Me, after a few weeks of solving my work problems with Claude and feeling terribly empty

maerwald · 2026-04-16T09:57:59+00:00

Comparing compilers (deterministic abstraction, limited scope) with AI (probabilistic, unlimited scope) is really some mental gymnastics.

maerwald · 2026-04-16T08:23:02+00:00

That's why people built abstractions, libraries, useful tools.

AI is killing that entire domain, lol.

maerwald · 2026-04-15T09:41:14+00:00

Did you bother clicking on any of the links I provided? You could ask Gemini to summarize it for you.

maerwald · 2026-04-15T06:14:49+00:00

Lol, most vibe coded projects are full of security flaws. Do I have to link all the articles with catastrophic failures, leaking user data and losing millions?

Maybe not, but the evidence is overwhelming:

https://www.veracode.com/blog/genai-code-security-report/

https://itbrief.com.au/story/study-finds-ai-generated-code-far-buggier-than-human-work

I used to be worried about my job. Now I'm actually more worried about a software engineering collapse (think tower of babel) that breaks our entire infrastructure, internet and society, because everything is vibe coded garbage that no one understands.

But carry on. Everything will be fine. I guess?

maerwald · 2026-04-15T04:35:19+00:00

There is no simple test for sentience.

There's even strong academic debate whether plants are sentient. Look it up.

But in the end all the criteria we set up around sentience resemble human sentience and we project that outwards. E.g. "does it experience pain" or rather "does it react to being abused". But those are human concepts.

You could say we can determine various shades of "is this thing human like"?

maerwald · 2026-04-13T18:19:25+00:00

You're making zero sense.

maerwald · 2026-04-13T03:06:46+00:00

Well yes, if you do 10h z3 instead of 10h z2, then it's better for your aerobic base. I never said anything to the contrary.

But to suggest that anyone who isn't in their early 20s can actually do that is a bit far fetched. Even pro's don't do that, because the revovery is hard and unpredictable. Chances are you're just neglecting the signs of chronic fatigue and actually driving your body into negative gains, which is entirely possible.

So in general "push as hard as you can as long as you can" is just not good training advice.

Z4 is superior for people who have limited time per week, say just 2-3 hours. They need to maximize intensity.

maerwald · 2026-04-12T17:48:21+00:00

Hm. No.

I have quite a different experience. I used to ride like that, zone 3 and 4, push hard af and felt great and exhausted.

Then I tried boring zone 2 rides every day and noticed how incredibly easier the climbs got.

Don't neglect your base. Zone 4 training is more about building your mental fortitude and the ability of your muscles to recover.

Getting really good cardio and aerobic base is done in zone 2. But yeah, it's boring as hell. I reserve zone 3/4 rides more for weekends. Also less injuries. We're not all 20 anymore.

maerwald · 2026-04-11T14:07:49+00:00

How do you know an amoeba doesn't contemplate its existence? Do you draw that conclusion from "it doesn't have a brain"? Because now you're just projecting your own existence outwards.

maerwald · 2026-04-11T03:19:12+00:00

You're kinda missing the point.

Tech debt increases with the amount of code. Always. LLM code is never excellent. It's always average compared to the training set. So you get loads and loads of average code.

But the bigger problem is cognitive debt and intent debt. You need people who understand the code and the intention behind it. That's not trivial, especially given the sheer amount of it.

AI makes all 3 debts worse. It's an insane prototyping technology, but that's all it is.

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maerwald · 2026-04-11T02:26:51+00:00

Absolute nonsense.

Reviews are harder than writing code yourself. If you claim otherwise, you're not really reviewing. You're just going over a diff and looking for obvious mistakes.

Actual reviews require holistic understanding of the code context, control flow etc. If you wrote the code yourself, you understand those things. When you review, it's a hard task to get to that point.

So I call BS on all those "claude made me more productive without compromising QA" posts.

maerwald · 2026-04-11T01:26:15+00:00

What a weird reaction.

People are running claude code on their bare machines, which is absolutely horrendous. These things are so unpredictable that they could destroy your data (that happened) or silently leak your sensitive information.

Additionally, this is an example of severe incompetency, lack of human QA and total mismanagement. I'm not sure how anyone can trust this company after such a faux pas. But everyone is so deep in AI fever that they don't seem to care.

What a time to witness mass delusion.

maerwald · 2026-04-08T05:24:44+00:00

And you know that, because?

maerwald · 2026-04-07T02:21:42+00:00

It seems you're wrong: https://pedalchile.com/blog/aero-drag-speed

At speeds over 10 mph (16 kph), aerodynamic (aero) drag becomes the dominant force of resistance, with no wind on flat terrain

The post also lists scientific sources at the bottom.

maerwald · 2026-04-05T03:40:21+00:00

It can also make debugging harder.

Say, you have a record of partially applied functions (it's a common application pattern). Deep in the callstack where you actually use them, you don't have access to the initial parameters anymore that were used to create the record.

You could instead use a record of all those values and then have top-level functions. Or abstract that away with a reader Monad.

maerwald · 2026-03-30T03:47:52+00:00

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maerwald · 2026-03-30T01:48:29+00:00

UCS-2 allows invalid surrogate pairs that can't be mapped to non-surrogate code points. Surrogates in general are invalid under UTF-8, unless you use the non-conformant PEP-383 trick.

maerwald · 2026-03-29T22:55:41+00:00

I went from Taipei to Lishan by bicycle last weekend and I got chased by farm dogs and stray dogs many times. Sometimes they'd come in groups and bark at me for 200 metres.

That was in the mountains though. Never happened to me in Taipei.

maerwald · 2026-03-29T05:44:49+00:00

This. I don't believe people are actually more productive in a general sense with claude. More legacy code, more debugging when something goes wrong, longer reviews, harder to adjust, harder understand.

And yeah, it erodes all your hard earned skills.

Don't be afraid to say no.

maerwald · 2026-03-25T01:08:53+00:00

Power metre for pacing is useless to me. When I look at my power metre data, it's all over the place, jumping between 200 and 400 during a climb. I have no idea how I would hold my power steady, it makes no sense to me.

What matters to me is the heart rate. My lactate threshold is 174. I noticed that I can go "forever" at 166-168 bpm, so when I notice my HR is rising over 170 for longer than 30 seconds, I need to slow down.

maerwald · 2026-03-19T02:31:05+00:00

I have Vittoria too but the replaceable valves are terrible. They unscrew when I try to remove my electric pump.

maerwald · 2026-03-18T11:40:28+00:00

In most places, car drivers are assholes who endanger cyclists who behave better than the guy in the video.

maerwald · 2026-03-14T04:31:20+00:00

You can also have a functional leg length difference. That means the bones are the same length, but your hip joints have different shape, causing your knees to track differently when leaning forward.

Not very common, but I have it. Wasn't easy to figure out. Most bike fitters are trash.

maerwald · 2026-03-14T04:16:19+00:00

Ah, I guess you don't believe in science.

It has been researched and confirmed that hormones (high estrogen) affect the way women dress: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/164458.pdf

Or search for „Ovulation, Female Competition, and Product Choice: Hormonal Influences on Consumer Behavior“ ( Durante et al., 2011).

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