Readit News logoReadit News
tomgp commented on The highest quality codebase   gricha.dev/blog/the-highe... · Posted by u/Gricha
tayo42 · 10 days ago
How do you end up with 3 to 4 languages in one project?
tomgp · 10 days ago
HTML, CSS, Javascript?
tomgp commented on Your data model is your destiny   notes.mtb.xyz/p/your-data... · Posted by u/hunglee2
tomgp · 2 months ago
As a customer I often look for the data model without a "moat". I want to be able to move my data to a different supplier without too much hassle
tomgp commented on The gaslit asset class   blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the... · Posted by u/zdw
Ozzie_osman · 3 months ago
I think there are a large group of techies who hold similar opinions and never really bought into the hype, but still sit and watch with amazement (and maybe envy) at how something that they believe is fundamentally flawed has passed the test of time and recovered through many boom-bust cycles.
tomgp · 3 months ago
I think the reason is that Bitcoin et al were sold as having practical uses but their ‘success’ has been as a vehicle for speculation. Though the two things are linked (hype for the former drives adoption for the latter) and it’s possible to both hold that crypto currencies are of no practical use and a great investment opportunity. (FWIW, with a long enough time span I believe neither of these is true)

[edited to correct a couple of typos]

tomgp commented on The GitHub website is slow on Safari   github.com/orgs/community... · Posted by u/talboren
whstl · 4 months ago
The way it works in tech today is that there are three groups:

- Project managers putting constant pressure on developers to deliver as fast as possible. It doesn't even matter if velocity will be lost in the future, or if the company might lose customers, or even if it breaks the law.

- Developers pushing back on things that can backfire and burning political capital and causing constant burnout. And when things DO backfire, the developer is to blame for letting it happen and not having pushed it more in the first place.

- Developers who learned that the only way to win is by not giving a single fuck, and just trucking on through the tasks without much thought.

This might sound highly cynical, but unfortunately this is what it has become.

Developers are way too isolated from the end result, and accountability is non-existent for PMs who isolate devs from the result, because "isolating developers" is seem as their only job.

EDIT: This is a cultural problem that can't be solved by individual contributors or by middle management without raising hell and putting a target on their backs. Only cultural change enforced by C-Levels is able to change this, but this is *not* in the interest of most CEOs or CTOs.

tomgp · 4 months ago
This is a very accurate and concise summary of why I can't work in tech companies anymore. Recently I returned for a quick contract to develop a proof of concept app and almost immediately my stress levels whent through the roof. Just the whole thing is a recipe for erroding peoples's ability to produce anything of value.
tomgp commented on GDPR meant nothing: chat control ends privacy for the EU [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=3NyUg... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys
panstromek · 4 months ago
If the law incentivises bad behaviour, it's a bad law.
tomgp · 4 months ago
the behaviour was already bad (sharing your personal information with 1000s of “trusted partners”), companies just want to keep doing it even if it inconveniences their users.
tomgp commented on LLM's Illusion of Alignment   systemicmisalignment.com/... · Posted by u/GodotX
fleebee · 6 months ago
The animations on this website are disorienting to say the least. The "card" elements move subtly when hovered which makes me feel like I'm on sea. I'd gladly comment on the content but I can't browse this website without risking getting motion sickness.

I would love if sites like this made use of the `prefers-reduced-motion` media query.

tomgp · 6 months ago
yes! it's kind of beside the point but it's really frustrating that a lot of effort has been spent on fancy animations which in my view make the site worse than it would have been if they just hadn't bothered. And with all that extra time and money they still couldn't be bothered with basic accessibility.
tomgp commented on The Death of the Middle-Class Musician   thewalrus.ca/the-death-of... · Posted by u/pseudolus
giantg2 · 6 months ago
If you want to talk about the root of problems, it comes down to preferences. Income inequality in musicians? People prefer some musicians and songs over others. UBI and taxation isn't going to meaningfully change the income inequality between the median and top earners in entertainment fields due to social dynamics. Guess what the primary driver of the housing shortage is? Preference for larger homes and "better" locations. There are enough housing units nationally, but their distribution and charateristics don't match the preferences. You might be thinking about NIMBY, but guess what that is? The preferences of the people already there. Solutions like UBI or just building more skip a logical step of evaluating the true underlying causes and presume them instead. To solve a problem we must first understand it.
tomgp · 6 months ago
In Britain it’s noticeable that as unemployment benefit and social housing has been stripped back the proportion of people from working class backgrounds with careers in the arts has declined. The most visible example of this is probably actors; pretty much all the current generation of British actors went to public school and were able to support themselves via family wealth as they became established. This wasn’t the case for the generation coming through in the 70s and 80s. The underlying cause is that if you can’t subsist as you learn your craft you can’t learn your craft, I don’t think this is mysterious.

This doesn’t just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles are stripped away by llm’s where do the talented developers of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their own time, those with independent wealth.

At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really important both from a mortal point of view and an economically pragmatic one.

tomgp commented on Ask HN: How do I give back to people helped me when I was young and had nothing?    · Posted by u/jupiterglimpse
firefax · 6 months ago
Focus less on those who helped you, and more on helping others.

The first time I went to Defcon, I felt lonely and lost -- it was the first year they had those cool electronic badges, and at the time they were only given out as entrance tokens for an exclusive party that was the talk of the con.

I didn't really "know" anyone there -- like a lot of young hackers, I was part of one of those vBulletin board hacker crews that have been lost to time and I'd exhausted the meager savings I had built up that summer on my plane ticket and hotel room at the Riviera.

A lot of people who had expense accounts were going out to nice places for dinner -- the guy with per diem would get drinks, the guy who had to itemize, and me, the guy trying to get a group together to visit that cool looking dive bar next to Bally's kept getting laughed at and called a newbie...

Then none other than Dan Kaminsky[1] strolls up, tells me he knows who I am (!) and heard I'd been asking about the ninja party, tells me he can't get me in but he knows a room party. Shows me a room next to the pool with a keg in the bathtub, I threw them a five and we sat around talking until late in the night. They had some good tips on cheap places to eat, how to get free drinks at the penny slots, that sort of thing.

And then, every year since that I visited, I did what he did... wander the convention looking for the budget travel crew, the folks who don't do it for a salary and whom this is their reality, and I'd take them on a quest for two dollar hot dogs, show them the little store next to the dive bar where they could stock up on beer and liquor and ice and then disappear into the night like some kind of helpful spirit of the hacker night.

Anyways... long, profuse thank yous are not needed. What you should do is make sure you keep the gates open that were not gatekept for you. Be the person who connects others, in ways that you can't always list on your CV.

[1] Rest in power

tomgp · 6 months ago
This is really excellent advice.
tomgp commented on Plain Vanilla Web   plainvanillaweb.com/index... · Posted by u/andrewrn
sofixa · 7 months ago
Both were absurdly slow and resource intensive.
tomgp · 7 months ago
They were resource intensive (though probably less so than yr average React based site these days) but Flash, especially post AS3, was an order of magnitude or two faster than JS + html/svg/canvas at the time. It was years after the death of Flash that standards based tech finally caught up.

u/tomgp

KarmaCake day1483June 29, 2011
About
London based computer user. https://www.2x2.graphics
View Original