robbbbbbbbbbbb (u/robbbbbbbbbbbb)

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally? · Posted by u/svara

ramraj07 · a day ago

I used to think that the people who keep saying (in March 2026) that AI does not generate good code are just not smart and ask stupid prompts.

I think I've amended that thought. They are not necessarily lacking in intelligence. I hypothesize that LLMs pick up on optimism and pessimism among other sentiments in the incoming prompt: someone prompting with no hope that the result will be useful end up with useless garbage output and vice versa.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · a day ago

Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, this is a fascinating hypothesis and honestly super believable. It makes way more sense than the intuitive belief that there’s actually something under the human skin suit understanding any of this code.

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally? · Posted by u/svara

robbbbbbbbbbbb · a day ago

Context: micro (5 person) software company with a mature SaaS product codebase.

We use a mix of agentic and conversational tools, just pick your own and go with it.

For Unity development (our main codebase and source of value) I give current gen tools a C- for effectiveness. For solving confined, well modularisable problems (eg refactor this texture loader; implement support for this material extension) it’s good. For most real day to day problems it’s hopelessly confused by the large codebase full of state, external dependency on chunks of Unity, implicit hardware-dependent behaviours, etc. It has no idea how to work meaningfully with Unity’s scene graph or component model. I tried using MCP to empower it here: on a trivial test project it was fine. In a real project it got completely lost and broke everything after eating 30k tokens and 40 minutes of my time, mostly because it couldn’t understand the various (documented) patterns that straddled code files and scene structure.

For web and API development I give it an A, with just a little room for improvement. In this domain it’s really effective all the way down the logical stack from architectural and deployment decisions all the way down to implementation details and debugging including digging really deep in to package version incompatibilities and figuring out problems in seconds that would take me hours. My one criticism would be the - now familiar - “junior developer” effect where it’ll often run ahead with an over engineered lump of machinery without spotting a simpler more coherent pattern. As long as you keep an eye on it it’s fine.

So in summary: if what you’re doing is all in text, nothing in binary, doesn’t involve geometric or numerical reasoning, and has billions of lines of stack overflow solutions: you’ll be golden. Otherwise it’s still very hit and miss.

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play or App Store Account heltweg.org/posts/you-wan... · Posted by u/rhazn

gib444 · 19 days ago

You're trying to paint me as someone who hates the whole gov.uk experience - which is not what I wrote or implied

I'm allowed to be frustrated and to criticise it - I'm a tax-paying British citizen.

> is just enclowning yourself with a partisan and non-sequitous point.

It's sequitous and highly relevant as GDS is part of the Government. Your comment just reads like a reflexive defensive reply by someone who can't stand any criticism of something they personally like.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 19 days ago

It's not sequitous mate.

The idea that a Labour Secretary of State would be phoning up the Cabinet Office screaming down the phone at them about interaction design on the website while a Tory one would just have their feet up is ludicrous and you know it.

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on You Want to Visit the UK? You Better Have a Google Play or App Store Account heltweg.org/posts/you-wan... · Posted by u/rhazn

gib444 · 19 days ago

gov.uk has a tendancy to treat everyone like a 5 year old. It's often 2-4 clicks to get to the /actual/ thing you want, with many long pages of "ok here's what this thing is. Here's what will happen next".

(Even that 'direct link' has a whole page of "ok here's what you need - click to continue" !)

So this isn't really an exception, and is to be expected if you're familiar with govuk

I think it needs to be scaled back, but with a party in power famous for paternalism, and a long history of their interaction design in this direction, I don't see it happening

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 19 days ago

This feels super unfair to the gov.uk experience design which for me stands out head and shoulders above any other web workflow delivered by the public sector I've ever come across.

Pages are snappy, terse, consistent, clear and unsurprising. I agree this specific example feels a bit dark-patterny and occasionally stuff like self-assesment can have more steps than necessary, but overall it's really high quality.

In comparison the process for getting a DUNS number felt like going through some kind of a psychological experiment.

Finally, this:

> a party in power famous for paternalism

is just enclowning yourself with a partisan and non-sequitous point.

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media yle.fi/a/74-20207494... · Posted by u/Teever

sunaookami · 2 months ago

So yes, you will need to show your ID which will connect to your account and obviously be used to surveil everything you post online. People on HN of all places need to stop being so naive.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 2 months ago

If your theory is that this global push by legislators to introduce age restrictions is actually a secret Trojan horse to harvest government IDs orchestrated by the platform owning capitalists…how do you account for the fact said capitalists have been desperately lobbying against it for years?

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media yle.fi/a/74-20207494... · Posted by u/Teever

hiprob · 2 months ago

Are they going to conduct an uncontrolled human experiment by requiring age checks to use the Internet (read: surveillance capitalism and Orwellian lack of privacy)?

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 2 months ago

No, they’ll probably just follow Australia’s lead[1] of: default allow; algorithmic age estimation; account suspend; ID to unblock. Chill.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo.amp

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s kazeta.org/... · Posted by u/subliminalpanda

SomeoneOnTheWeb · 6 months ago

Right, if you specifically want to use an SD card and not USB, and don't want to add an adapter either, sure the A5 is the way to go.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 6 months ago

Yeah, definitely boils down to how much of a factor the aesthetics of the 'tiny carts' is for you in the whole experience. I can imagine some creative modding that would make a collection of themed USBs just as appealing, if not more :)

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s kazeta.org/... · Posted by u/subliminalpanda

SomeoneOnTheWeb · 6 months ago

For the same price you have the Minisforum UM760 Slim which should be 100% compatible and provide VASTLY superior performances. Or you can check cheaper models that would have the same level of performance as the A5.

Geekom make nice products but they are usually both very expensive and very noisy compared to competitors. Their selling point is mainly their top-notch design, but I find these to be function-over-form most of the time.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 6 months ago

I guess the lack of a built-in SD card slot might make the Minisforum options less attractive

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s kazeta.org/... · Posted by u/subliminalpanda

robbbbbbbbbbbb · 6 months ago

Such a cool concept! For anyone who didn't slog through their docs, the recommended hardware system (and the box in their product shots) is the Geekom A5 https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a5-mini-pc and the 8BitDo Wireless controller https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-2c-wireless-controller/

Those + some SD cards and a spare evening for setup makes this a really tempting £400 project.

robbbbbbbbbbbb commented on Meta Project Aria - Smart Glasses Research Kit projectaria.com/research-... · Posted by u/walterbell

_fat_santa · a year ago

I'm glad Mark managed to dig Meta out of the hole it was in a few years ago. I remember they were dumping so much money into the metaverse telling everyone it was the future. Seems now they have less of a focus on that and more of a focus on VR hardware and their AI models, which IMO is a better place for them than where they were.

robbbbbbbbbbbb · a year ago

I don't know if you're conflating 'Metaverse' with 'NFTs' or something, but in Meta land it's very much a VR/AR term.

If you're interested in where they're currently focusing their spending and the timelines for return on investment, the recently leaked memo isn't a bad place to start https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-cto-to-staff-leaked-memo-2025-...