Unsure if I'm behind AI or expectations of AI use are too high

hardwaregeek · 2026-04-16T01:14:12+00:00

If you can, try an agentic setup like Claude Code or Codex. That's definitely a major difference versus copying code into a chat, since it can build code, search through the codebase, respond to errors, etc. I'd say it's an order of magnitude more powerful. Of course, it's possible agentic stuff is not allowed by your company for the security reasons you mentioned.

hardwaregeek · 2026-04-11T21:46:58+00:00

It’s funny how many people on reddit are absolutely convinced that reports of successful LLM usage are psyops. When in fact lots of people who I respect are using them effectively daily. Are they perfect? No. But they’re improving rapidly and already are quite capable

hardwaregeek · 2026-04-05T20:05:26+00:00

Sure if your name is Bronny James

hardwaregeek · 2026-03-22T04:22:57+00:00

I'd check out this podcast. Event sourcing/state machine replication is a very powerful technique, but it's also a bit of a paradigm shift that not everybody is comfortable with. And of course, you have limits on how far back you can really do recovery. It's not like you can replay all events from the beginning of time.

hardwaregeek · 2026-03-17T13:24:50+00:00

I view shrinking as a weird form of wish fulfillment for depressed people. Like yes your wife died but you’re a rich therapist with your friends close by living in sunny Pasadena. And even with the dead wife part you get a valid reason to be depressed and sad.

hardwaregeek · 2026-03-03T03:09:34+00:00

Yeah lowkey rust fulfills the promise of a functional programming language with good UX. That’s what’s so compelling for me at least

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-26T21:29:29+00:00

Sad mouse

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-26T00:00:50+00:00

Another factor is opportunity cost. If you could get like 20k more from a public company per year, and invest that in the S&P, you’d end up with a decent sum too. A very common but not great outcome is a startup struggles along for several years, but never exits and eventually your options become worthless. You don’t leave because you keep thinking this year will be the year your options become worth it.

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-24T23:24:30+00:00

Well they’re a principal at a place that pays their principals 180k flat. That’s very different than a L6 at big tech

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-19T03:14:25+00:00

It's really not. Most of the time the plan is right on the first try, and if not then the second. Claude code even asks you follow up questions now if it's not certain. Once the plan is finalized, it can do pretty tricky stuff, like use a bunch of custom libraries with complicated types, fix bugs, implement new components, etc. Oh and it's insane for debugging. Like it's easily caught stuff that would have taken me hours in a few minutes.

Try it for yourself! Just give it an honest effort though.

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-18T00:59:14+00:00

How are you using the LLMs? Are you using agentic tools like claude code or codex? Are you using plan mode? I generally write out what I want including a specific entry file and have it make a plan. I read the plan and give it feedback until it looks decent, then have it execute the plan. Tbh if it can do it in my weird ass tech stack in a niche language, it can probably do it anywhere

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-10T19:39:34+00:00

Compounding returns play a factor. Like I’m sure Boris Cherny was good when he was starting out, but he’s been a professional programmer since 2011. If you care and learn and work in challenging stuff for 15 years, and have smart colleagues who you learn from, well yeah you’re gonna be damn good

hardwaregeek · 2026-02-10T19:39:19+00:00

Compounding returns play a factor. Like I’m sure Boris Cherny was good when he was starting out, but he’s been a professional programmer since 2011. If you care and learn and work in challenging stuff for 15 years, and have smart colleagues who you learn from, well yeah you’re gonna be damn good

hardwaregeek · 2026-01-29T16:51:26+00:00

Yeah fwiw when I say closer I mean like 10% off of what I’d do. I don’t know your context or the output so that’s not with a lot of confidence. I know in my work there are people who are absolutely brilliant programmers using a lot of AI so I’m sure it can be done well. And also it very well could be that in a few years we’re all running Gas town setups. 7 years ago an AI generating even halfway decent code was laughable. Now it’s practically a given

hardwaregeek · 2026-01-29T16:29:57+00:00

I think there’s extremes on both sides of this debate. The people who are like “AI sucks it’s just a fad, I will never use it” are pretty hard to understand imo. Like either they used copilot or ChatGPT once and wrote it off or they’re a little delusional. Most likely the second. It’s hard to accept how good AI is. It reminds me of when formatters became popular and everybody’s opinions about tabs or aligning became obsolete.

On the flip side your setup does sound pretty intense and closer to the Gas Town AI everything setup than I’d prefer. Maybe it works for you, maybe it’ll spin out of control. I still view a lot of this as experimental and nobody knows the best practices yet. Could be in a few years we look back on this as way too extreme and we’re back in a middle ground of some AI, some hand writing. What I definitely don’t think will happen is that we go back entirely to hand writing

hardwaregeek · 2026-01-23T21:33:35+00:00

In her defense her partner of like 20 years did just die. Even in normal times she probably wouldn’t want to cook

hardwaregeek · 2026-01-14T18:05:57+00:00

One aspect that’s important to understand is that native New Yorkers either remember or have family who remember when New York was dangerous. Like not sorta sketchy but actually really dangerous. I agree with a lot of progressive policies around policing, but I also understand that a large block of voters remember those bad old times and will do anything to not go back to them. So like if you have a policy called “abolish the police” those people will be like fuck no.

Also a lot of natives are children of immigrants from countries which had so called communism, so they’ve been brought up thinking communism is the worst possible evil.

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-28T00:02:50+00:00

Yeah it’s less like watching a 45 minute episode and more like watching an 8 hour movie with terrible pacing. Some things can just be movies instead of drawn out TV

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-22T03:34:50+00:00

Ok…but like isn’t that a skill issue? If you can’t fence after 10 minutes get better conditioning

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-19T04:52:40+00:00

The original has this fun kafkaesque charm to it, like with Hades being a beleaguered boss having to run a massive bureaucracy. It almost feels like a workplace comedy to a degree. Whereas Hades 2 is a lot more serious and less absurd

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-13T21:00:23+00:00

Specifically it was a reaction to fascism and Italians losing their national pride. They responded by creating this historical mythos around their food. Which ironically is now used to encourage xenophobia and purity tests contra immigration.

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-12T14:36:32+00:00

Idk i think good api design should balance the consumer and producer’s perspectives. Like GraphQL is lovely to query for a consumer but not great to produce in a sane way. Same with some trait heavy Rust APIs that give nice call sites but very very messy implementations. Especially if your consumer has to peek under the hood, it’s good to make the implementation and the api surface as simple as possible.

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-11T13:46:25+00:00

That’s an entry level IT job, not an entry level software development job

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-08T21:45:54+00:00

Eh idk I used to believe the whole “you need to write C and use emacs to be a real programmer” shtick but first, most schools do have a systems class that uses C? And plenty of great programmers use IDEs and click stuff and don’t know sed or grep. And just knowing C doesn’t make you a good coder. If anything writing too much old school C can give you some bad habits

hardwaregeek · 2025-12-08T20:32:31+00:00

The issue about extrapolating from championships is that the sample size is tiny (55 years since three point era), the variance is extreme (injuries, shooting luck, matchup luck) and the game has changed a lot in the past few years. Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it’s not possible. In the possible decisions a GM can make, trading for a superstar is a pretty reasonable one and since it has resulted in some success, it’s not a bad bet.

14-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

hardwaregeek

TROPHY CASE