why-el (u/why-el) - Readit News

why-el commented on Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sha... · Posted by u/XzetaU8

AnimalMuppet · a month ago

> Sounds a bit like Chomsky's Universal Grammar.

Yes, except with things in it instead of words.

why-el · a month ago

Chomsky never argued it was words (and how couldn't it be words, for there are millions of words from 100s of 1000s of languages), just a configuration to eventually learn those words.

why-el commented on The great displacement is already well underway? shawnfromportland.substac... · Posted by u/JSLegendDev

shawnfrompdx · 7 months ago

thanks. this is the fifth iteration of my resume in this last year's search. im clearly trying to push for ai-coding, as i think i was often overlooked for being too 'trad'. in reality im all-in on ai.

why-el · 7 months ago

I am not sure if this will help you, but have an extended, deep conversation with ChatGPT about your resume. Tell it who you are, what you excel at, and list projects and technologies. Then, paste a couple of the job postings that did not work for you.

This might sound silly to you, but it absolutely works, because it will distill your experience better, ask you to re-arrange and generalize, and more importantly, it is far superior to us in finding unique key word combinations that work.

why-el commented on Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes simonwillison.net/2025/Ma... · Posted by u/ulrischa

tylerchurch · 10 months ago

> Code by one LLM can be reviewed by another

Reviewed against what? Who is writing the specs?

why-el · 10 months ago

the user who wants it? and a premature retort: if the feedback is "the user / PM / stakeholder could be wrong", then... that's where we are. A "refiner" LLM can be fronted (Replit is playing with this for instance).

To be clear: this is not something I do currently, but my point is that one needs to detach from how _we_ engineers do this for a more accurate evaluation of whether these things truly do not work.

why-el commented on Hallucinations in code are the least dangerous form of LLM mistakes simonwillison.net/2025/Ma... · Posted by u/ulrischa

why-el · 10 months ago

I am not so sure. Code by one LLM can be reviewed by another. Puppeteer like solutions will exist pretty soon. "Given this change, can you confirm this spec".

Even better, this can carry on for a few iterations. And both LLMs can be:

1. Budgeted ("don't exceed X amount")

2. Improved (another LLM can improve their prompts)

and so on. I think we are fixating on how _we_ do things, not how this new world will do their _own_ thing. That to me is the real danger.

why-el commented on GitHub Copilot: The Agent Awakens github.blog/news-insights... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

bramhaag · a year ago

   It can suggest terminal commands and ask you to execute them

People were already blindly copy pasting commands from StackExchange answers, but at least those are moderated. I wonder how long it takes before someone nukes their project or root directory.

why-el · a year ago

> "ask you"

I get the concern, however. But, short of nuking the actual .git directory, the upsides are worth it, in my opinion. Cursor offers filtering via a mini-prompt in its YOLO mode, so does Windsurf. The idea is killer, it allows it to progressively build and also correct its own errors. e.g. Cursorrules can be told to run tests after a feature is generated, or typecheck, or some other automated feedback-loop your codebase offers. That's pretty neat!

Better yet, setup a dev container first. Then, at most, your local DB is the only concern. If still paranoid (as you should be), suspend your network while the agent is working. :D

why-el commented on How I use LLMs as a staff engineer seangoedecke.com/how-i-us... · Posted by u/gfysfm

why-el · a year ago

I was hoping the LLM is the staff engineer? can read both ways.

why-el commented on Introducing S2 s2.dev/blog/intro... · Posted by u/brancz

andrethegiant · a year ago

Dibs on S0

why-el · a year ago

your incident lingo will be fun.

why-el commented on How God Plays Chess (2018) en.chessbase.com/post/how... · Posted by u/akkartik

thom · a year ago

Dunno if it’s just the timezone difference, but whenever I play, God’s drunk.

why-el · a year ago

not to be confused with "Drunk Magnus", a very strong player.

why-el commented on Why pipes sometimes get "stuck": buffering jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/29/w... · Posted by u/tanelpoder

why-el · a year ago

Love it.

> this post is only about buffering that happens inside the program, your operating system’s TTY driver also does a little bit of buffering sometimes

and if the TTY is remote, so do the network switches! it's buffering all the way down.

why-el commented on Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup? · Posted by u/aml183

why-el · a year ago

I learned the following:

- Everything public in Slack. Create a fun-sounding moto that discourages DMs. Even if a DM happens, and the back and forth resulted in a consensus, share that consensus in a public channel (which makes it searchable).

- Record your team meetings, preferably with software that can AI-summarize. Folks on vacation / leave can get the rundown easily.

- Encourage the sharing of solutions to various problems (technical or otherwise) in Slack. If a developer is stuck, and someone helped them in a huddle or a pairing app, share the solution afterwards (again, makes it searchable). Discourage the over-sharing of screenshots (of your application and other things). Again, not searchable. If one must be shared, describe it. For instance, many devs share a picture of a stack-trace. Not super helpful for others. Grab the text and dump it to Slack.

- Have a good pairing software setup, unblocks for when Slack back and forth is too tedious. I like Tuple (tuple.app).

- Connect your issue tracker to Slack, if you use one, makes creating issues easy. Linear does this well.

- If feasible, have your team meet in person, cadence up to you, but at least once. Meeting the people in real life humanizes them more. I know it sounds silly to say, but it's very true in my experience. Your people will seem even lovelier.