rgoulter

6 ms·

1.
by rgoulter 4d ago
This prioritises accuracy/history of what happened, but this has significant disadvantages and practically no advantages (other than "accuracy of what happened". There are cases where you really do want an append-only leger,
2.
by rgoulter 5d ago
> I wonder what use case there would be to checkout the same branch in multiple worktrees. I've run into it when I've wanted to checkout that branch (to try running code there, or view a file, or rebase it, or whatever) and the
3.
by rgoulter 5d ago
The linked post is not that long. The readme in the linked project happens to be longer, but it's clearly because the author put tables of keymap bindings in the readme. It's what I'd hope a well-written readme should look li
4.
by rgoulter 8d ago
I can tell you wrote this comment when you were younger.
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by rgoulter 12d ago
For one, there are frequently examples posted to HN where LLM coding agents have been used to help people complete projects which otherwise wouldn't have been done. You're taking a really strict view of 'meaningful' if
6.
by rgoulter 20d ago
This whole post reads like a frustration with a lack of thought. I think it's worth distinguishing 'LLM assistance' based on how much thought/effort went into the prompt. e.g. It's popular to hate on "my collea
7.
by rgoulter 28d ago
Interesting discussion of a chorded input device alongside modal editing of code. Modal editing is quite prominent in vim and vim-flavoured tools. So, I don't think model editing's lack of popularity is due to people not knowing a
8.
by rgoulter 1mo ago
I'd count in LLM coding agents favour: e.g. willingness and capability to do things which I'd have to go read a tutorial for; as well as rapidly being able to iterate and narrow down e.g. when given access to a repl. Rhombus looks
9.
by rgoulter 1mo ago
Each to their own, but I think free weights is the easiest activity where you get to feel tangible progress from doing it. You move weight around, later you move the same around a bit more (yay!), or move a heavier weigh around (yay!). You
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by rgoulter 2mo ago
Nix (& NixOS) are very much in the same "as code" as Terraform. -- You put in extra effort now, to save effort later. This isn't traditionally 'practical'. It's quicker to just install the package, compared
11.
by rgoulter 2mo ago
Hmm. Using e.g. Claude code: I could see this as next step: "plain text editor" progresess to "with autocomplete"; using an LLM coding agent is then an abstraction over editing code. Using e.g. LLM-based system: natural
12.
by rgoulter 2mo ago
A naive hope is: you see that the LLM is so good at coding that all you need to do is supply a "yes/no" on what you want. Turns out that understanding the technical domain is important to getting good results, even if the LLM
13.
by rgoulter 2mo ago
To an extent, but not to that extent. There's a significant difference between (say) 20wpm and 100wpm. -- Your comment is 150-200 words; so that's the difference between spending two or three minutes vs ten (just typing it out,
14.
by rgoulter 2mo ago
'Maybe cheap but not free' is a good observation. If I'm getting paid for the work, I'm happy to leverage the LLMs so I can do more. If I'm paying for the work, I expect more from it. For hobbyist stuff, where I&#x2
15.
by rgoulter 2mo ago
> I think the last time I tried was a year ago though, so I assume it has improved. I noticed that coding agents seemed to get pretty good around 2025 Oct/Nov. If it's improved? My experience with Nickel-lang (probably as not-i
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by rgoulter 2mo ago
Another consideration: written by hand, the trade-off of development velocity vs well organised code means that it can be worth taking some tech debt now in order to deliver some value now. (Especially when prototyping etc.). With coding ag
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by rgoulter 2mo ago
Kindof. The problem is: quickly fixing problems (or preventing problems) benefits from having a good understanding of what the code is doing. If you do have a suite of automated checks that's comprehensive enough that if it passes, no
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by rgoulter 3mo ago
devenv is really nice. devenv brings modularity to development shells. For example, you could configure your devenv module for the shell you want (which env vars you want set, which packages you want available, etc.), and then re-use this
19.
by rgoulter 3mo ago
> Also, NixOS is not very flexible. I prefer e. g. /Programs/Ruby/4.0.5/ I'd characterise it as the opposite: A unique aspect of NixOS is that it avoids global state as much as possible (& prefers to symlink
20.
by rgoulter 3mo ago
> I suppose you're saying ASCII 10 was chosen as newly because it aligns with the down arrow on keyboards of the time. Maybe. The linked StackExchange has it as: > What character was used for what control code was mostly a matter
21.
by rgoulter 3mo ago
> \n is ^J (ctrl-J) so there's some logic there The same 'j' as vi uses for 'hjkl'. https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/42426/why-did-vi-use-...
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by rgoulter 3mo ago
I recalled Google says "AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses", and wondered why it wasn't in the screenshot. I see it's because you need to click the "show more"/expand button to see that discla
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by rgoulter 3mo ago
SKG aren't going for a maximalist "if you publish an online game, it must 100% work forever". Unfortunately, it seems it's not so easy to find a clear mission statement. I see their main point as: it should still be poss
24.
by rgoulter 3mo ago
I do wish that Emacs was more popular with LLM technologies. LLMs are powerful at dealing with text. And Emacs is highly extensible and typically text-oriented. Already I see people say that LLMs much Emacs much easier to use (since you can
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by rgoulter 3mo ago
That's an apt term. Or more to the point: 'mode error' is exactly what the upthread comment is complaining about with the Caps Lock key.
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by rgoulter 3mo ago
> I've switched to programmable ergo keyboards where there's a whole slew of options The best part of these kinds of keyboards is they provide each thumb two keys each. That allows for the keyboards to be much more expressive,
27.
by rgoulter 3mo ago
Sort of. The downside from the 'state' from Caps Lock is you have to keep track of whether it's active or not. Whereas with layers, typically a layer will only be active if you're holding down some kind of "activate
28.
by rgoulter 4mo ago
> If I'm gonna be reviewing all day... I think the point is: Pre-LLM: 1. think, 2. write code & check, 3. review. LLM: 1. think, 2. write prompt, <LLM writes code quickly>, 3. review. If the thing that you enjoy about prog
29.
by rgoulter 4mo ago
> But LLMs don’t seem particularly good at inventing new ways to code (or write, or…). It’s literally all derivative. I think the key part is how much thought goes into something. Optimistically, LLMs are good at taking unstructured inpu
30.
by rgoulter 4mo ago
Seems to me LLMs have changed some things. I'm not sure how it's best put, but it used to be: - Seeing code (or a blogpost or whatever) was a result from effort where thought had gone into it. The writer paid effort so the reader

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