Hey manucorporat! So fun seeing this on the frontpage of HN. I'm bummed our two paths didn't cross in person via a Go conference or something else. Wanted to say how happy I was to see Gin rise in popularity in the community. I think you did a great job taking some of the elegant bits from Martini and making some better technical tradeoffs that were more idiomatic for Go.
I’m a pretty big generalist professionally. I’ve done software engineering in a broad category of fields (Game engines, SaaS, OSS, distributed systems, highly polished UX and consumer products), while also having the experience of growing and managing Product and Design teams. I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years.
My most recent role I’m working on a net new product for the company and have basically been given fully agency over this product: from technical, budget, team, process, marketing, branding and positioning.
Give someone experienced like me capital, AI and freedom and you absolutely can build high quality software and a pretty blinding pace.
I’m starting to get the feeling than many folks struggling with adopting or embracing AI well for their job has more to do with their job/company than AI
Yeah I absolutely see it every day. I think it’s useful to separate the research/planning phase from the building/validadation/review phase.
Ticket trackers are perfect for this. Just start with asking AI to take this unclear, ambiguous ticket and come up with a real plan for how to accomplish it. Review the plan, update your ticket system with the plan, have coworkers review it if you want.
Then when ready, kick off a session for that first phase, first PR, or the whole thing if you want.
But planning like this is absolutely something AI can do. In fact, this is exactly the kind of thing we start with on our team when it comes to using AI agents. We have a ticket with just a simple title that somebody threw in there, and we asked the AI to spin up a bunch of research agents to understand and plan and ask itself those questions.
Funny enough, all the questions that you posed are things that come up right away that the agent asks itself, and then goes and tries to understand and validate an answer, sometimes with input from the user. But I think this planning mechanism is really critical to being able to have an AI generate an understanding, then have it be validated by a human before beginning implementation.
And by planning I don't necessarily mean plan mode in your agent harness of choice. We use a custom /plan skill in Claude Code that orchestrates all of this using multiple agents, validation loops, and specific prompts to weed out ambiguities by asking clarifying questions using the ask user question tool.
This results in taking really fuzzy requirements and making them clear, and we automate all of this through linear but you could use your ticket tracker of choice.
I think there are multiple conversations happening that are tying to converge on one.
On one hand, LLMs are overhyped and not delivering on promises made by their biggest advocates.
On the other hand, any other type of technology (not so overhyped) would be massively celebrated in significantly improving a subset of niche problems.
It’s worth acknowledging that LLMs do solve a good set of problems well, while also being overhyped as a silver bullet by folks who are generally really excited about its potential.
Reality is that none of us know what the future is, and whether LLMs will have enough breakthroughs to solve more problems then today, but what they do solve today is still very impressive as is.
Just wanted to chime in and say how appreciative I’ve been about all your replies here, and overall content on AI. Your takes are super reasonable and well thought out.
One thing I think a lot of folks don't realize about ADHD is that even with treatment, there is still a whole skillset to pick up regarding organization, self-management related to time etc. Many neurotypical people pick those things up over time, but those of us who are diagnosed late usually need to develop those skills, often for the first time.
That said, gaining those skill and having treatment feels like a superpower
Yup, not everyones diagnosis is the same, but mine was definitely combined with childhood trauma in a way that made it hard to notice anything was wrong in the first place. Can't begin to describe how much easier life feels now that I'm not using negative self talk to get through my day
Being very recently diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s (after searching for a source of my chronic exhaustion), it was interesting to notice just how much I masked my own ADHD from myself and others my whole life, where the experience of taking medication definitely matched "putting on glasses for the first time".
I've always felt like doing uninteresting things felt like wading through 3 feet of water, but I assumed everyone felt that, and that I was just lazy.
The biggest realization I had was that I have been using negative feelings/emotions in order to get stuff done for years. On the outside I looked like a productive, healthy person, on the inside I was beating myself down all day every day, and that behavior didn't lead to a great relationship with myself.
Now that I'm on medication, my brain actually rewards me for doing boring stuff. I see a dish in the sink and I want to rinse it and put it away because it feels good.
tldr; Just because you lead a successful, healthy life, your own perception on how hard life needs to be may still be skewed, and treatment for those who have been diagnosed with ADHD can really up your quality of life
Great to see you here :D