Well, software is measured over time. The devil is always in the details.
Yeah curious what would happen if they asked for an additional big feature on top of the original spec
Readit Newsaronowb14 commented on Scaling long-running autonomous coding simonwillison.net/2026/Ja... · Posted by u/srameshc
aronowb14 commented on It's hard to justify Tahoe icons tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icon... · Posted by u/lylejantzi3rd
A bit ironic that the website complaining about UI has virtual snow on it making reading hard.
aronowb14 commented on A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code sanity.io/blog/first-atte... · Posted by u/kmelve
Guy said a whole lot of nothing. Said he's improved productivity, but also said AI falls short in all the common ways people have noticed. Also guarantee no one is building core functionality delegating to Claude Code.
Agreed. I think this Anthropic article is a realistic take on what’s possible (focus on prototyping)
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/58284b19e702b49db9302d5b6f135a...
aronowb14 commented on Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer? · Posted by u/hopa
When I first graduated I read a bunch of tech focused books: they’re all helpful but I think practice and learning from more senior engineers is the most effective road to mastery! You can probably get away with not reading any of these books if you have good coworkers :).
That being said, these have been my favorites:
- designing data intensive applications (a great way of understanding systems + the basics of SRE)
- the senior engineer (I love the prototyping process he lays out)
- the effective engineer (lots of good gems for approaching prioritization)
- debugging (by David agans)- a great resource for a formalized debugging process if you don’t have one
- on writing well (I’m halfway through this, but it has been indispensable for writing tickets + messages at work)
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aronowb14 commented on Get a personal teacher sebastian.bearblog.dev/ge... · Posted by u/real-sebastian
I think that's something missing from adulthood--study or learning groups. There's a chance that in every group you'll have someone good at something, so you can teach eachother. Personally, I am unsure how to approach someone with such a request, it feels like such an imposition to them. Unless someone is professionally offering services, I'd feel awkward asking. Though in my experience, people who sign up to teach often shouldn't.
I think these groups are out there, but unfortunately they are informal (not listed on the web or through a company), and also are not for a beginner level.
For me, I’ve been learning how to surf and cook. I found at an absolute beginner level no one really wants to go out surfing with you, or do dinner parties. I did find once I showed enough commitment, and reached a beginner-intermediate level, more people were willing to join me in learning, and form informal learning groups.
Therapy worked wonders for me.
Therapists are trained to help and give you custom things to do based on what you need. I found one that gave me a lot of structured “assignments” and questions to ask myself and I’ve never felt better than I do now.
aronowb14 commented on Stable Diffusion is a big deal simonwillison.net/2022/Au... · Posted by u/simonw
It's funny how hyped up stable diffusion is on HN right now: reminds me of when style transfer first started making it's rounds in 2017. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13958366
I think as technologists we want to think that code can "solve" some of the problems in the art world... but I think we still have a really, really long way to go. I tried to get style transfer adopted at work (worked at a creative technology firm in NY) but frankly I think deep learning methods for art generation tend to be really unpredictable, which make them pretty hard to use for professional applications. Imagine deploying production code that only worked 85% of the time... would be a nightmare. I felt, and feel similarly about deep learning approaches to art. They're just so finnicky and unpredictable, for example, add a single extra pixel to that example in this article and the output would look completely different.
Either way, cynicism aside, stable diffusion is awesome :).
aronowb14 commented on Remote startups will win the war for top talent future.com/remote-startup... · Posted by u/gmays
As someone who took their first software engineering job as a junior during covid, I have to say I definitely struggled to learn and execute on tasks in a way which I know I wouldn't in an in person setting.
I found asking for help as a junior is definitely harder when you don't have people around (walking up to someone's desk vs slack message with ~20-60 minute delay then zoom call): and I often found myself blocked on tasks.
I found learning is generally harder remotely for me as well: the sheer amount of information + resources + help you get from serendipitous conversations with other engineers should not be understated. It's the same reason people got so angry over paying so much for remote university: it is objectively a worse learning experience.
I think this is just my personal stance: but I think in my perfect world I work in office for the first 5-10 years of my career to optimize for learning + relationship building, and then once I get more senior (or have kids) I transition into either hybrid or fully remote.
I’m a programmer, and my dads a doctor, and for ten years I’d always tell him that something like 20 questions could do his job.
After about 5 years he did this graduation speech and in it he referenced that: “yes, AI is getting great, your phone is a supercomputer, but the truth is that a computer will never be able to hold the hand of a dying patient and tell them it will be all be okay.”