ychen306 (u/ychen306)

ychen306 commented on Why xor eax, eax? xania.org/202512/01-xor-e... · Posted by u/hasheddan

cesarb · 3 months ago

> It's not only xor that does this, but most 32-bit operations zero-extend the result of the 64-bit register. AMD did this for backward compatibility.

It's not just that, zero-extending or sign-extending the result is also better for out-of-order implementations. If parts of the output register are preserved, the instruction needs an extra dependency on the original value.

ychen306 · 3 months ago

This. It's for renaming.

ychen306 commented on Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment) github.com/samrolken/noko... · Posted by u/samrolken

ls-a · 4 months ago

Try to convince the investors. The way the industry is headed is not necessarily related to what is most optimal. That might be the future whether we like it or not. Losing billions seems to be the trend.

ychen306 · 4 months ago

Eventually the utility will be correctly priced. It's just a matter of time.

ychen306 commented on Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment) github.com/samrolken/noko... · Posted by u/samrolken

ychen306 · 4 months ago

It's orders of magnitude cheaper to serve requests with conventional methods than directly with LLM. My back-of-envelope calculation says, optimistically, it takes more than 100 GFLOPs to generate 10 tokens using a 7 billion parameter LLM. There are better ways to use electricity.

ychen306 commented on John Carmack on mutable variables twitter.com/id_aa_carmack... · Posted by u/azhenley

anymouse123456 · 5 months ago

I completely agree with the assertion and the benefits that ensue, but my attention is always snagged by the nomenclature.

I know there are alternate names available to us, but even in the context of this very conversation (and headline), the thing is being called a "variable."

What is a "variable" if not something that varies?

ychen306 · 5 months ago

I try to avoid this ambiguity by calling such variables "values".

ychen306 commented on White Mountain Direttissima whitemountainski.co/pages... · Posted by u/oftenwrong

dan-robertson · 7 months ago

What is it that makes this route a direttissima? I’m not super familiar with the term.

ychen306 · 7 months ago

It's a TSP route over the highest 48 peaks of NH.

ychen306 commented on Short Message Compression Using LLMs bellard.org/ts_sms/... · Posted by u/chunkles

deadbabe · a year ago

With LLM based compression, could we get something like the opposite of lossless, like hallucinatory? All the original content, plus more?

ychen306 · a year ago

How this works is the LLM predicts the probability of the next token and then an arithmetic coder turns that probability distribution into bits. So it will never hallucinate. In the worst case, when the LLM makes an outrageous prediction, you just use more bits, but it doesn't affect correctness.

ychen306 commented on Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills notes.andymatuschak.org/z... · Posted by u/JustinSkycak

Sakos · 2 years ago

Because the identical logic works when used on athletes and musicians. You're just being obtuse and refusing to recognize it. I don't know if you get off on feeling superior to people who aren't developers, but I think it's weird you're trying to argue this angle so hard.

In all these professions, and many more, we're expected to maintain a certain level of performance (or capacity for performance) whether we're officially given the time for it at work and whether we're paid for it or not.

I also don't see how you can possibly in good faith compare "public performance" to whatever you think the equivalent "performance" is as a developer.

It sounds disrespectful and unnecessary, honestly.

ychen306 · 2 years ago

My main point is that these jobs are fundamentally different and people spend their time differently as a consequence. At this point, I am more curious about how what I argue even comes across as me feeling superior or being disrespectful to people who aren't developers. (I am not a developer and would rather spent all my time running if I could)

ychen306 commented on Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills notes.andymatuschak.org/z... · Posted by u/JustinSkycak

gherkinnn · 2 years ago

And how much of that 9 to 5 is writing code?

This whole line of reasoning is ridiculous and smells like something said by people who know fuck all about athletics and musicianship.

ychen306 · 2 years ago

Not writing code doesn't equate to not working. Thinking, documenting, designing, discussing, etc are all important parts of their job. I don't understand why you seem offended by my take on this. This line of reasoning doesn't by any means diminish athletes/musician's work.

ychen306 commented on Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills notes.andymatuschak.org/z... · Posted by u/JustinSkycak

abletonlive · 2 years ago

perhaps if you have a very narrow definition of what a "musician" is.

a modern music producer will literally spend 700 hours on a single song.

ychen306 · 2 years ago

In this instance what would qualify as “pursing fundamentals” for a producer as defined by the author?

ychen306 commented on Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills notes.andymatuschak.org/z... · Posted by u/JustinSkycak

rrradical · 2 years ago

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding your definition of work. Even if you meant perform- most athletes have to perform continuously outside out of games in order to earn minutes in game. And touring musicians are performing way more hours than you cite.

Imagine if programmers were like NFL players, constantly measured on their performance against their peers.

ychen306 · 2 years ago

NFL players wouldn’t have time to do drills if their games last 8 hours and they need to play everyday.