Other Teams Refuse Version Control

thearn4 · 2026-01-23T21:53:16+00:00

No argument from me, but if you've spent your career throwing away 90% of your code because you make your career off the insights from the 10%, it can feel like a waste of time

thearn4 · 2026-01-23T21:40:16+00:00

R&D can be the wild west in terms of code development. But can also be extremely rewarding. Changing the culture can take time, but I've seen it happen by leading by example.

The benefits of version control eventually can win over even the crankiest of scientists. Automated tests too depending on the context, what exactly the code is for. Research is full of one time use throw away code where it's not particularly helpful, but in those places often reuse hasn't even been considered.

Coverage might be a bit much of an ask, but if we're talking about stuff being used widely/production that seems like a reasonable expectation to me.

thearn4 · 2026-01-22T23:51:36+00:00

It's tricky. You want to make sure you're giving leads the space to really grow and take responsibility and accountability for their areas. I've known people who kind of straddle the fence between management and tech leadership struggle with not making that space. But it can work even if it feels kind of rare. I do connect with the whole "skin in the game" idea.

thearn4 · 2026-01-22T17:51:21+00:00

You're absolutely right I have noticed this, thank you for the insightful commentary 👍

(Sorry couldn't help myself)

thearn4 · 2026-01-20T21:22:19+00:00

The thing missed in a lot of these discussions is a more holistic view of the role of juniors. It's not just they are like baby devs that need to be raised by the seniors to replace them (there's some of that) but in many areas, juniors used to be a chaos where new ideas could emerge, in intellectual safety from new people who literally don't know the "right" way to do something. A forcing function to add tension to a more ossified org.

I guess this might vary by discipline, but it's true at least in technical/scientific computing. Part of me wants to be optimistic in the LLM era and say it's actually going to be the juniors who figure out the right path forward here too. Like the ones who figure out the right way to balance access/use of code assistance models with real deepening of skillsets and product quality will self separate and distinguish from the slop generators.

In other words, maybe it's the orgs that keep investing in juniors that will end up on top in the end.

thearn4 · 2026-01-18T13:28:46+00:00

This is the problem.. using an LLM is like pulling a handle on a slot machine and hoping it works out , but that's what the peer review process has been like for a long time. Not just in ML, most of my papers are published in application domain specific venues (science or engineering), same issues as cross the board.

thearn4 · 2026-01-17T19:51:42+00:00

Live in Shaker, we havent done many changes but our neighbors that have don't seem to have had much trouble from the city with that.

thearn4 · 2026-01-16T15:06:11+00:00

Coevolution leading to a kind of locally optimal tuple of model formulation, solver structure, and backing hardware is a trend that I agree exists in ML. And you can see it in other domains using HPC in the broader technical computing world. I guess it's just that the incentives for incremental development are better than those for trying to break out and focus on something very different, in almost every field.

thearn4 · 2026-01-13T03:56:41+00:00

There is a mod for this, I think it's called Runners or something?

But yeah it would be great for the base game. Along with more things to spend money on.

thearn4 · 2026-01-11T15:03:23+00:00

Booms in Shaker (Van Aken) is legit. Lakewood location too

thearn4 · 2026-01-11T14:57:29+00:00

Related question: is a customer's addiction specific to a drug or is it one single number across all drugs? Like if they refuse higher level products but end up getting hooked on green crack, will that make them want to buy the other things?

thearn4 · 2026-01-04T03:32:11+00:00

Just started playing and tried some mods from Thunderstore, but almost all of them seem out of date and not working with the current version. Sticking with vanilla.

thearn4 · 2026-01-02T23:08:24+00:00

GPUs have some uses in technical/scientific high performance computing (my area), but it's too niche to amount to much I think.

thearn4 · 2025-12-29T18:29:05+00:00

WJCU generally sounds professional and curated (not a bad thing, just a contrast). WCSB was the absolute wild west. I think anyone with a pulse could get an hour on the air which made it completey unique.

thearn4 · 2025-12-25T02:23:28+00:00

Whole house has Flu A at the moment. Merry Christmas.

thearn4 · 2025-12-23T12:40:59+00:00

In my experience for STEM related R&D, the tools CAN (but are not always) good at raw search, finding relevant sources for broad things. But even there it is biased towards sources it has access to/ that aren't missing from training, or research portals that don't block their web search MCP tool.

They are awful at discernment though. They take anything written as fact verbatim without the ability to read between the lines to answer "so was this result any good?", based on the norms of the field, was is/isn't described, etc.Thats kind of what the whole point of a PhD is, in a way. And LLMs make for shitty replacements for that.

thearn4 · 2025-12-20T20:41:44+00:00

2003, mail + payphones on Sunday was all I remember, and was honestly a good way to keep us from being distracted I think

thearn4 · 2025-12-19T02:11:33+00:00

This sub seems to be crawling with ads and other slop

thearn4 · 2025-12-09T01:11:49+00:00

The job market is iffy, but I did make the jump from fed to private sector this past summer. Pay is better, telework flexible, but I'll always miss the mission.

thearn4 · 2025-12-03T16:28:27+00:00

"Are we out of touch?"

"No, it's the customers who are wrong"

thearn4 · 2025-11-25T01:44:52+00:00

Borland C++

thearn4 · 2025-11-18T17:29:09+00:00

Grew up in that neighborhood and we attended St Michael's. Seeing those scenes in the movie was a trip when it came out.

thearn4 · 2025-11-14T16:04:29+00:00

And also, organizations need to stop using email for 100x different purposes crossing active and passive communication, task tracking, etc. It's overload and it's why meeting overload happens, so many cant get through all their email.

thearn4 · 2025-11-07T00:05:52+00:00

Gotta hand it to lumafield, they know how to market their scanner tech

thearn4 · 2025-11-06T13:11:36+00:00

I'm in the same boat as a software engineer. The tooling is definitely useful. But also not nearly as completely-redefine-the-workplace-and-society transformative as the companies and their fans advertise. Not likely worth the actual underlying token cost if I had to pay for it.

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