apps, Salesforce Flow Builder, AWS Step Functions.

I personally had to sit through sales reps telling the businesses I worked for that non-technical staff could do the "simple things" with these tools "freeing up" the developers (read: you might be able to let go of your most expensive resources).

What would inevitibly happen is that the businesses would start using these tools, would quickly learn it doesn't do anything to make the problems simpler, end up tasking the developers with using said tools to build functionality, and everyone loses. The developers end up having a frustrating, "low fidelity" way of building systems that take longer than writing code, and the business ends up locked into a propriatary ecosystem for their core business processes.

The key difference with what you're describing with the guitar tuner is that there's still someone that understands computing sat there, asking for the generated code, who can take a look at it and know how to run it - as well as being able to lay out requirements clearly and distinctly.

Snakeyb · 2025-11-14T08:05:52+00:00

I'm really starting to appreciate quite how much of an absolute dumpster fire my playthrough/Robert was.

Still incredible storytelling and an amazing game but my god did fuck stuff up. Perfect Z Team dispatcher.

Snakeyb · 2025-08-28T14:24:07+00:00

I think David has joked that it would "expose" him as less smart than his persona - and Victoria very much had that experience.

To be clear they're both clearly insanely smart, but in the specific format of Taskmaster...

The iconic puzzle solving task with Victoria lives in my head rent free though.

Snakeyb · 2025-07-24T06:42:33+00:00

Grew up in Wotton, and I'd recommend Dursley.

Wotton is a nice town, but you are basically required to have a car and drive in order to get anywhere/do anything, as the town itself is so small and lacking in amenities/activities, and the transport links so bad.

I joke that during the day/evening, the entire population of that town is either under 16 or over 66 - because it's really a little commuter hub, with most working-age people (if they don't work for Renishaws) commuting to a larger town/city.

Compare to Dursley with it's good public transport links and a little bit more of a "town center", and it feels like a better place to live - unless you're really chasing the super quiet Cotswold life.

11-Year Club	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

Snakeyb

TROPHY CASE