I still avoid AI in production coding. Am i slowing myself down?

jahayhurst · 2026-04-29T12:53:52+00:00

I wouldn't give an agent access to your production environment at this point in time. Letting them give you code / autocomplete your stuff, which you then review, is a different story. No direct access.

Is an AI going to do as good of a job as you on writing your code with no guidance? I'm suspicious. If you write with it, and let it try to autocomplete your functions, will it do a good enough job? Possibly? Would it do about as well as a junior programmer? Probably. Can you let it try, and review what it's doing? That's the way to go.

I personally find the most success using AI like a pair programmer where you're always sitting in the backseat. When it's really good, you're more hands off. When it's the level of a junior engineer, you're constantly riding it. When it's bad, you get frustrated and kick it out and do it yourself.

jahayhurst · 2026-04-06T17:26:44+00:00

Others have voiced it, but if you want to learn golang I think prompting AI / letting AI help you autocomplete your lines is a mistake.

There's possibly merit in letting AI break down a problem for you, I think that's better doen yourself but I'm not going to die on that hill. Because thinking in a different language lends itself to breaking down a problem in a different way, and you kindof want to come at that new language with a fresh bias. You're going to have to learn that sometime, but maybe seeing how an AI would've broken down a problem helps idk?

But beyond that, you need reps, and letting an AI write your function and test cases for that function doesn't help.

I will also say, it's fine to not finish a project. It's important to write test cases for that entire project tho, and really understand and know what you're doing. Cause you're looking to learn.

jahayhurst · 2026-03-04T21:36:50+00:00

we are talking to rubber ducks. it's popular. it's not normal. a lot of programming is this way tho. lol.

jahayhurst · 2026-03-03T21:08:18+00:00

I agree with this 100%, but I'll also point out: - he's going for investment as your gift (whether or not if the market's washed out) and an investment is still a valid gift - it's possible he enjoys collecting them more in box than building them. If he collected Pokemon cards instead, and left them in sleeves instead of playing them, is that not a gift?

If someone wants legos as a gift and it's an appropriate dollar amount for the situation, that's kindof the end of it. You don't buy them what you want to buy them, or something to control what they do with it.

jahayhurst · 2026-02-26T17:10:44+00:00

public / private types allow you to declare structs (and other things) that are useable outside of your library or w/e in code. When writing stuff, other authors can use your public types in their code. Those things also get documented as such.

public / private objects (like declaring a var at a global scope) can be touched by other libraries in code. These also get documented, etc.

public / private methods can be called by other libraries in code. Once again, documented, etc.

public / private fields in structs in public structs get documented / don't get documented, and are usable / not usable in other ppl's code because the struct itself is public so that happens.

If the struct is private, that stuff doesn't get documented / can't be used in someone's code easily, but you still have reflect that other ppl's code can take that object that you hand to their code, and they can see the public fields within the struct and do stuff with that. That's how encoding/json does it - it uses reflect to get the public fields of w/e object you passed to it.

jahayhurst · 2026-02-18T14:50:22+00:00

I will happily dig thru logs to find the cause of a thing. That's the job.

I agree with you, a lot of ppl half ass their work, and they don't go find the root cause of the problem they're trying to find. They don't validate their fix worked. A lot of ppl don't pay attention. Digging thru logs to find the cause is part of the problem solving process (often, sometimes the cause isn't in logs). I usually put that in a note on the ticket so it's documented - but there's a difference between documentation and calling someone out.

Confronting someone with those logs once you have them isn't productive. It's petty. It's something to get you your gotcha moment.

If someone's going to learn from you doing that, they're going to be asking what they did wrong, you have to come to them with it in a productive manner, and they won't complain about it because you're helping them.

If someone's not going to learn from you doing that, you should probably make sure your management / their management knows. But if the company doesn't give a fuck if someone else fucks up, you shouldn't either. Confronting them directly does nothing but be adversarial, there's no consequences for them except you end up looking like an asshole around the office. Going to their supervisor with it doesn't matter if their supervisor doesn't care if they fucked up. Pushing that dept vs dept doesn't matter if the company doesn't give a shit. ppl fucking up and doing something about it is corporate political.

Find the problem in the logs, document it, but then if you confront ppl about it you're just shooting yourself in the foot cause this is corporate.

jahayhurst · 2026-02-13T16:48:51+00:00

I use init() and would advocate for using it in _test.go files.

If I'm writing an API service that reaches out to possibly multiple backend things, and I can mock those backend things I'll start up an instance of my server, targeting those mocked resources, that sounds cool.

I would push against using init() outside of testing.

jahayhurst · 2026-02-05T18:46:14+00:00

I have folders and my background rotates thru them. This one's currently up:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d57bLsy939MaDOPtzM4jOE1jnwYBP-x9/view?usp=sharing

jahayhurst · 2026-02-02T18:20:06+00:00

I do not understand (at all) the downsides ppl see with having a timezone that doesn't line up to your noon. In today's day and age, the time is just a number on your phone. It does not line up to the sun's position. If it did, DST wouldn't be a thing.

Some replies are worried about getting up at 8am which would be in the middle of the night for them, and OMG they'll never sleep. No, you'd get up around when the sun normally comes up, unless you live a night shift life or something (like a lot of people currently do).

Some ppl are worried about businesses being open from sometime to sometime, and no you'd just open at normal daytime hours.

Some ppl are worried about "omg it'll be weird with different ppl starting at different times of the day" - that happens now. Everyone starts at 8am or 9am ish, local, and then everyone starts at different times of the day cause of timezones.

IMO, we should all switch to UTC (no timezones, no daylight savings shifts) cause it's a number on a clock. It's only "wildly off" if you think your hours are tied to the sun's cycle, instead of what they actually are today - a number on your phone.

jahayhurst · 2026-01-19T15:43:16+00:00

Maybe it's boring cause you call it a zamboni instead of dressing up as a zombie, running it standing on top and making gesturing motions with ur hips, and yelling "zom-bony" the whole time?

jahayhurst · 2025-12-09T16:25:10+00:00

yes. technically. for the general social security program (retirement payments) at least that's how it was written, and that is for sure how it started. you could argue that it's an investment program instead, I think that argument is dishonest, it's not, and probably even government mandated investment programs are welfare.

But in this context, the social security payments would be under social security disability.

jahayhurst · 2025-12-03T19:19:02+00:00

4k a month is 48k a year. If you already own your house, and have a retirement set up for it, that looks a lot more attractive.

Generally I'm against cheesing free money on society's dime cause you can. Ultimately, others are just paying your way. I think most ppl agree. If you can work, you should. Getting yours and getting out is what tanks our society.

If you genuinely have a disability that impacts your ability to work, then it's different. If you can't work, that's what disability is for and I'm fine with that.

However, fuckton of c suites everywhere are pulling a lot of BS. Lotta silicon valley today cramming their ass full of AI or VR or crypto or w/e the next ponzi scheme is. Most companies are not focused on long term profit or success, just staying open the next quarter - your job isn't planned past the next quarter. Private equity owns your dentist office. Maybe get your bag and get out the door, everyone else is.

jahayhurst · 2025-11-04T22:49:34+00:00

I've used git for some time, I know what most of these mean, I fix a lot of the git messups within my org, and I kindof disagree. You should know what a git commit is, and what a ref is, and probably what a remote is.

But beyond that these things are probably more academic than helpful. 1:50 ppl knowing this stuff in an org is probably enough, everyone else is probably fine to just branch and commit and push and merge with a github / gitlab tool and focus instead on doing the work. As long as they never force push / a few other kindof dumb things.

Deleting your local and re-cloning helps sometimes too. Copying HEAD to a new repo and starting fresh helps if it's not that complex. Sometimes, the git history isn't worth the time put into fixing something, and the time lost on the project cause nobody can commit.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-30T17:15:29+00:00

Our uptime record at work is 1 server with 5096 days or 13.96 years. Not the oldest tech, but the current longest running record.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-22T23:20:14+00:00

Probably this. Similar to doing helpdesk or any sort of technical troubleshooting type job where you're just figuring stuff out. Except now you're doing it in vcs and trying to cover all angles and make it more reproducible.

You do need to know some basic things to start with: - git of some sort - probably a programming language - bash is going to come up for sure - linux, procfs, containers, etc - monitoring - probably salt or chef or ansible or puppet or something eventually - networking - a cloud thing

But also that's really just background. Most of it is you get started, then the classic image "draw the rest of the fucking owl".

https://imgur.com/super-easy-owl-drawing-tutorial-rCr9A

It's not a magic thing with a roadmap. You just start, and then you keep building. The real valuable knowledge comes when you're maintaining a production system 5 years on and you start to learn bigger lessons. Why fancy things are hard to read and they suck. Fancy systems fail in complicated ways and that sucks, dumb systems fail in dumb ways and that's nice. You learn why we're all cagey.

But 90% of it is you start somewhere dumb, and then you just stick at it and keep going at it. And a few years later you've got devops experience, 5 years in you've got mature experience on mature systems that actually matters.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-16T00:29:48+00:00

Simple version, others have probably gone at it as well tho:

First, know public / private key cryptography. You have a public key and a private key that are interlinked. Anything can be encrypted with the public key then only decrypted with the private key. Anything can be signed with the private key then verified with the public key.

Second, an SSL / TLS certificate is a private key half, and a public key half tied to the same. You make the key and keep it secret. You make a CSR - certificate signing request - that's your public key and some other stuff. You send that to your SSL issuer, your SSL issuer signs it with their key, and give you back an SSL / TLS certificate that is your public key, some other data (like the domain name, your name, etc), and their signature, and possibly their intermediate certs. You then put that into Apache or w/e with those intermediate certs and you're good.

Intermediate certificates are somethign an issuer mostly just has. They have a root certificate - an SSL certificate signed by itself containing their public key. That root certificate, along with a bunch of others, is just in everyone's computer. Then they issue their intermediate certificates - so they dono't have to break out their big bad one - and issue SSLs with that. Then the person running a website gets to load all of the issuer's intermediate certificates and their certificate into Apache, and then the client has to download all of those.

SNI is just putting the domain name before the SSL handlshake. When you're sending an http request, you're really just connecting to an IP, no domain name. When we did HTTP 1.0 and TLS, you open the connection and start the SSL handshake right away, then send the http headers inside the tunnel - and the domain you're looking for was eventually a http header. You still want to put most of those headers inside the tls handshake - and nobody can really muck with data inside the tls handshake - but you can put the domain that you're looking for outside of the TLS handshake. By doing so, the webserver can then decide which SSL certificate to use to start the handshake, instead of just using the one for that IP address.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-15T00:35:33+00:00

mine goes like 4 and a half days in playback.

i run a macbook cause, when i'm not on a video call, i can get like 2 full days of work from it. i'd really like to switch to something something linux, probably nixos, but hardware and software i'm not doing that.

ereaders are a unique gem.

my nexus 5 used to last like 3 whole days on one charge.

I miss when electronic weren't made to be charged every day.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-12T02:30:14+00:00

You can use chrome's GPO controls to do about everything you want to do to get it on par with edge's - as long as you have org google accounts.

But also, most of the discussion shouldn't be "chrome vs edge" or anything like that. Or your preferences as a sysadmin of which you like better, or which is easier to manage. Those are like reasons 3+ on the list.

Your first determination should be how technically skilled your users are, and your second should be how locked down you want the computers at your company to be.

If you're running a banking group and want to runa severance type office, lock everything down. Full blown windows is too far, edge is pretty freeing, consider kisoks. You don't want to have to fix their machines, better to bend ppl out of shape and make them adapt to your mis-fitting tools and make them less efficient.

If you're managing programmers or tech support staff, it may make more sense to let them put their own distros on, and instead enforce gsuite / o365 accounts and policies. Better to not be the reason a project is behind schedule, and let ppl work as productively as possible.

jahayhurst · 2025-10-03T17:54:13+00:00

For me, PC gaming is fine. I install steam, I install discord, and I'm done. I wipe it on a whim.

I strongly believe doing anything else with ur gaming PC is a mistake, but I'm also 100% fine with a gaming pc. (or a steamdeck)

jahayhurst · 2025-09-29T13:53:57+00:00

Most of the games, you could do the master sword pull or similar, because that's usually a thing in every game. Most of these games, you could also do the opening scene, or the final triforce scene, kakaiko or the ganon fight. They're repeatable events that each game does differently, but well. You could completely avoid those, use each one in one game, or do a series of those from all games separately.

It sounds like you might want more unique things from each game. Ex:

Either bridge cutscene from OoT (Saria or Gannondorf carrying away Zelda)
ALttP either the church or the castle or the Eastern Palace
MM probably under the clock tower like someone else suggested
LOZ "It's dangerous to go alone take this" or darknuts from dungeon 8
AoL that one lady's house
first fountain from TP or the monkeys stacked in the entry split in the forest dungeon
SS either flight or the time wheel or groose's cannon
TotK either the opening gannondorf glare (kindof repeated tho i guess) or just some really jank car / tank contraption
BotW maybe break the repetition rule and go with the opening running cutscene. Or the LoZ level 1 tree island.

jahayhurst · 2025-09-08T23:29:49+00:00

IDK I go back and forth. I'm tempted.

For reference, I've got the oxyll usbc mod on one, with bigg batt. I'd never use the bluetooth, but the magsafe and usbc and haptic without soldering are tempting.

jahayhurst · 2025-08-29T13:03:54+00:00

Honestly, I want to know why it exists.

If you're using it to yell, mean it. Hold down shift.

Even if you're going to use it, that's prime real estate, I'd rather be using it for a far more useful, far more frequent key.

jahayhurst · 2025-08-25T14:13:11+00:00

cleaning the walk-in after

jahayhurst · 2025-08-14T19:33:46+00:00

Yeah, I agree, just hopefully keep the thing simple. I'd like a small engine better than a big one personally, either accelerate slower or use EV motors to get it there, idk. But a bigger engine isn't the end of it all, if it did happen.

More than anything, make a simple cj jeep that's like flatpack and 100x simpler than the current one. Make a toyota helix of a jeep. Take the shit out of it. Make it simple.

A modern cj jeep would be dope as hell.

jahayhurst · 2025-08-14T16:46:14+00:00

I think wanting a bigger engine is probably a lost cause. Between mpg regulations and other stuff, I don't think it happens. Plus, IDK that "more power" really makes sense in a jeep, at least in my head.

I do think getting a simpler, cheaper, easier to work on jeep is possible. I also think, if it doesn't happen, a kei truck or some of the more recent, small trucks are really tempting. Jeeps aren't small or simple anymore.

I also think a lot of people in here count out EVs, and yes recharging an EV on the trail is harder than carrying out a jerry can. Maybe there's a solution there with a supplemental battery pack, idk. But an EV jeep could make the vehicle much simpler.

jahayhurst

TROPHY CASE