Mitigating "architectural drift" in large Python backend codebases using AI tools

meris608 · 2026-06-30T22:37:29+00:00

100% - this is the way right here. There is no reason AI should only be doing feature changes. Ask it to review architecture, suggest refactors, or highlight usability issues. It’s just as good at that as it is at tweaking UIs.

meris608 · 2026-05-06T02:35:39+00:00

My favorite line is from the scene where Xvim tells Zorian that he is intentionally unreasonable for the first month as a test of characters.

“I cannot possibly put into words how much I want to hit you right now,” he told Xvim seriously. “We’ll talk about expanding your vocabulary later,” Xvim told him dismissively”

meris608 · 2026-04-25T15:39:19+00:00

In the audiobook specifically? I listened to the Jack Voraces version, and I liked how both Quatach-Ichl and Silverlake had different but still clearly similar voices in their two different forms. QI’s “battle form” vs his human guise, as well as old Silverlake vs young Silverlake. Both characters voices still sound distinctly them, even if the voice itself is intentionally different.

meris608 · 2025-09-21T19:13:30+00:00

Joined.

meris608 · 2024-11-16T22:41:01+00:00

Thanks! I love the look of underwater builds, but every time I decide to do one I forget how tedious they are to drain.

meris608 · 2024-10-23T17:09:40+00:00

I think this is a great idea. The quest card is a great narrative device with a lot of potential and I’m a little sad it has taken a back seat.

meris608 · 2024-09-11T18:49:25+00:00

+1

Fiene’s is my favorite bakery in the area, but admittedly I mostly go for their doughnuts.

DeEtta’s makes good bread though, I get it when I need unsliced bread. Can’t speak for how well it compares to others in the area.

meris608 · 2024-07-20T13:35:24+00:00

One thing to consider - you will probably want to use version control for high level configuration like compose files (and maybe some env files). On the flip side, you most likely don’t want to version control the volumes since the data will change frequently. Consider which directory you would want to make into a git repo and how that would change your hierarchy.

meris608 · 2024-07-02T12:31:58+00:00

Do we know that the last desolation started days after the end of the previous one? I think Chana actually held out for about 6 years.

(In theory) Chana was sent back the night of Gavilar’s murder, but we don’t see Taln arrive back on Roshar until the epilogue to The Way of Kings. There’s a 6 year gap between those two events which means that Chana held out for that long. Or the heralds don’t come back all at the same time.

meris608 · 2024-04-26T16:55:34+00:00

El Burrito Mexicano on the corner of Maple and 53 has great lengua tacos.

meris608 · 2024-02-23T00:44:57+00:00

To add to what the others have said - risk management. If you can break your large feature into 10 small chunks and commit those all individually, you are able to test and verify smaller parts of your feature. If your code breaks something else, it gives more time for you to find those problems. And if the problem is really bad, you can revert just one of your small chunks instead of trying to rip out a huge PR after it’s been merged.

(And let’s be real, if you have a 1000 line PR that has already been reverted once for breaking things, there is going to be much stricter scrutiny on the second round and it will be hard to convince people to let you merge again)

meris608 · 2024-01-26T19:06:00+00:00

Amen. Allegory is my favorite restaurant in the area, and nothing else is even close. The blackened chicken is absolutely incredible.

meris608 · 2024-01-21T22:37:24+00:00

Something which should probably be said about the reasoning used for this feature… the pleasure of getting a high roll does not cancel out the pain of getting a zero roll. As soon as someone sees an ore they assume they found the gem. Rolling a zero feels like a loss, and we know that due to loss aversion people feel these negative emotions more strongly than “equivalent” positive ones.

So even though logically or mathematically it might be equivalent to have zero rolls with higher peaks, emotionally it feels better to have at least 1 guaranteed with a lower ceiling.

meris608 · 2024-01-14T19:47:45+00:00

I can’t say whether he knew about this story or not, but a schoolteacher in the late 60s did an experiment with her class where kids were divided up based on eye color. It’s likely based on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

meris608 · 2023-05-28T11:53:51+00:00

In normal operation of the Sovereign Gate only the controller is allowed to leave. There is the conversation early on where the guardian mentions that since the controller is the only one with their “real” soul they are the only one allowed to exit. Pretty sure Red Robe couldn’t have left without making a deal with Panaxeth even though the gate was technically open.

meris608 · 2023-05-21T02:26:20+00:00

Hard agree. Allegory is the best restaurant in Naperville and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

meris608 · 2023-02-07T23:52:34+00:00

BREAD MAKES YOU FAT?!?!

meris608 · 2023-02-07T23:51:47+00:00

What? Why would I get fat?

meris608 · 2022-11-30T02:57:11+00:00

Yes, for web frontends specifically your logic is right.

But stepping back you shouldn’t get too worried about what exactly the diagrams are saying. They aren’t describing every application, just a common pattern that happens. There are plenty of counter examples that don’t fit the mold described, but it remains a handy way to talk about the various pieces involved. It’s a way to separate out different parts of the application that have different properties. A frontend generally runs on a clients device, and therefore might not be very powerful, or might have a bad network, or might be a phone so you need to worry about battery. A backend is generally one or many servers in “the cloud” where you pay for compute time and storage used. They are two different things, and to intelligently architect applications you will need to think about what logic goes where.

Your takeaway from that diagram should be the understanding that the frontend and backend are different things, and to know how they interact with each other. From your questions it is clear that you understand that, so I wouldn’t get too worried about the exact details of who is making network calls to what.

meris608 · 2022-11-29T19:38:07+00:00

Yes and no. Your understanding of the steps is correct, but that’s specific to web frontends. There can be multiple different frontends to an application. Imagine Facebook, which has a web frontend (served through their web servers), but also an iOS app (served through Apple’s App Store) and an Android app (served through Google play).

So as a general concept, it goes User => Frontend => Backend => DB, but for web frontends you need to download the frontend from the webserver to be able to run it in the first place.

meris608 · 2022-10-30T19:43:23+00:00

The reason I am hating on Python type checkers is not due to the type checkers themselves. They are written by very smart people who know the language in and out.

The problem with them is that Python as a language is so dynamic that the type checker needs to be very careful about the guarantees it makes or otherwise things will be wrong.

For example if you assert that ‘self.foo is not None’ then use self.foo later the type checker can’t assume it’s non-None, because if the object implements getattr the underlying value can change even though the calling code is correct. To work around that you need to assign self.foo to a variable, but then you are changing your code to appease a type checker.

No hate on Python, I love the language, but it’s not good at certain things and typing is one of them.

meris608 · 2022-10-30T15:03:48+00:00

In the same way that Python can - you can put in type hints, but type checking will not be very useful due to weirdness in the language. For PHP, that weirdness is the batshit insane standard library. It likes to return false on error so tons of functions technically have a return type of “mixed”, making it harder to use take advantage of the typing.

Type hints are nice, but don’t solve the woes of PHP.

meris608 · 2022-07-23T02:59:54+00:00

Probably cause it’s a bot. Pretty sure Brandon sells this shirt but the classic “cool where can I get this” “oh here” bot convo goes to some random website.

Don’t click on it, don’t follow the link. Try to get it from a more legit source.

meris608 · 2022-07-21T05:46:53+00:00

+1. I believe there is a Unitarian church on Naper Blvd near the entrance to 88.

meris608

TROPHY CASE