stevedonovan

6 ms·

1.
by stevedonovan 1mo ago
The default model they are using for Web search is getting capable and is very visible. And now it invites people to keep asking questions. They are quietly trying to become the chatbot that everyone uses to look things up. That strikes m
2.
by stevedonovan 6mo ago
Hypomania is very irritating, and can actually mess up a person's life. It's a neurotic defense mechanism that's opposite to depression
3.
by stevedonovan 7mo ago
You could write in the language you are most eloquent in and prompt a bot to do a faithful translation. Post both versions
4.
by stevedonovan 7mo ago
Except for the power-to-weight problem. Would need very big wings!
5.
by stevedonovan 8mo ago
Codex generates solid Rust in my experience. Just needs a little style guidance
6.
by stevedonovan 8mo ago
It was my first taste of Swift, and has destroyed any lingering curiosity I had about it.
7.
by stevedonovan 9mo ago
Yep, there's always syntax, whether it's 'friendly' or not. And it still isn't natural language, where you can paraphrase, use synonyms etc. Good job for an LLM
8.
by stevedonovan 9mo ago
But are they writing? In that specific sense of high prestige communication? Sounds like stolen aura. Now, code by Gen AI is straightforward in comparison. Coding is not writing poetry, even if the lines also don't reach the right ma
9.
by stevedonovan 9mo ago
"This post could have been a tweet", and so on. It's a lovely metaphor for the soulful business of doing something really well, even if there is no 'market' for that kind of quality
10.
by stevedonovan 10mo ago
I've been getting great results from Codex. Can be a bit slow, but gets there. Writes good Rust, powers through integration test generation. So (again) we are just sharing anecdata
11.
by stevedonovan 11mo ago
Heh,I read SF as San Francisco; point remains true. Except the Valley wants to force a future, not describe it
12.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
It's not inconsistent to say there's a financial bubble and also genuinely think it's a new era for software development. There aren't enough programmers to justify the valuations and capex
13.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
These are a few well-chosen dependencies for a serious project. Rust projects can really go bananas on dependencies, partly because it's so easy to include them
14.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
So the cognitive reality of being a billionaire is now available to everyone?
15.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
But this is one thing that Gen AI is genuinely good at, constructing computer programs under close human supervision. It's also the most profitable (but not enough to justify valuations) Also, it may be a big thing here but its pretty
16.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
So much for the old thermonuclear ramjet idea....
17.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
This is how Option works with ? in Rust. But short-circuiting in an expression does make sense
18.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
Is this not more a Cargo thing? Cargo is obsessed with correct builds and eventually the file system fills up with old artifacts. (I know, I have to declare Cargo bankruptcy every few weeks and do a full clean & rebuild)
19.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
Ah, Elon paying attention to hid companies again! Context poisoning is not a uniquely LLM problem
20.
by stevedonovan 1y ago
I agree, it's hopelessly over-cheerful and tries to be cute. The pizza metaphor fell flat for me as well
21.
by stevedonovan 2y ago
Ah, Edge/Bing went through this phase recently. A split personality, where sensible stuff appeared on the left, and Copilot laboriously typing on the right. I disabled it, really did not add anything to the experience.
22.
by stevedonovan 3y ago
Yes, same feeling I had, but with dual mode; can be compiled as a 'standalone' service over HTTP/REST (or whatever) and _also_ compiled as a classic module with a strictly defined interface. One cool thing about standalone se
23.
by stevedonovan 3y ago
Yes, and at least StackOverflow will often give you some minority opinion, not just a snippet to be pasted into your code. Especially if something a little tricky like cryptography. Consider this classic: https://stackoverflow.co
24.
by stevedonovan 4y ago
Exactly. We learn to speak our mother tongue without instruction, but need to learn to write. And what is actually happening is training in putting thoughts out in a linear fashion, and debugging them. That's been the core of the cur
25.
by stevedonovan 4y ago
I suppose async web servers is the poster child of async, and drove a lot of the development. However, then _everything_ went async, adding the cognitive overhead of dealing with Rust async throughout the ecosystem, whether needed or not. I
26.
by stevedonovan 4y ago
I've honestly never noticed the problem, so I never saw the problem with X in the first place. (It is possible that I have never experienced a truly beautiful desktop, but my eyes are no longer particularly precise enough to operate at
27.
by stevedonovan 4y ago
Yes, the newtype pattern in Rust works very well, say to wrap a string. The somewhat annoying thing is that it is born without any properties so you have to teach it to be comparable, etc from scratch. The newtype pattern in Go is easier to
28.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
I would find such a lag very irritating, but it's fine on Linux. Using Bash for years and I realized that I could never remember all its corner cases - fish is much easier to fit in the head. And _personally_ I don't need to be PO
29.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Remember, using a loop is not a sin! (And I would hate us to get to the point where loops are automatically considered kindergarten code)
30.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
The ecosystem delivers a lot of pre-packaged essential complexity - e.g. only now Rust is starting to get the mature libraries to handle difficult domain-specific things. It is hard to program from scratch (no pun intended)

More ›