DavidPiper (u/DavidPiper)

DavidPiper commented on It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019) hsivonen.fi/string-length... · Posted by u/program

DavidPiper · a day ago

I think that string length is one of those things that people (including me) don't realise they never actually want. In a production system, I have never actually wanted string length. I have wanted:

- Number of bytes this will be stored as in the DB

- Number of monospaced font character blocks this string will take up on the screen

- Number of bytes that are actually being stored in memory

"String length" is just a proxy for something else, and whenever I'm thinking shallowly enough to want it (small scripts, mostly-ASCII, mostly-English, mostly-obvious failure modes, etc) I like grapheme cluster being the sensible default thing that people probably expect, on average.

DavidPiper commented on How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method yacinemahdid.com/p/how-to... · Posted by u/research_pie

socalgal2 · 3 days ago

My experience would be the opposite. I'm not goal oriented

> Instead I now just trust my instincts and follow what seems interesting or meaningful to me right now

for me that means watching anime, playing video games, reading HN and social media, and maybe writing small programs like solving S.O. questions, And now I look back, have accomplished nothing of significance, and have huge regrets. Regrets that I didn't set goals and work toward them so that I'd be in a better position in my life than I am now.

Not sure the OPs method will change that. In fact the OPs method sounds like using the waterfall method for life planning. That also doesn't sound like it would work for me

DavidPiper · 3 days ago

Your comment actually suggests that your instincts tell you those things are not as valuable, but you might just be following habit and dopamine loops at the current moment.

Which I guess is to say that GP's "follow your instincts" can also be as difficult as "set goals and hit them", just in different ways.

DavidPiper commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez

DavidPiper · 11 days ago

I'm a big fan of Adam Savage's TODO system:

- Ordinary dot points (on a 5x3 lined card, for me)

- But instead of dots, you draw a little square

- When the task if part way done, you colour in half the square, corner to corner

- When the task is completely done, you colour the whole square

It gives you partial progress, and the same satisfaction of crossing something off when done, but without obscuring the text you originally wrote.

DavidPiper commented on Teacher AI use is already out of control and it's not ok reddit.com/r/Teachers/com... · Posted by u/jruohonen

zamadatix · 17 days ago

I think the meaning was more "and now there is yet another thing the education system was better suited to do the parent now needs to do instead" and less "your child's education is worth grocery bags".

DavidPiper · 17 days ago

Oh! Yes that's a completely different read, and one whose sentiment I very much agree with.

DavidPiper commented on Teacher AI use is already out of control and it's not ok reddit.com/r/Teachers/com... · Posted by u/jruohonen

Avicebron · 17 days ago

Great, and now you too are bagging your own groceries, mission accomplished.

DavidPiper · 17 days ago

It seems a little disingenuous to equate the importance of bagging groceries and supporting your child's education when judging how much time and attention each deserves.

DavidPiper commented on The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-Five Year Mistake computerenhance.com/p/the... · Posted by u/SerCe

DavidPiper · a month ago

So much gold to mine in this talk. Even just this kind of throwaway line buried deep in the Q&A:

> I prefer to write code in a verb-oriented way not an object-oriented way. ... It also has to do with what type of system you're making: whether people are going to be adding types to the system more frequently or whether they're going to be adding actions. I tend to find that people add actions more frequently.

Suddenly clicked for me why some people/languages prefer doThing(X, Y) vs. X.doThing(Y)

DavidPiper commented on The current hype around autonomous agents, and what actually works in production utkarshkanwat.com/writing... · Posted by u/Dachande663

pmg101 · a month ago

Only one of these outcomes will be correct, so worth putting money on it if you think they're wrong a la The Big Short.

DavidPiper · a month ago

Not OP, but I've been thinking about this and concluded it's not quite so clear-cut. If I was going to go down this path, I think I would bet on competitors, rather than against incumbents.

My thinking: In a financial system collapse (a la The Big Short), the assets under analysis are themselves the things of value. Whereas betting on AI to collapse a technology business is at least one step removed from actual valuation, even assuming:

1. AI Agents do deliver just enough, and stay around long enough, for big corporations to lay off large number of employees

2. After doing so, AI quickly becomes prohibitively expensive for the business

3. The combination of the above factors tank business productivity

In the event of a perfect black swan, the trouble is that it's not actually clear that this combination of factors would result in concrete valuation drops. The business just "doesn't ship as much" or "ships more slowly". This is bad, but it's only really bad if you have competitors that can genuinely capitalise on that stall.

An example immediately on-hand: for non-AI reasons, the latest rumors are that Apple's next round of Macbook Pros will be delayed. This sucks. But isn't particularly damaging to the company's stock price because there isn't really a competitor in the market that can capitalise on that delay in a meaningful way.

Similarly, I couldn't really tell you what the most recent non-AI software features shipped by Netflix or Facebook or X actually were. How would I know if they're struggling internally and have stopped shipping features because AI is too expensive and all their devs were laid off?

I guess if you're looking for a severe black swan to bet against AI Agents in general, you'd need to find a company that was so entrenched and so completely committed to and dependent on AI that they could not financially survive a shock like that AND they're in a space where competitors will immediately seize advantage.

Don't get me wrong though, even if there's no opportunity to actually bet against that situation, it will still suck for literally everyone if it eventuates.

DavidPiper commented on I avoid using LLMs as a publisher and writer lifehacky.net/prompt-0b95... · Posted by u/tombarys

ryeats · a month ago

You know that teammate that makes more work for everyone else on the team because they do what they are asked to do but in the most buggy and incomprehensible way, that when you finally get them to move on to another team and you realize how much time you spent corralling them and fixing their subtle bugs and now when they are gone work doesn't seem like so much of a chore.

That's AI.

DavidPiper · a month ago

We need to update Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to AI that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

DavidPiper commented on An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education openletter.earth/an-open-... · Posted by u/mathgenius

izacus · a month ago

The person you're responding to has clearly used the word "student". What on earth are you on about?

DavidPiper · a month ago

I interpreted "students of arithmetic" as anyone that practices arithmetic - similar to "students of medicine", etc.

DavidPiper commented on An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education openletter.earth/an-open-... · Posted by u/mathgenius

amelius · a month ago

Makes sense. You also don't give calculators to students of arithmetic.

DavidPiper · a month ago

(Theses days) it's hard to know what you mean by this and whether you're being sarcastic.

No you don't give arithmetic students calculators for their exams, and you expect them to know how to do it without one.

Yes you probably give professionals who need to do arithmetic calculators so they can do it faster and with less errors.

Giving calculators to people who don't know how, why and/or when to use them will still get you bad results.

Giving calculators to someone who doesn't have any use for one is at best a waste of money and at worst a huge waste of time if the recipient becomes addicted to calculator games.