truetraveller (u/truetraveller)

truetraveller commented on Show HN: Reactive: A React Book for the Reluctant (written by Claude) github.com/cloudstreet-de... · Posted by u/DavidCanHelp

DavidCanHelp · 15 days ago

I just scrolled way, way back. Found the original Claude Code prompt: ```This folder exists to write a book. You're the author, and I'm guiding you in tech topics to write about. This book is called Reactive, and it has a unique twist: it is a book that teaches React to people who hate react, the idea of react, how react looks and behaves and all the downsides. Be wistful for alternatives but contrast the way things are done. Somebody who reads the book should be amused, entertained, and learn react programming. Write the book in markdown, with numbered files and one file per chapter. Make it a full book, with an index, table of contents, and all the classic sections (Introduction) a book would have.```

truetraveller · 15 days ago

If that's the only prompt, that's honestly incredible.

truetraveller commented on Show HN: Reactive: A React Book for the Reluctant (written by Claude) github.com/cloudstreet-de... · Posted by u/DavidCanHelp

DavidCanHelp · 15 days ago

I actually captured the banter with Claude Code in https://github.com/cloudstreet-dev/React-is-Awful/blob/main/...

truetraveller · 15 days ago

Thanks! But I didn't see any hints to the AI about being sarcastic or humorous. Was the initial prompt the only prompt, or were there other prompts? What about per-chapter prompts? Or did the AI pump out the chapter names as well?

truetraveller commented on Show HN: Reactive: A React Book for the Reluctant (written by Claude) github.com/cloudstreet-de... · Posted by u/DavidCanHelp

truetraveller · 15 days ago

Some really funny gems, and actually very true! This whole thing is incredibly humorous. And surprisingly, very pleasant to learn from. Please let me know the prompt.

Quote1: "useEffect is React's answer to the question, "How do we do side effects in functional components?" The answer, apparently, is "Confusingly, with lots of bugs, and in a way that makes developers question their sanity."...If React hooks were a family, useEffect would be the troubled teenager who means well but keeps setting the house on fire."

Quote2: "ComponentDidMount's Evil Twin: In the before times, we had lifecycle methods that made sense...Clear, explicit, predictable. React looked at this and said, "What if we combined all of these into one confusing function called useEffect?""

Quote3: "The Dependency Array of Doom: The second argument to useEffect is an array that determines when the effect runs. Sounds simple. It's not."

Quote4: "Cleanup Functions: Forgetting Them Since 2019: useEffect can return a cleanup function. You'll forget to add it. Every. Single. Time."

Quote5: "The Infinite Loop Trap: Want to crash a browser? useEffect makes it easy!"

truetraveller commented on Figma will IPO on July 31 figma.com/blog/ipo-pricin... · Posted by u/nevir

dostick · a month ago

Figma is one of the worst evils of capitalism. Considered a leader in UIUX design software while its own UIUX is abysmal, full of amateur level mistakes, inconsistencies and bad patterns. We have now a generation of designers that take Figma’s UX as an example to learn from and implement in their designs. To be a good designer today you have to learn to actively reject what Figma teaches you.

what else you could expect - Figma was born out of founder’s need to find a proof of concept test case for real-time collaboration JavaScript engine they created. They stumbled on this idea. Back then everyone used Sketch and wanted better prototyping and interaction design, and Figma appeared with its real time collaboration as major point which you used once just to try and never again. For occasional demos and in large organisations maybe it is useful, but with your average design team size is one person it’s not a problem to solve first. And yet despite having this real time collaboration you still couldn’t collaboratively present your design. You have to shout all the time “and now, what screen you’re on, what do you see?, yes click on that button on the left”. It shows how to this day, the UX is not at the table at Figma. They focus on opening offices all over the world and courting big clients. Because need growth, IPO.

Figma was first to employ an army of customer support “yes men” with sole task to answer in support forums and defuse frustrations this way, thus allowing Figma instead of fixing embarrassing bugs for years, to divert development resources to products nobody asked for, to fuel that growth.

Figma has became a product for investors rather than designers. And doing that it poisoned the design community, normalised bad UX and business practices.

truetraveller · a month ago

Why do many people not understand this? It's bloated. And doesn't do it's core competency (hint UI/UX design) well.

truetraveller commented on American sentenced for helping North Koreans get jobs at U.S. firms fortune.com/2025/07/24/no... · Posted by u/fortran77

markus_zhang · a month ago

They are extremely talented. One of my Chinese friends told me that one of the interviewees he got knew enough about X11 to impress everyone, but then shocked them by showing on camera wearing NK uniform. Apparently he didn’t get the job.

truetraveller · a month ago

Wow. Is this intelligence a one-off occurrence, or a pattern?

truetraveller commented on Figma aims at $16.4B valuation as tech IPOs bounce back reuters.com/technology/fi... · Posted by u/nairteashop

duxup · a month ago

I'm probably not a great customer for them but every time I've touched Figma I came away thinking "man this software is a beast" and I think about how much work it would take to bring everyone along to use it.

It might be because I'm in a small org, but it seemed like big time sink vs time saver.

truetraveller · a month ago

You're not alone. Absolutely bloated.

truetraveller commented on Make Your Own Backup System – Part 1: Strategy Before Scripts it-notes.dragas.net/2025/... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

bambax · a month ago

Well it was "a" production database, the one that tracks supplier orders and invoices so that suppliers can eventually get paid. The database is populated by a data stream, so after restoration of the old version, they replayed the data stream (that is indeed stored somewhere, but in only one version (not a backup)).

And this was far from painless: the system was unavailable for a whole day, and all manual interventions on the system (like comments, corrections, etc.) that had been done between the restoration date and the incident, were irretrievably lost. -- There were not too many of those apparently, but still.

truetraveller · a month ago

Okay, that makes sense. So they had a base backup (which was 4 days old), and 4 days worth of WAL log had to be replayed.

truetraveller commented on We made Postgres writes faster, but it broke replication paradedb.com/blog/lsm_tre... · Posted by u/philippemnoel

truetraveller · a month ago

diagramas made how?

truetraveller commented on Make Your Own Backup System – Part 1: Strategy Before Scripts it-notes.dragas.net/2025/... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

bambax · a month ago

It's endlessly surprising how people don't care / don't think about backups. And not just individuals! Large companies too.

I'm consulting for a company that makes around €1 billion annual turnover. They don't make their own backups. They rely on disk copies made by the datacenter operator, which happen randomly, and which they don't test themselves.

Recently a user error caused the production database to be destroyed. The most recent "backup" was four days old. Then we had to replay all transactions that happened during those four days. It's insane.

But the most insane part was, nobody was shocked or terrified about the incident. "Business as usual" it seems.

truetraveller · a month ago

Wait, the prod db, like the whole thing? Losing 4 days of data? How does that work. Aren't customers upset? Not doubting your account, but maybe you missed something, because for a $1 billion company, that's likely going to have huge consequences.