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lelele

400 karmajoined 16 jaar geleden

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Why ancient Roman buildings last for millennia [video]

bbc.com
1 points·by lelele·7 maanden geleden·2 comments

comments

lelele
·eergisteren·discuss
Joel On Software: Rewriting software is the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make. [1]

Microsoft: Take that, Joel!

;)

---

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
lelele
·19 dagen geleden·discuss
Indeed. I'm trying to develop a similar style. The phrasing in the quoted passage is really tight.
lelele
·28 dagen geleden·discuss
Yes, C# is becoming more and more complex, but IMO C++ is still in a class of its own. Just compare how many different, sometimes competing ways there are to initialize variables in C++, each with its own subtleties.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. And of course, even if C++'s user base seems to be shrinking, it still works well for some categories of programmers.
lelele
·28 dagen geleden·discuss
See my reply to a similar objection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48520416
lelele
·28 dagen geleden·discuss
See my reply to a similar objection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48520416
lelele
·28 dagen geleden·discuss
Not really. C++ is on another level altogether: the code could be calling implicit conversion operators, the compiler could have instantiated some template code in an unforeseen way, and so on.

Years ago, I was really proficient in C++, but after a year of programming in C#, I realized that not once had the behavior of my code caught me off guard. In the following years, I only ran into quirky behavior a couple of times. I could finally program without the constant mental overhead of watching out for C++ pitfalls.
lelele
·28 dagen geleden·discuss
> y'know you can check if an operator has been overloaded

And there lies the problem with C++: to be sure, you have to check. C++ code can't be taken at face value -- the most innocuous-looking code could be a ticking bomb.
lelele
·vorige maand·discuss
In my experience, yes. AFAICS, LLMs never think out of the box, and are heavily influenced by the way you ask questions.
lelele
·vorige maand·discuss
So, Greenspun's Tenth Rule seems to have come full circle: now, "Any sufficiently complicated Coalton program contains an ad hoc, slow implementation of half of OCaml." ;)

I've left out "informally specified, bug-ridden" because I guess that's not the case for Coalton, but kept "slow" for when Coalton is used on a slower CL implementation.
lelele
·2 maanden geleden·discuss
Would you mind sharing your HW configuration? Thank you.
lelele
·2 maanden geleden·discuss
You forgot the 10 levels of precedence and the 3 associativity options for operators ;)
lelele
·4 maanden geleden·discuss
> The main difference between my workflow and the authors, is that I have the LLM "write" the design/plan/open questions/debug/etc. into markdown files, for almost every step. > > This is mostly helpful because it "anchors" decisions into timestamped files, rather than just loose back-and-forth specs in the context window.

Would you please expand on this? Do you make the LLM append their responses to a Markdown file, prefixed by their timestamps, basically preserving the whole context in a file? Or do you make the LLM update some reference files in order to keep a "condensed" context? Thank you.
lelele
·4 maanden geleden·discuss
> Sure sounds like another fad diet.

Yeah! A fad lasting millions of years of human evolution, however.
lelele
·5 maanden geleden·discuss
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.
lelele
·5 maanden geleden·discuss
With the crucial difference that now you have some leeway in firing one/some of your bosses.
lelele
·5 maanden geleden·discuss
Thanks for sharing. Would you mind expanding on a few points?

> 2. sell what makes customers feel good buying

What did you have in mind? What would make a purchase feel good or bad for a customer?

> 3. Never compete, focus on service with a novel niche product. Stupid people by their nature destroy everything around them regardless of long term benefit.

I'm not sure how the second sentence connects to the first - could you clarify what you mean there?

> 9. Stay quiet (especially online in a sea of cons), and only talk about the distant past when people try to goad you into telling them how you make revenue

You mean staying quiet about the specifics of your current products and strategy, as opposed to sharing general advice like here, right?

> Never let technical staff talk with the customers, or vendors.

Could you elaborate on the reasoning behind this?

Thanks again.
lelele
·5 maanden geleden·discuss
I don't know about others, but I switched to Reddit or forums for asking and answering questions because it offered a much smoother experience.
lelele
·5 maanden geleden·discuss
What do you mean?
lelele
·6 maanden geleden·discuss
.
lelele
·6 maanden geleden·discuss
There is no such thing as "desktop Linux". What we have instead is a large collection of distros, each with its own UX, unlike Windows or macOS which present a relatively unified platform.

I switched to Linux many years ago because a new laptop was unusably slow under the Windows Vista it came with, and I have not looked back since, yet I'd never recommend Linux to "the masses". Linux can work well for people who just browse the web and read email. Beyond that, the experience quickly becomes dependent on having a knowledgeable person nearby to help with choosing software and supported hardware or troubleshooting it.

To me, articles like this show how disconnected many technically inclined people are from average users' experience. Things like bloated software or aggressive advertising may be annoying to us, but to most users they are just part of using a computer.