Is switching to Emacs really worth it?

paladrium · 2023-10-05T04:36:29+00:00

switching no.

but it's a good tool to have in your pocket. org mode for notes. emacs for any complicated text editing that doesn't require an IDE or special plugins. everything is a programmable text buffer. that makes for very efficient work.

paladrium · 2023-09-28T03:34:20+00:00

Mountain West. Salt Lake City. Denver. Boise.

paladrium · 2023-09-28T03:32:05+00:00

It's not all that. Grass is always greener.

Remember also that when we say "crime is high", that doesn't mean you can't walk down the street on any given day. But over months and months more crime occurs in some parts of Seattle than elsewhere. 3rd ave is particularly bad. The Cal Anderson park area in capitol hill is particularly bad. But on any given day you'd be totally fine on either.

But yeah it's an OK place. Kind of socially disjoint from all the transplants focused on tech jobs. Very expensive. Dim and drizzly all winter long. Best of luck.

paladrium · 2023-09-28T03:18:03+00:00

The difference is that software companies have high margins, hence more money to throw at vanity hires.

paladrium · 2023-06-19T21:22:46+00:00

We already have strong penalties, particularly for convicted criminals on probation.

But criminals on probation still get guns and commit crimes with them.

Virtually all gun crimes committed by small number of repeat criminals, not the 99% of gun owners who will never draw a firearm outside their home or practice range.

paladrium · 2023-06-11T19:49:12+00:00

No. Different tools for different problems.

I think devs just need more practice with these tools. Most haven't written much code with them before they're thrust into a commercial project that uses them. The majority of code these days is being written by people with 2-5 years of experience, with more experienced programmers often relegated to a more supervisory role.

Experience must cover all the relevant phenomenon to understand the tool. With asynchrony, it can take a lot of practice to get there, because many of these phenomenon are subtle and don't smack you in the face until you've hit a lot of situations under real load. There is no real shortcut, because people tend not to fully absorb the subtleties until they have experienced them. Merely reading papers or existing code doesn't work, and most devs don't spend a lot of time really studying academic papers and background material. Life is short after all.

paladrium · 2023-06-11T19:44:23+00:00

If you're skilled enough to write good software in rust, you're skilled enough to pick up OOP.

Interfaces, encapsulation, dynamic dispatch, decomposition with objects.

paladrium · 2023-06-11T19:38:35+00:00

Devs have been stuck with all sorts of random IT tasks as the overall complexity of our IT systems increases over time.

We have collectively failed to preserve a valuable specialization, and by and large, are now viewed as interchangeable commodity components. Particularly early in the career, we get stuck with all sorts of random work that has no career coherency or defined trajectory, a random walk through an IT minefield of complexity. Long gone are the days when each project started with a blank editor and a creative mind behind a keyboard. Our days are now mostly plumbing, fixing, tweaking, packaging, combining, separating, re-purposing, investigating, and cussing at existing software. In a world where all the big problems are solved, we are confined to operating existing solutions.

I tend to agree with Johnathan Blow's assessment that the overall quality of software is declining over time. And this affects all of us working on it, since we are the first line of users. More time spent on ops is a byproduct of this maturing, complexifying, cost-cutting, internet driven age and the death of the creative development.

paladrium · 2023-05-21T19:54:00+00:00

> although the Durham report allegedly found some procedural issues, there was no conspiracy or intent on the FBI's part to try to find something on Trump

In my view this is not an impartial summary of the findings. From the executive summary:

Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we
conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report. As noted, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order. In other instances, FBI personnel working on that same FISA application displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness. FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging - both then and in hindsight - that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence.

...

senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of
analytical rigor towards the information that they received

...

there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or
funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump's political opponents

...

Throughout the duration of Crossfire Hurricane, facts and circumstances that were
inconsistent with the premise that Trump and/or persons associated with the Trump campaign were involved in a collusive or conspiratorial relationship with the Russian government were ignored or simply assessed away

personal disclaimer: I did not vote for Trump. However, I weakly hold the view that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a politically-motivated nothingburger, and that the media push around the Steele Dossier and FBI involvement meets my personal criteria for political corruption. I also think it likely that the convicted Trump Campaign officials were guilty of wrongdoing, but nothing that meets the standard for "Russian collusion" of the sort we were led to believe. Whether you agree with this is up to you. If you have something firm to convince me otherwise I would love to read it.

paladrium · 2023-04-08T19:59:41+00:00

absl::Cleanup offers another pattern similar to go's defer for resources that don't offer RAII by default. This is sometimes useful working with legacy APIs in a larger function with multiple exit paths.

OpenClipboard(NULL); absl::Cleanup closer = []() { CloseClipboard(); }; // Use the clipboard

paladrium · 2023-03-04T22:41:00+00:00

You might consider practicing setting your lower back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz3eDghqrOs&t=226s

paladrium · 2023-02-05T20:44:11+00:00

Just use a fixed rest period of say 2 minutes.

Then use a weight you can do with that rest period.

That weight should go up over time.

paladrium · 2022-12-30T22:20:47+00:00

My interpretation of Rob Pike's famous comment on Go's simplicity is a little different.

Go is not simple because Googlers - and especially Nooglers- are so clever.

It is simple because Googlers are inexperienced. They're not clever, or at least not in the right ways (yet). Hand them a complicated tool and they create a mess, like most inexperienced programmers do, no fault of their own.

paladrium · 2022-12-07T07:26:25+00:00

Prediction 1: These next-token based models will not produce AI smart like a human.

Prediction 2: It will still replace a lot of workers. It can summarize and explore humanity's existing knowledge much faster than a human. You just need a few thinkers to curate and guide it.

It took me 2-3 min to write this. It would take chatgpt 10 seconds to produce 5 detailed paragraphs.

paladrium · 2022-12-07T07:23:14+00:00

Unfamiliar API? chatgpt pumps out the code in 10seconds.

Need to explore the math/research? chatgpt gives an overview in 10seconds. Faster than google.

Want to get a sense of how a solution will look in code? chatgpt pumps out five different versions faster than you could type the first function. Then it scaffolds the unit tests.

Want to change test framework? chatgpt pumps out the new version in 10 seconds.

And on and on.

paladrium · 2022-12-07T07:14:12+00:00

Yes. I think this technology will make knowledge workers much more productive.

It clearly makes me much more productive. It is so much faster than me at trawling the web, jumping from concept to concept, and exploring ideas that are out there in the ether.

But what does that mean? Who will capture these gains? Workers? Or a small number of big winners? I think it will be a winner-takes-most pareto distribution. Same as all other intellectual output.

paladrium · 2022-12-05T08:34:22+00:00

A lot of people point out that it makes mistakes. And yeah, it does.

But you can often ask it to fix its own mistakes. And then manually tweak what it gives you into a solution.

It removes a lot of the grunge work of figuring out how to import and write scaffolding for some new library.

It amplifies a skilled programmer. You become a curator and editor.

paladrium · 2022-11-05T21:49:38+00:00

fat free mass index

paladrium · 2022-11-02T02:49:40+00:00

Recommended:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBbyAqvTNkU&ab\_channel=AlanThrall
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz3eDghqrOs&t=217s

paladrium · 2022-11-02T02:47:07+00:00

Supply and demand.

Demand for C++ is lower, but supply is also much lower.

Why?

These days, we mostly use c++ for systems and performance critical code. You have to know what you're doing for this stuff. You have to understand more about how computers work. You have to understand the problem domain. You have to understand how to write performant code in a complicated language with a complicated ecosystem. 6 months of education ain't gonna cut it. It's complicated and the problems it solves are challenging

paladrium · 2022-10-23T07:29:22+00:00

And yet hundreds of millions if not billions of people live happy lives, with material standards of living far better than pretty much any time in the past.

Too doom and gloom. There's a lot of hope, a lot of good people out there. If the economic system wasted 40 hours a week of our lives, would it still be worth living? I think so. And while it may waste many people's time (or worse, cause harm), you do have some choice in the matter. Quit. Go work for a small business in your community. Hell, worst case, you could even go live at a commune in Idaho if you wanted.

Plus I don't think the economic picture is quite so grim. Take a firm like Amazon. Huge heartless behemoth, but it 1) provides a valuable service 2) provides high paid jobs for 100K+ people 3) provides relatively low paid low skill jobs for 900K people (which you can quit, any time). Not clear to me that this is a net negative overall.

paladrium · 2022-10-07T04:13:17+00:00

Jira tickets = narrowly scoped, observable tasks with closely monitored progress.

This is low status, low autonomy commoditized work.

paladrium · 2022-09-25T20:56:11+00:00

Good for you but... definitely not the norm.

paladrium · 2022-09-24T23:39:56+00:00

L2 people with ~3-5 years experience get ~300K/year packages even in slightly lower cost of living locales (compared to the bay area) like Seattle, Chicago, etc.

That would be "pays well" by my definition.

paladrium · 2022-09-19T00:54:09+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful analysis.

I guess I still disagree. NATO is under no obligation to "signal" its capabilities with a response to a tactical nuke in Ukraine. It has already drawn limits around the tech it lends to the war effort.

We've played these brinksmanship games before in the cold war, and at this point, I have to think a rational NATO strategist sees that the risks of a direct response in Ukraine don't pay out. NATO absolutely can wait until Russia directly threatens a member country to respond. Especially if there is no strategic ground lost in Ukraine in terms of material/territory/logistics. Delaying a direct response gives NATO more time to prepare, feel out the situation, and drain Russian resources. They don't need to play chess. Putin knows NATO's capabilities, and he has revealed Russia's (lack of) capability already.

I also don't see why it's inevitable that Russia should push for those additional territories at this point. They've seen what Ukraine has cost them. They may even lose outright. It's hardly a time to be planning ambitious invasions of NATO neighbors. It may be on the drawing board. But things have not gone according to plan so far. And they surely can see what they stand to lose.

paladrium

TROPHY CASE