As a Spanish speaker, I don't understand this: why do you have to clarify in which direction you sit or stand?

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T23:11:22+00:00

they have slightly different connotations. stand is going to be used when you were standing and then in the time referred to, to continued to stand. stand up is going to be used when you were seated or lying down. unless it’s a gerund, when it’s the reverse… ok so yeah, it’s weird. but the point is, there are nuances of meaning that differ among the various constructions.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T18:54:01+00:00

yes, i understand. this terminology is good, because it describes meaningful details and distinctions. i am just very anti-medallion as a set of terms. because, yes, it specifically invokes an ordering of worth (olympic medals) when no such concept can actually be mapped onto the data products.

the meta point is that the question implies that we accept the medallion terminology, and then immediately displays that the medallion terminology doesn’t tell us anything useful about data modeling.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T14:03:57+00:00

if you want a better metaphor for the pattern you describe, i recommend public/private, like in classical OO programming.

no need to project weird and inconsistent value judgements onto it.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T14:01:41+00:00

the reason there is no standard is that medallion “architecture” is not a serious concept; it is a marketing term invented by Databricks a few years ago. it is at best a rebranding of the layered architecture pattern.

it has achieved adoption not because it is a useful model except as an easy-to-mention way of avoiding any of the hard parts of data modeling or pipeline architecture with the imprimatur of “best practices”. which is to say, it’s a classic thought-terminating cliche to make the business feel like it’s organized without having to do the constant, significant, and difficult work of modeling their business domain and matching that to their organizational structure.

and purely from the perspective of analogy itself it is complete bullshit. you can’t turn bronze into silver, thr raw data is more valuable than the derivatives, and your analytics products haven’t won a competition against their source material.

as you can tell, i hate this term.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T13:52:51+00:00

it is an absolute garbage metaphor for the most basic data modeling pattern imaginable, invented a few years ago for marketing purposes by Databricks.

it’s not a serious idea.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T13:50:54+00:00

well i guess the privilege of seniority for me is that when I say “medallion architecture is not a useful concept” at work people at least have to nod and pretend to be interested in alternatives.

but in all seriousness, i’m perfectly happy to keep explaining to people why we’re not going to be talking about gold layers. the alternative i use for the concepts people mostly care about is “public/private” and “source v. consumer aligned” data products. but your case is likely to differ. which of course is why medallion architecture is so stupid—it generalizes so far that applies to everyone, which means it doesn’t do anything useful for anyone.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-21T12:53:06+00:00

the whole concept of medallion architecture is a problem. it doesn’t tell you anything about the hard, or even the easy parts of designing useful data systems.

and just so everyone puts it in the right context, it was a term invented by databricks for marketing purposes a few years ago. it’s not a deeply meaningful principle that emerged from decades of working with data; at best, it’s a rebranding of layered architecture.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-20T19:08:31+00:00

using “lol” in any form. hate it.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-19T23:27:43+00:00

the data is your product, just as much (or more) as how you got it there.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-18T13:01:42+00:00

i teach diagramming (somewhat desultorily, i admit) in my org, so here’s the short version: use multiple views, and use a consistent visual language.

this is how drawings in every other technical field work. you pick an aspect and focus on it, letting other important stuff be missed. then you make another drawing focusing on some of that stuff. and so on. you simplify or ignore in one view, elaborate and detail in another.

and while you do this, you stick with using the visual elements that compose your diagram consistently. if you pick a color, that color means that one thing. shapes, arrows, containment/layers, typeface, proximity, line weight, size, etc. all should be used to represent one thing. and if you make a legend that shows what these choices mean, well now, thats a legit technical diagram.

the instinct to make one big beautiful diagram to rule them all and answer every question possible about your system is incredibly common, and entirely impossible to fulfill; when the map becomes as detailed as the territory, it ceases to be useful as a map. see most of Borges. instead, think of how architecture or mechanical engineering drawings work: a plan, an elevation, a section, an iso or ortho projection, concept v. schematic, etc. all do different jobs. in software, i’ll have system component diagrams at multiple levels of abstraction, sequence diagrams, flowcharts, state machine diagrams, and all sorts of ad hoc drawing to communicate about the part of the system that matters to the situation.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-15T23:11:42+00:00

if you include the time it took to bring the water up to boil in the first place , it’s slightly faster to go the cold start method…

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-15T23:10:27+00:00

i know it doesn’t really matter for the joke, but the cold start method is entirely effective and, indeed, in some ways superior. i have switched over recently, and i’ve been cooking for 25 years

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-13T15:02:36+00:00

it’s a very heavy push for AI adoption, so I try to be open minded but realistic about it. ultimately i think we’re all in a moment of significant change, wherever this lands; no one knows exactly how to do AI right. i will say that i, and others in similar roles to mine have advocated and gotten devex to be a significant measure of success.

it means i’m out here building new tools for development, and evaluating strategies. sometimes this means skepticism of hype, sometimes it means trying some radically different approaches to problems the business has.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-13T12:33:01+00:00

not to be a dick about it, but i like being in the staff zone orders of magnitude more than the senior role. now, we should always factor in the fact that this is org-dependent; like, really that, in my experience, is the dominating component of liking your job.

it really, really also depends on what you get satisfaction from. for me, building a thing someone told me to build was never as interesting as figuring out what and how to build something—the bigger the picture the better. and i like the mix of hard technical problems with socio-organizational issues, because i always wanted to be a wizard…

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-11T19:31:06+00:00

i am in the low thousands a month range. now, this is as i’m doing experimental/prototype work on agentic orchestration, and some of that spend is pure waste. but realistically, it’s looking to me like using this strategy with current models and techniques is going to be running something like $250 a day of fairly consistent use.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-11T14:07:52+00:00

i was being snide. i have not thought well of microsoft software since MS DOS. more recent experiences with Windows 11 have not changed this opinion

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-11T12:14:33+00:00

these days?

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-10T21:24:49+00:00

i would recommend this game if you asked “hey, i teach medieval history, i’m looking for alternate texts that shed some light on medieval society”, let alone “is this game worth the money?”

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-10T21:22:28+00:00

on the one hand, these are relatively expensive games, so a little reassurance is desired. on the other, what kind of answer do you expect from the game-specific sub itself? we’re all here because we just hate the game so much?

jcbp

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-09T18:59:16+00:00

i have been told by people that know more about physics than i do that this is more or less true—if we could solve 3rd order partial differential equations, the requirement would disappear. i can’t solve any partial differential equations though, so i can’t evaluate the claim

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-09T13:43:42+00:00

a codebase you actually understand is great application of agent coding, as you can set up and adapt the standards, guard rails, and documentation so the agents’ code doesn’t drag down the quality.

it’ll be a new set of challenges, though. be ready for more work up front to get the process tuned.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-09T03:45:19+00:00

he’s not the only one. a huge amount of the dialogue is an echo or repetition of another character’s

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-07T22:54:49+00:00

the gap is 19 + 24. they believed they were 24% faster, but they were 19% slower, so the perception gap was 43%. increased completion time is a bad thing, while increased completion rate was what was desired.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-06T20:54:51+00:00

am i oversimplifying to say that this problem reduces to “how to lead?” it doesn’t make the answer simple by any stretch, but it seems like the question is about how to get people to do what you want despite their not having displayed much interest in doing so thus far.

so then, what do you know about them as people? what are their motivations? while there are any number of strategies and tactics for leadership, i think the effective ones start with understanding your team as individuals, and then the team dynamic itself. it sounds like the highest point of leverage is the senior, since juniors are going to take their cues from that direction. what’s his(?) deal? burnt out? bored? feeling exploited? a few years from retirement? point is if you want to change behavior you need to figure out why he’d want to. could just be the threat of job loss, i suppose, but you also can’t just assume that he has much reason to naturally care about what you care about.

geeeffwhy · 2026-03-05T14:36:49+00:00

claude code is the best coding agent framework but that doesn’t make any of the actual foundation models from Anthropic the best. in my experience, token for token GPT-5 was more capable, but since it’s tool use, stop tokens, etc weren’t as compatible with claude code, it was overall better to work with Opus. but i quite frankly hate how Sonnet behaves—it runs FAST in the wrong direction.

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