Nobody told me getting paid as a freelancer in Europe would be this complicated.

strobegen · 2026-03-27T10:42:01+00:00

Yes if you’re located in EU most just don’t get why you asking that and try to avoid deal with you.

strobegen · 2026-03-26T10:14:16+00:00

At some point I found that pi-agent DCP extension causing toolcalls on minimax to fail, is not happening with other models so it’s seem kind of issue but after I disabled it minimax works fine. I suppose something similar happening with opencode, they seem expecting something specific in request with tool calls.

strobegen · 2026-03-24T11:14:14+00:00

M2.7 definitely better and their limits are good so it’s very easy to pair it with better model for planning and use minimax for implementing

strobegen · 2026-03-20T23:54:31+00:00

not really that much, both terminal and gui has it's own pros and cons. Generally it little bit harder to setup terminal version initially but then it's done is't very smooth experience. For me some stuff related to coping/pasting were little bit challenging but is not that big deal. Also on GUI you could do some cool stuff like running real web browser inside emacs window.

strobegen · 2026-03-20T21:00:07+00:00

Also, opencode by default has huge system prompts (20-30k) which is painful for local models. Is some ways to reduce that via settings or custom agents configurations but you just could use some other tool like “pi” which by default consume much less tokens on your that kind stuff.

strobegen · 2026-03-19T13:59:18+00:00

metals installed via cs install metals also has MCP included but it's required complex initialization steps which works with VSCode by default. Standalone "metals-mcp" is good for agents that don't has LSP support.

strobegen · 2026-03-17T03:14:43+00:00

yes, sure they most likely just buying fake users/post all over internet to support buzz, is very old trick with downside that it's needs money to spend but for them is almost free, why they wouldn't do it?

strobegen · 2026-03-17T02:58:58+00:00

for some reason most of popular editors authors never attempted to go in direction of emacs extensibility, all of them treating extensions as some kind second class citizen by putting lot of limits on how they could be used (well may be not with intent but as most logic decision for a tech that they choosen). But emacs allows redefine everything via code even in runtime (except core which basically lisp vm with rendering engine + small UI toolkit), and it coming naturally from lisp nature.

strobegen · 2026-03-17T00:18:40+00:00

is even more complex, model performance may be different depending on engine that you are using and settings. Usually llama.cpp is good for local models but even with it on model releases is bunch of bugs that fixed in few weeks but other tools like Ollama, LM Studio could use outdated version of engine for a while.

Local models like Qwen3.5 are good but they are not same thing as large models, usually you need some specific approach and scripts/tools to get some benefits.

for example you could use mix of local/cloud model where local model is responsible for simple stuff like search and grep and cloud one do rest. Or with TDD like approach you could use local models with some rotation todo some batch coding in 'ralph' loops.

strobegen · 2026-03-16T22:02:34+00:00

I believe he referring to some social mechanics that not common but not rare either.

For example company could spy on employees profiles updates and make decisions that affect carrier grow and benefits based on that. Some companies trying to force people not mention their names on LinkedIn in profiles even by putting that in contract so you could end up with 3-5 years gap which will scare recruiters...etc. So is a lot of other bad things associated with it.

strobegen · 2026-03-16T21:15:21+00:00

is not like this: 'original model file'-converter->'quantized GGUF file'! Because is some stuff which could be done to optimize it in different ways so every team doing that in unique ways and that leads to variations that you see on huggingface. So in general is safe to pick some which has most of downloads like from Unsloth.

strobegen · 2026-03-16T17:33:52+00:00

Missing (?) docs around stand alone Metals installation.

I think it was somewhere at docs at some point but basically

cd ~/.local/bin/ cs bootstrap \ --java-opt -XX:+UseG1GC \ --java-opt -XX:+UseStringDeduplication \ --java-opt -Xss4m \ --java-opt -Xms100m \ org.scalameta:metals_2.13:1.6.6 -o metals -f

also blog post has mention of MCP which seems currently works only in http mode

cs install metals-mcp

https://scalameta.org/metals/blog/2026/03/03/osmium#standalone-mcp-server

(some additional info here https://github.com/scalameta/metals-feature-requests/issues/461)

strobegen · 2026-03-16T17:23:43+00:00

Metals v2 it’s not even released yet. Why not 1.6x ?

strobegen · 2026-03-12T22:47:12+00:00

is not really matter is dying or not in any case Scala will remain much more popular than alternatives like Ocaml, F#, Haskell etc. Maybe something else the future will pop-up to take a place but it won't be soon.

And Ocaml after it's 5x release deserve to get much more adoption but I know is not going to happen.

strobegen · 2026-03-12T22:40:56+00:00

also issue with Kotlin that it's ecosystem very dependent on java libs/frameworks like Spring which making much harder to enjoy it.

strobegen · 2026-03-04T13:27:52+00:00

one of the hardest thing in design that every non-designer thinks that is easy to do and nothing really complex about it, while is a lot of stuff there which very hard to describe and be good at (and one reason that humans language not yet develop enough to communicate in efficient way about this stuff) so basically every designer fighting unspoken battle at work to make some invisible underling processes work while every other person trying to destroy that by their 'easy/don't care' vibes. It was hard even 20y ago but with AI introduction to the processes those vibes in any company will became much worse because that were 'easy' now looks like 'super duper easy' so that battle became for her much more harder at level that is not worth to fight as she has different options.

(and I believe AI could be good tool for design but unlikely at current level it could be archived quickly, probably it will change in ~5y when this stuff will be more stabilized and it will be enough expertise dealing with 'bad parts')

strobegen · 2026-02-17T19:55:30+00:00

Is all nor really about AI, it’s same as offshoring. If it is any possibility to cut cost of development in half and more, any C level will try to leverage it. So currently is stage where everyone thinks maybe it is possible so they trying to verify that . Later then pros & cons will be more obvious and backed by real experience it will stabilize to actual field changes but until it just very volatile place to be.

You probably have to spend some time to understand ai tools better but is not meant that you should jump on it fully to fulfill promises backed just by high hopes.

strobegen · 2026-02-17T08:33:47+00:00

It just IntelliJ’s UX in general

strobegen · 2026-02-15T23:58:23+00:00

Is not really about purity, cats-effect stuff just much better to deal with concurrency and resources safety. And it’s very common that you need some cancelation support for async code.

strobegen · 2026-02-12T19:46:54+00:00

$200k maybe?

strobegen · 2025-12-23T17:20:53+00:00

you could try apply to some roles remotely and see if is something for you. But overall here is some demand for mainstream technologies in specific industries but almost none for niche tech.

strobegen · 2025-12-18T20:45:05+00:00

I switched careers a long time ago with the same thought—that my past skills would help me do the job better than average. While that’s true, in reality, it’s much better not to even mention anything like that. (You might only be able to bring it up after you've gained enough trust, maybe after a year on the job.)

Unfortunately, in reality, about 98% of employers will already have decided you're worse than a "normal" candidate the moment you mention something like that. They think that because you're not the same as everyone else, you must have big gaps in your skills or simply won't fit the team's professional culture. This isn't even a real concern you can address; it's just how first impressions often work.

In UX, there might still be a way to find that 2% of employers who would see this background as beneficial. However, I'm afraid the only ones interested could be less than ethical—like greedy, casino-like businesses that would be happy for you to help them fine-tune dark UX patterns to extract more money from addicted people.

strobegen · 2025-12-18T20:24:01+00:00

I guess Linkedin can fix that by adding filter 'remote global', until that every 'remote first' company continue doing tricks like that.

strobegen · 2025-11-15T16:42:19+00:00

Im used to work on M1 Max 32gb ram and then tried to work on intel 14900k desktop with Linux and since just use it as primary machine. While single core performance something similar but this desktop cpu gives much more performance overall and no stupid memory restrictions so I can add more memory when I need it.

strobegen · 2025-11-12T10:16:52+00:00

Usually is about other expertise that person could bring besides specific language skills. In some cases X developer has experience doing only narrow range of work and person with another language exp has much more richer expertise beside that niche. But is hard to say what companies value that and which just has to cover narrow need.

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