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kody commented on Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns   geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/ppew
FlyingSnake · 4 days ago
People keep rediscovering the Bhagavad Gita in new ways

https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/47/

kody · 3 days ago
It’s a tricky philosophy to put into practice. I have oscillated between this approach (“owning” the effort) and “owning” the outcome. I have found that taking ownership of the outcome leads to better results because I have a personal stake in the outcome and I tend to think through the problem more deeply, but I am almost always left feeling more stressed and “empty” when the work is finished. When I focus on doing the best I can and let go of the outcome, the end result is almost always subpar which leaves me feeling frustrated, because I know it could have been better had I taken on more responsibility.
kody commented on Breaking the spell of vibe coding   fast.ai/posts/2026-01-28-... · Posted by u/arjunbanker
daxfohl · a month ago
I think it all boils down to, which is higher risk, using AI too much, or using AI too little?

Right now I see the former as being hugely risky. Hallucinated bugs, coaxed into dead-end architectures, security concerns, not being familiar with the code when a bug shows up in production, less sense of ownership, less hands-on learning, etc. This is true both at the personal level and at the business level. (And astounding that CEOs haven't made that connection yet).

The latter, you may be less productive than optimal, but might the hands-on training and fundamental understanding of the codebase make up for it in the long run?

Additionally, I personally find my best ideas often happen when knee deep in some codebase, hitting some weird edge case that doesn't fit, that would probably never come up if I was just reviewing an already-completed PR.

kody · a month ago
Coaxed into dead-end architecture is the exact issue I have had when trying agentic coding. I find that I have the greatest success when I plan everything out and document the implementation plan as precisely as possible before handing it off to the agent. At which point, the hard part is already done. Generating the code was not really the bottleneck.

Using LLMs to generate documentation for the code that I write, explaining data sheets to me, and writing boilerplate code does save me a lot of time, though.

kody commented on Ask HN: What are some good resources for coding best practices?    · Posted by u/genericmask
pieterr · 9 months ago
What I found helpful early in my career:

Book: Code Complete - Steve McConnell

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Cons...

A bit dated maybe, but still very informative!

kody · 9 months ago
I second Code Complete.

The Pragmatic Programmer and Code Complete were integral on my first job.

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kody commented on Ask HN: Anyone else feeling increasingly alienated from the industry?    · Posted by u/saubeidl
fsflover · 9 months ago
Even today, not all companies are like this. System76, Purism, Pine64 and others rely on free software and push for the users' rights. I believe they are still changing the world for the better.
kody · 9 months ago
Oxide is another that comes to mind.
kody commented on Ask HN: Dealing with Vibe Coding Depression?    · Posted by u/softirq
kody · 9 months ago
> I’m no longer an artisan enjoying the journey of creating

me the first time my boss forced me to unit test my code

...

The best thing you can do is listen to your gut and try to act as rationally as you can.

Talk with trusted mentors if you've got them. Don't listen to me and for the love of god don't listen to people on HN or reddit or Youtube or any other social media.

Nobody knows what they're talking about and they certainly don't know how it'll impact you.

If somebody is making you feel afraid, left behind/out, inferior -- they're trying to sell you shit. Don't listen to the bullies and con artists.

You're entitled to your opinion. If you think AI output is crap, it's crap. Don't be pressured to conform. This is supposed to be hackernews after all. There are plenty of companies using java 8 today. You won't be unhireable.

kody commented on AI 2027   ai-2027.com/... · Posted by u/Tenoke
lumenwrites · a year ago
I'm pretty good at what I do, at least according to myself and the people I work with, and I'm comparing its capabilities (the latest version of Claude used as an agent inside Cursor) to myself. It can't fully do things on its own and makes mistakes, but it can do a lot.

But suppose you're right, it's 60% as good as "stackoverflow copy-pasting programmers". Isn't that a pretty insanely impressive milestone to just dismiss?

And why would it just get to this point, and then stop? Like, we can all see AIs continuously beating the benchmarks, and the progress feels very fast in terms of experience of using it as a user.

I'd need to hear a pretty compelling argument to believe that it'll suddenly stop, something more compelling than "well, it's not very good yet, therefore it won't be any better", or "Sam Altman is lying to us because incentives".

Sure, it can slow down somewhat because of the exponentially increasing compute costs, but that's assuming no more algorithmic progress, no more compute progress, and no more increases in the capital that flows into this field (I find that hard to believe).

kody · a year ago
I appreciate your reply. My tone was a little dismissive; I'm currently deep deep in the trenches trying to unwind a tremendous amount of LLM slop in my team's codebase so I'm a little sensitive.

I use Claude every day. It is definitely impressive, but in my experience only marginally more impressive than ChatGPT was a few years ago. It hallucinates less and compiles more reliably, but still produces really poor designs. It really is an overconfident junior developer.

The real risk, and what I am seeing daily, is colleagues falling for the "if you aren't using Cursor you're going to be left behind" FUD. So they learn Cursor, discover that it's an easy way to close tickets without using your brain, and end up polluting the codebase with very questionable designs.

kody commented on AI 2027   ai-2027.com/... · Posted by u/Tenoke
lumenwrites · a year ago
Why would it get 60-80% as good as human programmers (which is what the current state of things feels like to me, as a programmer, using these tools for hours every day), but stop there?
kody · a year ago
It's 60-80% as good as Stack Overflow copy-pasting programmers, sure, but those programmers were already providing questionable value.

It's nowhere near as good as someone actually building and maintaining systems. It's barely able to vomit out an MVP and it's almost never capable of making a meaningful change to that MVP.

If your experiences have been different that's fine, but in my day job I am spending more and more time just fixing crappy LLM code produced and merged by STAFF engineers. I really don't see that changing any time soon.

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kody commented on Ask HN: Why do/don't you use C?    · Posted by u/purple-leafy
kody · a year ago
We use C for embedded products at work. My gut feeling is that Rust or Zig would require way too much time investment to learn and use properly, then you'd still have to deal with interop problems.

u/kody

KarmaCake day467February 23, 2016View Original