As a longtime developer currently perusing their first computer science degree, it makes me happy that I understood this article. Nearly makes all the trouble seem worth it.
Readit Newsflustercan commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan
flustercan commented on There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers workweave.dev/blog/hiring... · Posted by u/mooreds
Junior engineers should spend half their time doing customer support.
It allows them to provide meaningful value to the company without needing to code, it shows them a customer first approach to the product, it teaches them empathy for users and the CS team. It also teaches them repro/debugging skills.
Ya the early "studies" that said AI would benefit low skill more than senior never seem grounded in reality.
Coding with AI is like having a team of juniors that can complete their assignments in a few minutes instead of days. The more clear your instructions, the closer it is to what you wanted, but there are almost always changes needed.
Unfortunately it really does make the junior dev position redundant (although this may prove to be very short-sighted when all the SR devs retire).
I've never worked anywhere where the role of a Sr was to glue together a bunch of small pieces written by a team of Jr devs.
I've only worked places where Jr's were given roughly the same scope of work as a mid-level dev but on non-critical projects where they could take as much time as necessary and where mistakes would have a very small blast radius.
That type of Jr work has not been made redundant - although I suppose now its possible for a PM or designer to do that work instead (but if your PMs are providing more value by vibe coding non-critical features than by doing their PM work maybe you don't really need a PM?)
flustercan commented on The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong derekthompson.org/p/the-a... · Posted by u/rbanffy
There is an incredibly large lobby group who is fully invested in
house prices rising or at least not falling, namely homeowners.
and since most politicians at a high level usually own one or more
houses, they are fully invested in it as well.
If we can keep the price of homes flat for 10 years then homeowners won't get hosed (still increasing equity by paying off principle) and homes get more affordable (assuming steady inflation and wage growth)
If a hotel could offer me a house like experience I would definitely be interested.
I agree with the sentiment that Airbnbs are weird with the checkout chores and lack of regulation, but when traveling with friends I find it so much more enjoyable to be able to hang out and cook dinner and watch TV together rather than all being cramped in one couple's studio sitting on the beds and eating out every meal.
I've seen this take on LLMs many times, and I don't share the certainty that LLMs hinder the growth of engineers using them.
Sure, if you want to use an LLM to produce code that works you need to have enough knowledge and experience to be able to review and, if necessary, request changes.
However, another (IMO, even more powerful) aspect of LLMs, is their utility as a learning tool. They excel at imparting knowledge about new concepts, because they act as a personalized teacher.
I find it doubtful that use of LLMs will result in less experienced and knowledgeable engineers in the future.
You sound like someone who has developed a good work ethic and is comfortable with struggle. Likely because you didn't grow up with a magic thinking box to ask for help at the first bit of mental friction.
I would rather work with "old" engineers rather than 25/30 year old "senior" engineers.
Places with older engineers means:
1. things are done properly
2. less to break
3. no need to be on call
4. excellent WLB (no grind n burnout culture)
5. excellent mentoring and learning opportunities
6. sniper / laser focus on business fundamentals / making money rather than making noise on the internet streets
None of these things are related to age or amount of experience. Someone with 20 years of mediocre experience will be mediocre, and they may also have a false sense of their own ability because they've managed to scrape by for so long.
> But from the practical diet approach, CICO is oversimplification.
No, CICO IS the practical diet. Satiety, microbiome, none of that shit matters. All excuses to not properly stick to the diet. You weigh your food, calculate the macros, and that's it. Zero thought required past that.
It is literally impossible to not lose weight even if you are eating nothing but 500 calories of pure corn syrup every day (Though you may feel pretty sick)
"None of that shit matters" in purely thermodynamic sense, but it matters immensely to the actual goal of getting people to be healthier by having less body fat. In that sense, CICO is an oversimplification.
I personally don't think that anyone without enough will power and discomfort tolerance to feel hungry for long periods of time when surrounded by limitless food should be forced to live a shorter more painful life.
The key to getting people to quit smoking is for them to stop smoking. Very simple. Why on earth do we have nicotine gum and patches?
Seattle ports are currently empty, will be interesting to see if this holds true . https://seemorerocks.substack.com/p/port-of-seattle-empty-ze...
I am literally looking at a port with many containers and a fully loaded ship waiting to unload more containers at the port of Seattle right this second.
(based on other replies I guess I'm not the only one in Pioneer Square lol)
Unpopular opinion: this isn't that big of a deal for most people.
Gdp, consumer index scores, all that stuff is a measure of how much poor people are willing to spend and how hard they're working. What really matters is, can these people buy a house? Can they buy eggs?
I don't know how many of them will be all that caught up that they can't buy some disposable flip-flops on Temu anymore. We need to focus more on how hard it is to live than how hard it is to import stuff.
People care immensely about having a job. If tariffs mean that businesses don't hire as much or do layoffs then this is a big deal for most people. The unemployment rate doesn't even need to go up that much to have a huge effect on people's general feeling about the economy.