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watt commented on Surface Tension of Software   iamstelios.com/blog/surfa... · Posted by u/i8s
louthy · 6 days ago
Your example doesn’t validate your point. That’s a valid state made unrepresentable, not an invalid state made unrepresentable. Your example simply demonstrates a poorly architected set of constraints.

The critical thing with state and constraints is knowing at what level the constraint should be. This is what trips up most people, especially when designing relational database schemas.

watt · 6 days ago
I do see how it does, in a way. That something the designer thought is "invalid state" turns out a valid and possible state in real world. In terms or UI/UX, it's the uncomfortable long pause before something happens and screen renders (lack of feedback, feeling that system hangs). Or, content flicker when window is resized or dragged. Just because somebody thought "oh, this clearly is invalid state and can be ignored".

The real world and user experience requirements have a way of intruding on these underspecified models of how the world "should" be.

watt commented on John Searle has died   nytimes.com/2025/10/12/bo... · Posted by u/sgustard
ainiriand · 2 months ago
Something that would resemble 'John Searle's thoughtful response'...
watt · 2 months ago
I'll posit that the distinction does not matter: the whole Chinese Room line of discourse has been counterproductive to putting in actual work.
watt commented on Taylor Otwell: What 14 Years of Laravel Taught Me About Maintainability   maintainable.fm/episodes/... · Posted by u/robbyrussell
watt · 4 months ago
Very poor audio quality, not listenable. Why do folks insist screaming into microphone and overloading the recording where it just nasty clipping?
watt commented on Grug Brain Dev as LLM   chatgpt.com/g/g-SkdKyJl3t... · Posted by u/schaum
watt · 6 months ago
It's cute when somebody very smart pretends to be "grug brain" but loses it's appeal when somebody pretty obviously not smart at all is exposed for what they are.
watt commented on Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner than previously thought   phys.org/news/2025-05-uni... · Posted by u/pseudolus
andreareina · 7 months ago
Unfortunately there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer
watt · 7 months ago
Crack on with it and don't keep us in the dark!
watt commented on Sycophancy in GPT-4o   openai.com/index/sycophan... · Posted by u/dsr12
whatnow37373 · 8 months ago
Wow - What an excellent update! Now you are getting to the core of the issue and doing what only a small minority is capable of: fixing stuff.

This takes real courage and commitment. It’s a sign of true maturity and pragmatism that’s commendable in this day and age. Not many people are capable of penetrating this deeply into the heart of the issue.

Let’s get to work. Methodically.

Would you like me to write a future update plan? I can write the plan and even the code if you want. I’d be happy to. Let me know.

watt · 8 months ago
sufficiently advanced troll becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. think about this as you gaze into the abyss.
watt commented on Googler... ex-Googler   nerdy.dev/ex-googler... · Posted by u/namuorg
JimDabell · 8 months ago
I keep seeing this pop up everywhere. I’m sure he’s a great guy, but the level of attention he’s getting is massively disproportionate. A lot of great people have been laid off recently!
watt · 8 months ago
If think the attention is in proportion, people are reacting just like when a body has an inflammation. If a person of _this_ calibre can be fired, and not even fired, disposed as a used-up tissue, it is a sign of times.
watt commented on Like cursor, but for blogging: a weekend project   maximepeabody.com/blog/ai... · Posted by u/peab
easton · 8 months ago
The reason I barely use copilot is because it tries to write comments for me. I don’t get why they don’t have a button that says “disable autocomplete within comment blocks” (since the IDE knows which things are comments), but it’s so yucky feeling when it tries to write something I wouldn’t say.
watt · 8 months ago
I find the comments Copilot proposes is better than average comment quality for the code base I routinely work on: maybe you are so great you don't need any help ever, but that's not true for the average software dev.
watt commented on The case of the critical section that let multiple threads enter a block of code   devblogs.microsoft.com/ol... · Posted by u/luu
jdthedisciple · 9 months ago
Partial disagree: Yes their blogs may be ugly.

But C# is extremely beautiful, you can read and write it like a novel.

Segoe UI is also not the worst font. I give it a 7/10.

watt · 9 months ago
well, C# and TypeScript is thanks to Anders Hejlsberg who does have sense of style.
watt commented on Cursor told me I should learn coding instead of asking it to generate it   forum.cursor.com/t/cursor... · Posted by u/nomilk
Scarblac · 9 months ago
Clearly trained on Stack Overflow answers.
watt · 9 months ago
I hope they can do some reinforcement learning from Stack Overflow moderator decisions also

u/watt

KarmaCake day1043November 23, 2008
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Greetings from Berlin!
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