benbalter

7 ms·

1.
by benbalter 1mo ago
> I'm curious how much you think lessons and practices from say, 2012 or 2014 are holding up so far in a rapidly changing post-AI environment. I didn't touch too much on AI in the book itself (since it's changing so quickl
2.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Fair, and I think this is the most interesting feedback here, especially because I made the same observation in the blog post itself: > One of these caught me. `validateHypotheticalHooks` flagged the opening of a paragraph I was certain
3.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Fair. The project originally started as "turn my blog into a book", with a 1:1 mapping of blog post to chapter. I got feedback early on that that wasn't landing, but if you compare the outline on the book site to my blog arch
4.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Nice! My rule (pre-AI) had always been never force a human to do what a robot can. If you can automate yourself out of your least favorite part of your job, that's a win for both you and your employer. You can move on to more meaningfu
5.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Glad to inspire. That was the point of the post. For the record, I never made any guarantees that the book (or the website) was any good. Software or prose, you can have the most pristine build pipeline in the world, but "garbage in, g
6.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Ha! Indeed. Love the time-lapse video. ETA: Need to add "maniac on the front page of Hacker News" to my resume.
7.
by benbalter 1mo ago
I've gotten that feedback before. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Full disclosure, a few months back when I had some tokens expiring, I had Copilot spike out a draft to see if there was anything "there" worth writing. If you
8.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Well, there goes my weekend. Thanks for sharing. Will take a look.
9.
by benbalter 1mo ago
Why do you think I procrastinated writing by building out all that unnecessary tooling? /s
10.
How I over-engineered my book(ben.balter.com)
54 points by benbalter 1mo ago|47 comments
11.
by benbalter 2mo ago
Partially licensing, but also tokens + efficiency. As noted above, the book is written for humans (anecdotes, examples, etc.). Robots just need the facts and can extrapolate. If I were building a hosted service, a custom LLM with embeddings
12.
by benbalter 2mo ago
This was my first "real" MCP server (previously I made an MCP server to control a Furby for GitHub Universe) and I learned a lot. A few things I learned (not an expert): * Tool vs. Resource: Does it compute or does it serve * Prom
13.
by benbalter 2mo ago
> the book's website and blog appear interesting, the author can write I'll take the compliment! README was 100% intended for robots, not humans (book is 100% for humans, FWIW). I'd be impressed if you can spend $10 on tok
14.
by benbalter 2mo ago
Fixed rubric. It works on regex matching across interpersonal tension, active incident, sensitivity, and ambiguity. If a pattern matches, it weights sync over async.
15.
Show HN: An MCP server that turns async-work practices into tools(github.com)
22 points by benbalter 2mo ago|9 comments
16.
No Agenda, No Meeting(noagendanomeeting.net)
7 points by benbalter 5mo ago|1 comments
17.
by benbalter 5mo ago
Please don't send meeting invites without an agenda. Imagine getting a calendar invite that just says "Quick sync" with zero context… and having no idea what it's about.
18.
by benbalter 3y ago
TL;DR: When working as a distributed team, be mindful of cultural differences, time zones, encouraging breaks between meetings, and connecting as humans.
19.
Practice Inclusive Scheduling(ben.balter.com)
1 points by benbalter 3y ago|1 comments
20.
Pull requests are a form of documentation(ben.balter.com)
7 points by benbalter 3y ago|1 comments
21.
by benbalter 3y ago
TL;DR: When authoring a pull request, use the body as an opportunity to document the proposed change, especially the “why”, and cross link any related issues or other PRs to create a trail of breadcrumbs for future contributors.
22.
Meetings are a point of escalation, not the starting point of a conversation(ben.balter.com)
2 points by benbalter 3y ago|2 comments
23.
by benbalter 3y ago
Default to transferring context asynchronously. Hold colleagues accountable for being async first. If you receive a meeting invite without context, an agenda, or a read-ahead doc, consider politely declining.
24.
by benbalter 5y ago
PiHole is what first introduced me to the DNS sinkholing concept and was more mature when I was first researching options. AdGuard home has come a long way since then and I’m planning on giving it a closer look when I’m looking for my next
25.
Nine things a (technical) program manager does(ben.balter.com)
2 points by benbalter 5y ago|0 comments
26.
by benbalter 7y ago
> A lack of knowledge hoarding, healthier knowledge transfer and decision making, and reduced waste. Author here, +100 to this. The role of the PM should be to drive consensus around the problem, not to decree the problem (or requiremen
27.
Resolutions for Sustaining and Growing Open Source Communities(hackernoon.com)
1 points by benbalter 7y ago|0 comments
28.
by benbalter 8y ago
When you request an archive of your data, we send the download link to your primary email address (the required token is not available via the web UI). Once you click that link, you'll be asked to re-enter your password. So for this pa
29.
by benbalter 8y ago
Did I miss something? Is there not a way to use 1Password 7 without it automatically uploading your 1Password 6 vault to their cloud as part of the setup flow (as it did for me)? Unless I did something wrong, it looks like a my.1password.co
30.
Use any theme with GitHub Pages(github.com)
4 points by benbalter 9y ago|0 comments

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