rmah (u/rmah) - Readit News

rmah commented on AI will make formal verification go mainstream martin.kleppmann.com/2025... · Posted by u/evankhoury

simonw · a day ago

I'm convinced now that the key to getting useful results out of coding agents (Claude Code, Codex CLI etc) is having good mechanisms in place to help those agents exercise and validate the code they are writing.

At the most basic level this means making sure they can run commands to execute the code - easiest with languages like Python, with HTML+JavaScript you need to remind them that Playwright exists and they should use it.

The next step up from that is a good automated test suite.

Then we get into quality of code/life improvement tools - automatic code formatters, linters, fuzzing tools etc.

Debuggers are good too. These tend to be less coding-agent friendly due to them often having directly interactive interfaces, but agents can increasingly use them - and there are other options that are a better fit as well.

I'd put formal verification tools like the ones mentioned by Martin on this spectrum too. They're potentially a fantastic unlock for agents - they're effectively just niche programming languages, and models are really good at even niche languages these days.

If you're not finding any value in coding agents but you've also not invested in execution and automated testing environment features, that's probably why.

rmah · a day ago

I think the main limitation is not code validation but assumption verification. When you ask an LLM to write some code based on a few descriptive lines of text, it is, by necessity, making a ton of assumptions. Oddly, none of the LLM's I've seen ask for clarification when multiple assumptions might all be likely. Moreover, from the behavior I've seen, they don't really backtrack to select a new assumption based on further input (I might be wrong here, it's just a feeling).

What you don't specify, it must to assume. And therein lies a huge landscape of possibilities. And since the AI's can't read your mind (yet), its assumptions will probably not precisely match your assumptions unless the task is very limited in scope.

rmah commented on AI will make formal verification go mainstream martin.kleppmann.com/2025... · Posted by u/evankhoury

marcosdumay · a day ago

There are many really important properties to enforce even on the most basic CRUD system. You can easily say things like "an anonymous user must never edit any data, except for the create account form", or "every user authorized to see a page must be listed on the admin page that lists what users can see a page".

People don't verify those because it's hard, not for lack of value.

rmah · a day ago

Yes, except their cookie preferences to comply with european law. Oh, and they should be able to change their theme from light/dark but only that. Oh and maybe this other thing. Except in situations where it would conflict with current sales promotions. Unless they're referred by a reseller partner. Unless it's during a demo, of course. etc, etc, etc.

This is the sort of reality that a lot of developers in the business world deals with.

rmah commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

jlawson · 2 days ago

Sure, but go try to build a house while ignoring what Euclidean geometry tells you about it.

rmah · a day ago

I agree that both geometry and game theory are very useful tools.

rmah commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

Terretta · 2 days ago

It's nature.

Whether that word is reductionism is an exercise left to Chomsky?

rmah · 2 days ago

Game theory is no more a description of nature than Euclidian geometry is.

rmah commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

nostrademons · 2 days ago

I think a more accurate and more useful framing is:

Game theory is inevitable.

Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives.

The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that you, personally, are just one of those 8B+ people and your influence on the remaining 7.999999999B people, most of whom don't know you exist, is fairly limited.

If you think carefully about those incentives, you actually do have a number of significant leverage points with which to change the future. Many of those incentives are crafted out of information and trust, people's beliefs about what their own lives are going to look like in the future if they take certain actions, and if you can shape those beliefs and that information flow, you alter the incentives. But you need to think very carefully, on the level of individual humans and how they'll respond to changes, to get the outcomes you want.

rmah · 2 days ago

The statement "Game theory is inevitable. Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives." implies that the "actors" are humans. But that's not what game theory assumes.

Game theory just provides a mathematical framework to analyze outcomes of decisions when parts of the system have different goals. Game theory does not claim to predict human behavior (humans make mistakes, are driven by emotion and often have goals outside the "game" in question). Thus game theory is NOT inevitable.

rmah commented on How private equity is changing housing theatlantic.com/ideas/202... · Posted by u/harambae

HexPhantom · 8 days ago

It's wild when you think about it: a family scrapes together a down payment and pays full freight on property taxes, while a corporate landlord can roll one property's paper losses into the next deal and keep building their portfolio, tax-deferred

rmah · 8 days ago

You can't use unrealized capital losses (property paper losses) or even realized losses to offset property tax, you can only offset realized losses against realized gains for income taxes.

rmah commented on Most technical problems are people problems blog.joeschrag.com/2023/1... · Posted by u/mooreds

zwnow · 13 days ago

Give us a reason to care. It's that simple.

rmah · 13 days ago

I believe that seeking external validation, inspiration and/or reason is not robust and a path to unhappiness. IMO, it's better if the reasons for you to care come from within.

rmah commented on The Junior Hiring Crisis people-work.io/blog/junio... · Posted by u/mooreds

dkdcio · 15 days ago

genuinely asking, how do you network to get a job? esp. if you’re a new grad

where do you network? what do you network with these other humans on?

I do think I could get a job from my network because I’ve worked in the industry for years and done good work; I’m a little skeptical of advice to network to junior/new grads. I at least ignore those LinkedIn requests

rmah · 15 days ago

your professors. your classmates who got a job. your family and friends of family. anyone else you know that respects you.

rmah commented on Apple and Intel Rumored to Partner on Mac Chips macrumors.com/2025/11/28/... · Posted by u/bigyabai

naveen99 · 19 days ago

I don’t understand why intel doesn’t build a fab in Taiwan or another lower cost location ?

rmah · 19 days ago

lack of skilled labor, probably

rmah commented on How wealth dies surplusenergyeconomics.wo... · Posted by u/martinlaz

johnnyanmac · 19 days ago

It doesn't make sense. But that is exactly how policy makers justify how "the economy is doing good!" The GDP was never intended to be used as an indicator of national economic well being; only a simple statistic to measure how much money is exchanged between people.

But it only takes a few examples counter to what a public service should do to show that GDP reliance creates anti-patterns. e.g. rising healthcare costs is good for the GDP while universal healthcare is bad.

rmah · 19 days ago

First, you are correct. However, the reason GDP is used as a proxy metric for economic growth because it's convenient. Doing so does make a few assumptions though, foremost of which is that the structure of the economy will change very little from year to year. If that is so, than a rise in GDP should correspond to a rise in economic prosperity (and by extension wealth). Thus, using GDP change to measure changes in prosperity works (more or less) year by year. but the longer the periods you compare (5 years, 10 years, 20 years), the less meaningful the number becomes.