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Readit NewsFr3dd1 commented on What Will China's Green-Tech Ambitions Cost the World? nytimes.com/2025/09/18/ma... · Posted by u/butatwhatcost
This is true but there also needs to be good developers as well. It can't just be great process and low quality developer practices. There needs to be: 1/ high quality individual processes (development being one of them), 2/ high quality delivery mechanisms, 3/ feedback loops to improve that quality, 4/ out of band mechanisms to inspect and improve the quality.
I would argue that a good process always has a good self correction mechanism built in. This way, the work done by a "low quality" software developer (this includes almost all of us at some point in time), is always taken into account by the process.
> tdd from the integration side and only add unit tests later
This is where I've landed as well. Unit tests are for locking down the interface, preventing regressions, and solidifying the contract - none of which are appropriate for early stages of feature development. Integration tests are almost always closer to the actual business requirements and can prove direct value - ie only once the integration works, then lock it down with unit tests.
I've also toyed with a more radical idea: don't check your tests into the git repo. Or at least keep the developer tests separate from the automated tests. Think about it: what rule says that the tests used in development should go directly into the CI test suite? One is designed to help you navigate the creative process, the other is designed to prevent regressions. I think we do a disservice by conflating the two scenarios into one "testing" umbrella. During TDD, I need far more flexibility to redefine the shape of the tests (maybe it requires manual setup or expert judgement or ...) and I don't want to be hampered by a (necessarily) rigid CI system. Dev tests vs CI serve two completely different purposes.
Interesting idea but what exactly is a dev test for you? And when does it qualify as a ci test?
I had quiet a ride myself with that topic. For years my opinion was, that I dont want to, as the auther here suggests as well, go with tdd as long as I dont know exactly what I need. Than I switched over and used tdd for everything with a more regid (interface) design upfront. Nowadays I use tdd from the integration side and only add unit tests later or case by case when I think its usefull. A really good ressource is "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests"
Fr3dd1 commented on The rise of judgement over technical skill notsocommonthoughts.com/b... · Posted by u/kohlhofer
At present, when juniors do this at my company, they usually get fired within the month. The onboarding docs now explicitly state that though code review is a joint-responsibility process, you as the submitter are responsible for understanding it, ensuring it all works, and being aware of the broader scope and consequences. Maybe many companies have placed more responsibility on the reviewier to catch problems in the past?
I would go a step further and dont let juniors use LLMs for code generation. The purpose and your role as a junior is to not only work but also to learn. When using genrated code, you miss a lot of opportunities to do so. Of course you could learn of some other methods or stuff from the frameworks you are using but imho thats not that big of an advantage.
Fr3dd1 commented on The rise of judgement over technical skill notsocommonthoughts.com/b... · Posted by u/kohlhofer
Today, if someone uses LLMs for code generation, he/she will probably question the generated code and will put his own judgement above it. I am curious how fast that will change, especially for juniors. When will they start to question their own judgement and just go with the generated code becuase its "more safe"?
Art project. Counter Productive
A random button in a park with a countdown timer.
Instructions:
- Press the button to reset the 24-hour countdown timer.
- If the timer ever reaches zero, the project ends and the project will be removed.
- To keep the project alive — press the button
Its been running for 56 days with 820 button presses.
Write up: https://blog.abluestar.com/projects/2025-counterproductive/
Stats page https://blog.abluestar.com/other/counterproductive.html
You should make them input the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42
I definitely agree that real life relationships and communities are the best way to go, but also that our increasingly isolated lives makes that difficult, and some people get anxiety around social situations or just find themselves stuck in a rut of work followed by unwinding at home alone.
People increasingly also don't like being dependent on others, so while your take is a valid one, people who don't think it's true would need an alternate solution to that problem.
There are also some people who would like a better social life but are unsure how to, or don't have the skills or opportunity to do so.
The success criteria of such an app could even be that users should only be using it for a certain amount of time, after which the app should have encouraged and helped the users in replacing app interactions with real life social interactions.
Maybe you are right and it could be a good "first aid" :)
SciHub with Claude Citations on top of it with an API to enrich public comms via browser extension and community notes labelers? Thoughts: Who acts as the curators/editors? How do you make sure they continually operate in good faith? What do you do when people ignore facts? You're building a supercharged knowledge graph like Wikipedia, so you're going to need a lot of scaffolding around it.
https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/citatio...
https://docs.anthropic.com/en/prompt-library/cite-your-sourc...
Yeah, kind of like that. What would be needed to get curated are the facts. Who could do it, would be the author of the original article. Maybe the author just needs to flag the wrong facts. In my, obviously very well minded view, an author has a big interest that first: his scientific article is correct - you get real bad reputation if your science is provable wrong - and that the facts others get out of it, are also correct. Of course, highly positive view :)