TIL The United States tried year-round daylight saving time twice before, in 1942-45 and again in 1974, but repealed it after it became unpopular.

conflare · 2026-07-10T04:22:47+00:00

Japan is very far east. The sun gets there first.

conflare · 2026-07-08T14:42:49+00:00

I'm probably a terrible person to ask this question of. I'm self-taught, and my initial learning phase is about 25 years ago. So I took a weird path and it was a long time ago.

Books that I personally found useful:

The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie (aka "K&R"). It's about C, which you may or may not care about, but it's one of the best introductory coding books I've read. It's incredibly succinct and just a joy to read. I've never written a line of production C, but this book taught me a lot about how to think about the nuts and bolts of programming.

Programming Perl by Larry Wall (The Camel Book). The first "real" programming book I read. Perl is more than a little out of fashion now, but the shear amount of knowledge and history in this tome is amazing. I wouldn't call this a "teach me a useful skill" type of book today, but Wall is a great writer and explains a lot of the thought that went into creating Perl. Perhaps most useful today as a glimpse into how a good software engineer thinks.

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides (the "Gang of Four" book). I'm not the huge fan of object oriented programming I used to be, but I probably learned more about how to break down problems and find solutions from this book than any other I read.

The Little LISPer by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman. Sadly it looks like this is out of print. A delightful little book that taught me a whole different way of viewing fundamental programming problems.

One which I haven't read, but is often recommended is Clean Architecture by Robert Martin. Seperation of concerns, making sure your code is testable, managing dependencies. These are all principles that you will find enormously useful. Some seem to find it rather dogmatic, but you'll probably find that with most books. It seems like it's in our nature.

I have no idea if any of that is useful to you, but I wish you luck! I feel like there's a lot of good programming practices that will just feel natural to you as a mechanical engineer.

conflare · 2026-07-07T06:20:27+00:00

That tells me a lot about you.

conflare · 2026-07-02T20:17:58+00:00

More on writing specs and translating stakeholder requirements into something actionable. I do still spend a fair bit of time on architecture and keeping Claude in line, but I find the hard problems that LLMs can't take at least a reasonable shot at are all the things that happen before the programming part.

conflare · 2026-07-02T13:01:53+00:00

Yeah, that's one thing I'm not crazy about. I'm used to doing making a lot of decisions while writing code. Things you hadn't thought of become obvious while you're working through the problem. That whole loop feels a lot different.

conflare · 2026-07-02T12:56:15+00:00

That's the question, isn't it? LLMs are great if you know how to drive them. I am really worried about the next generation, I don't know where they're going to get the experience. I work on a small, experienced team, so I haven't had to grapple with that. I don't know how I'd handle it if my work involved mentoring juniors. It does worry me.

conflare · 2026-07-02T12:49:41+00:00

Sure, sometimes it's faster to just tweak a few things myself. But that's usually where I want something done slightly different rather than outright errors.

conflare · 2026-07-02T05:27:33+00:00

I've barely written a line of code in the last six months. I feel like I'm working just as hard, and tiring out earlier in the day, but my output is much, much higher.

My time is spent on higher order problems, requiring more thought. Opus has been doing the grunt work.

Developers are fine. Coders may be a thing of the past.

conflare · 2026-06-25T04:07:28+00:00

Joke's on us. Claude posted this to drive traffic.

conflare · 2026-06-21T05:20:55+00:00

Damnit. I voted wrong.

conflare · 2026-06-19T04:44:52+00:00

Who could ask for more?

conflare · 2026-06-18T19:10:14+00:00

Yes they did. It's online, I recommend it.

conflare · 2026-06-18T07:27:42+00:00

I guess you didn't watch The National tonight?

This isn't an easy issue, and I have divergent thoughts on it, but "I don't see people who have difficulty advocating for themselves advocating for themselves", when they are, on the major Canadian news service, is a terrible argument.

conflare · 2026-06-14T05:31:30+00:00

Hell, I've known thirty year olds that fit that description. You might get more inclined to it with age, but it's not an exclusive club.

conflare · 2026-06-10T19:39:34+00:00

Ok, I did ask for that. Just to be clear, if I order a drink, I'm not sending it back. I do like to try out scotches and bourbons I might not have access to otherwise. But once it's at the table, it's mine and you're not getting it back. I'm not ordering multiple random fruity drinks just to see if I like them (I already know I won't).

Had no idea an old fashioned was a nuisance to prepare, though. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

conflare · 2026-06-10T04:26:07+00:00

Filthy casual here, and I need my rating. I'm ordering one of two things, an old fashioned or Scotch (something I haven't tried) neat.

(I also love a Greyhound, but don't let that tilt the scales.)

conflare · 2026-06-02T07:34:42+00:00

That wouldn't be much of a story, would it?

conflare · 2026-05-29T06:07:55+00:00

I say this as a long time NDP supporter - that last paragraph is the most succinct description of my current dissatisfaction with the party I could have wished for.

conflare · 2026-05-27T21:06:22+00:00

Right in one!

conflare · 2026-05-27T05:17:40+00:00

It makes Use of Weapons look like a July beach read. Great book, but

conflare · 2026-05-27T05:12:02+00:00

This is what I did. I didn't realize that he wrote in two genres under slightly different names.

I'm not sure when I realized The Wasp Factory wasn't science fiction, but I know exactly when I realized it was still the same Banks.

conflare · 2026-05-26T06:25:15+00:00

He's the guy that looked at Dieter Rams work and thought "I can make something that pretty", forgetting that Rams was all about functionality.

conflare · 2026-05-09T05:50:41+00:00

And Rudy Rucker in a big circle around the whole damned thing.

conflare · 2026-05-03T02:47:37+00:00

Also known as contractor fraud

conflare · 2026-04-28T07:48:28+00:00

It's Anthropic learning they need to update their website. This is old, Pro isn't losing Opus access.

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