kcoddington (u/kcoddington)

kcoddington commented on GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation theverge.com/news/757461/... · Posted by u/Handy-Man

fnord123 · 21 days ago

> Excel single-handedly redeems Microsoft from being a pure drain on human existence

Debatable. Excel can't even open CSV files properly. You need to run the import wizard. But loads of people don't do this. They see a file on their desktop and double click it. Why can't double clicking a CSV file just open the import wizard!? (Because they want people to share xlsx files as a data format.)

kcoddington · 21 days ago

CSV is data only. Excel handles way more than that. XLSX is the preferred file format because it's compressed XML that can hold all kinds of things.

Also, CSVs seem to open just fine on my Excel. If it's not formatted with a standard delimiter or isn't handing quoted strings the proper way, sure maybe the data wizard is needed.

Excel is terrible in a lot of aspects, but CSVs seem to be something it handles as well as anything else in my experience.

kcoddington commented on How to Build Conscious Machines osf.io/preprints/thesisco... · Posted by u/hardmaru

PunchTornado · 3 months ago

This guy says nothing new, various things he says have been discussed a lot better by chalmers, dennett and others (much more in depth too). classical behaviour from computer scientists where they semi copy-paste other's ideas and bring nothing new to the table.

kcoddington · 3 months ago

Not everything needs to be a novel idea. 99% of blogs and books wouldn't be written if that were the case. Sometimes repeating information means somebody learns something they weren't aware of or is presented in a way that finally clicks for them. Meta-analysis is also useful. So is repeating experiments. Our entire world is driven by summaries and abstractions.

kcoddington commented on Containerization is a Swift package for running Linux containers on macOS github.com/apple/containe... · Posted by u/gok

tsimionescu · 3 months ago

I'm not sure about MacOS, but otherwise all major OSs today can run containers natively. However, the interest in non-Linux containers is generally very very low. You can absolutely run Kubernetes as native Windows binaries [0] in native Windows containers, but why would you?

Note that containers, by definition, rely on the host OS kernel. So a Windows container can only run Windows binaries that interact with Windows syscalls. You can't run Linux binaries in a Windows container anymore than you can run them on Windows directly. You can run Word in a Windows container, but not GCC.

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscont...

kcoddington · 3 months ago

I wouldn't think there are many use cases for Windows, but I imagine supporting legacy .NET Framework apps would be a major one.

kcoddington commented on Getting Past Procrastination spectrum.ieee.org/getting... · Posted by u/WaitWaitWha

HappMacDonald · 3 months ago

I find that shutting off one's brain and just slogging through a task leads to work quality on a par with AI slop.

So if one really is as uninterested in the quality of the output as you suggest, perhaps it might actually be better to dump the problem into Claude/Gemini/Cleverbot and just copy/paste/act upon the results verbatim and then mark the checkbox as "done" and move on.

For me personally, the pain of such efforts is ordinarily from making sure that the output is correct when the input is largely guesswork or speculation that always leads to hunting through a morass of poor documentation of some library or seeking a workaround to some irritating problem or rolling the dice on what the risk to various decisions might prove to be over the future: "eh, duct tape this and it ought to hold".

And most notably that doing more of this work correlates to an exponential rise in the volume of similar work that will be required down the road to maintain the same results.

Those are often exactly the time one would be best served by taking a step back and questioning the entire framework that supports the busywork in question. Perhaps starting from scratch or making some huge change would reduce the garbage portions of the effort and keep them from further proliferating?

kcoddington · 3 months ago

While I don't disagree with this approach, it only works for some digital tasks. AI won't clean my house or exercise my body or engage in obligatory social interactions. In these cases, just getting it done by shutting off your brain is often the best way to get it going.

Also, it's not all or nothing. You can decide to engage more in the task as it's ongoing, which could contribute to higher quality output. The hard part is usually starting.

kcoddington commented on Bored of It paulrobertlloyd.com/2025/... · Posted by u/NotInOurNames

gizmo · 5 months ago

The world is changing. Maybe for the better, maybe not. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic. Other people might mostly see risks and harm. I get that. But what I don't get is how people think this is boring. Today's kids will grow up in a strangely alien world that used to be science fiction. That's why people can't stop talking about.

kcoddington · 5 months ago

Humans crave novelty. That's all. I'm sure people were bored of hearing about the internet too.

I'm with you on the optimistic outlook, for the most part. But I think there will also be quite a bit of pain felt by a lot of people (job loss, bad code, bad info, etc.) until we can find ways to correct.

kcoddington commented on Nobody should be a "content creator" christianheilmann.com/202... · Posted by u/mfld

kcoddington · 5 months ago

There has always been filler entertainment that caters to the lowest denominator. The new medium types just allow for more of it. Maybe I'm in a very small minority, but I only consume HN and a heavily curated YouTube account.

I don't even see most of the viral content unless somebody else shows me. Anf since I don't have an account with most social media sites, they have to show me directly on their own devices. I also filter on all email with the word 'unsubscribe' and route it appropriately.

The short of it is: do better at filtering with allow listing or aggressive block lists. Consume content you search for. Or accept the fact that an algorithm will spoon feed you 99% filler.

kcoddington commented on The Worst Programmer I Know (2023) dannorth.net/the-worst-pr... · Posted by u/rbanffy

lapcat · 5 months ago

> If you can unblock yourself by having a team member sit besides you and walk through a problem, that team member will be helping the team.

I don't dispute that; hence the 20-30% pairing. But if it's the case that all day, every day there's at least one person on the team who is blocked, then you don't need a "Tim", what you really need is a new team, because that's an unacceptable level of blockage.

kcoddington · 5 months ago

Why is it unacceptable? And wouldn't the time/productivity loss from on-boarding an entirely new team completely outweigh the time/productivity loss of the 100% pairing with a Tim?

kcoddington commented on How to know when it's time to go bitfieldconsulting.com/po... · Posted by u/chautumn

Simon_O_Rourke · 6 months ago

> It’s no good nursing your private resentments for years, while telling your boss once a week that everything’s fine, and then suddenly walking out on them.

Strongly disagree with this point. Your departure should be an enormous shock to management, otherwise you've just spent weeks or months mouthing off about work to them, they've not fixed anything and indeed might even have lined up your replacement already.

kcoddington · 6 months ago

This level of 'us vs. them' doesn't really help anybody. If your employer is actually this cutthroat (I imagine the majority are not) then perhaps this tactic is warranted. But as a general recommendation, TFA has a valid point regarding a potential source for a strong reference or even future collaboration. Burning bridges should always be a last resort. Also, I don't think the author is recommending 'mouthing off' but rather sitting down and having a civil discussion.

kcoddington commented on US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency grist.org/politics/forest... · Posted by u/rntn

broof · 6 months ago

10% of the force is not a small number but it’s also not a decimation.

kcoddington · 6 months ago

That's actually a classic definition of the word. Hence the deci- prefix.

kcoddington commented on Money lessons without money: The financial literacy fallacy anandsanwal.me/financial-... · Posted by u/herbertl

graemep · 6 months ago

> I think the biggest fallacies is 100% seperation of "there is school, then there is work".

A agree very strongly with this. Not so sure about your solution if pushed too young

School level education should focus on mental development and learning how to learn. Given this, applying this to learning practical skills is a lot easier.

I think that link is interesting because a lot of people are taught things, maths in particular, in ways that leave them unable to apply it. People say they never used the maths they were taught in school, but that is because they do not have the grasp of it required to apply it to real life problems. Of course, going back to my earlier point things taught in school do not have to be directly useful (funnily enough no-one suggests kids should not be taught art or literature because they are not useful) so there does seem to be a particular issue with maths.

> hate that after leaving university it is difficult to find out what is taught current students, what are the new theories and tools that have been introduced in the last 10 years.

Or to learn new subjects and fields. IN the UK it has become a lot harder than it used to be - distance learning is a lot more expensive and adult education has been cut back.

kcoddington · 6 months ago

I wonder if it's because art and literature are better at teaching one how to think in and derive abstractions from more complex ideas. Math should most definitely do this as well, but I don't think is taught that way. Most of the time is spent in math classes are on procedural practice and connecting that work to think about it in an abstract way happens infrequently.