bontaq (u/bontaq) - Readit News

bontaq commented on Ask HN: Builders vs. Mercenaries – does this distinction make sense? · Posted by u/grandimam

bontaq · a month ago

I'd say you identified a difference with modern names. This split has certainly grown wider in the "code is cheap" AI era and changed meaning.

I'm firmly in the camp of actually enjoying programming. To me it was interesting to hear that some people actually don't like it all, and it's much nicer to have something "just do it".

Over my career I've leant much more heavily into programming as the art.

I wouldn't even say "how do you balance" is too much of a problem, as we all can vary between needs, you know?

bontaq commented on Show HN: I Built an Animated UI Library for React Lovers ogblocks.dev/... · Posted by u/ItsKaranKK

bontaq · a month ago

Sorry, but there's some things you could do better:

- display the components in a clean way on landing

- a landing that asks to pay without seeing anything does not make sense

- 25% conversion boost is meaningless

- absolute nonsense with a free 107 page ebook

bontaq commented on Ask HN: What are some modern technologies that you refuse to adopt? · Posted by u/catstor

bontaq · a month ago

Any new editor, airplanes, tablets, smart watches (as mentioned by catstor), VR, e-readers (though these are actually very good, mine just died).

It's not any particular reason, they don't seem to improve my life much? The e-reader was best for sure.

bontaq commented on Building more with GPT-5.1-Codex-Max openai.com/index/gpt-5-1-... · Posted by u/hansonw

dylanz · a month ago

> Claude basically disregards your instructions (CLAUDE.md) entirely

Does anyone know of a way to fix this? Claude constantly disregards my CLAUDE.md. I put a decent amount of time into it and it's pretty much worthless without explicitly telling it to reference it before each prompt.

bontaq · a month ago

I've found really hammering it with *important*, all caps, "NEVER", etc finally made it start using the tidewave MCP for elixir development well. It felt really heavy handed but it worked.

For an idea of how heavy handed it was, this is my claude.md (with some explanatory text before): https://gist.github.com/bontaq/77b56d90b30e29c84c53c86d7fe05...

bontaq commented on Workday to acquire Pipedream newsroom.workday.com/2025... · Posted by u/gaws

bontaq · a month ago

I really hope they remain open source, but overall this seems like a bad sign

bontaq commented on Measuring political bias in Claude anthropic.com/news/politi... · Posted by u/gmays

jesse_dot_id · a month ago

Does anyone use Claude for something other than coding?

bontaq · a month ago

mostly sys admin things but yeah

bontaq commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025) · Posted by u/david927

bontaq · a month ago

I'm working on an AI-controlled VPS. It makes a lot of sense to let them run with full permissions.

https://www.zo.computer/

bontaq commented on Claude Code can debug low-level cryptography words.filippo.io/claude-d... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

rtpg · 2 months ago

I understand the pitch here ("it finds bugs! it's basically all upside because worst case there's no output anyways"), but I'm finding some of these agents to be ... uhhh... kind of agressive at trying to find the solution and end up missing the forest for the trees. And there's some "oh you should fix this" stuff which, while sometimes isn't _wrong_, is completely besides the point.

The end result being these robots doing bikeshedding. When paired with junior engineers looking at this output and deciding to act on it, it just generates busywork. Not helping that everyone and their dog wants to automatically run their agent against PRs now

I'm trying to use these to some extent when I find myself in a canonical situation that should work and am not getting the value everyone else seems to get in many cases. Very much "trying to explain a thing to a junior engineer taking more time than doing it myself" thing, except at least the junior is a person.

bontaq · a month ago

I would say a lot of people are only posting their positive experiences. Stating negative things about AI is mildly career-dangerous at the moment where as the opposite looks good. I found the results from using it on a complicated code base are similar to yours, but it is very good at slapping things on until it works.

If you're not watching it like a hawk it will solve a problem in a way that is inconsistent and, importantly, not integrated into the system. Which makes sense, it's been trained to generate code, and it will.

bontaq commented on AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula–No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun wsj.com/business/entrepre... · Posted by u/pondsider

pjjpo · 3 months ago

As far as I could tell, the article seems to be specifically about founders, not "everyone".

Personally I don't agree even for founders since I've seen too many that end up just grinding the gears without producing value - when that leads to meetings etc reducing the productivity of the entire team it's a problem. But committing to a stressful life as a founder in itself doesn't seem that bad as long as it's not propagated poorly to the team.

bontaq · 3 months ago

As far as I could tell, by reading the article, it is supposed the be culture of the company. The culture of the company of course applies to people they hire. Do you understand that?

bontaq commented on AI Startup Founders Tout a Winning Formula–No Booze, No Sleep, No Fun wsj.com/business/entrepre... · Posted by u/pondsider

bontaq · 3 months ago

Seems generally worse for the world if we want to force everyone to work 24/7 with no joy or interests outside of work. Ah well. Do you think they can recognize it? I don't think any of these companies will have anything interesting to say, last ten years, or improve lives.

It mostly looks like an act to me, a cargo cult where if they offer up enough "work" they'll be rewarded, disregarding any usefulness.