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yodsanklai commented on What is going on right now?   catskull.net/what-the-hel... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
mensetmanusman · 2 days ago
Not being a programmer, I have a question.

Can any program be broken down into functions and functions of functions that have inputs and outputs so that they can be verified if they are working?

yodsanklai · 2 days ago
There are many implications to this question! TLDR; in theory yes, in practice no.

Can a function be "verified", this can mean "tested", "reviewed", "proved to be correct". What does correct even mean?

Functions in code are often more complex than just having input and output, unlike mathematical functions. Very often, they have side effects, like sending packets on network or modifying things in their environment. This makes it difficult to understand what they do in isolation.

Any non-trivial piece of software is almost impossible to fully understand or test. These things work empirically and require constant maintenance and tweaking.

yodsanklai commented on AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'   theregister.com/2025/08/2... · Posted by u/JustExAWS
jqpabc123 · 3 days ago
He wants educators to instead teach “how do you think and how do you decompose problems”

Ahmen! I attend this same church.

My favorite professor in engineering school always gave open book tests.

In the real world of work, everyone has full access to all the available data and information.

Very few jobs involve paying someone simply to look up data in a book or on the internet. What they will pay for is someone who can analyze, understand, reason and apply data and information in unique ways needed to solve problems.

Doing this is called "engineering". And this is what this professor taught.

yodsanklai · 3 days ago
> My favorite professor in engineering school always gave open book tests.

My experience as a professor and a student is that this doesn't make any difference. Unless you can copy verbatim the solution to your problem from the book (which never happens), you better have a good understanding of the subject in order to solve problems in the allocated time. You're not going to acquire that knowledge during your test.

yodsanklai commented on California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters   sfchronicle.com/californi... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee
mertleee · 8 days ago
There's a reason most people you run into SF are either here on O1 or h1b visas these days...

Time to cull the waterloo crowd and maybe think twice about cheap outsourcing to latam and india.

yodsanklai · 8 days ago
Arguably, the purpose of a company is to generate profit. If US companies need skilled workers that they can't find locally, they will open or expand their international offices. At least the O1/H1B visa holders pay taxes in the US and contribute to the local economy.
yodsanklai commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness   yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute
kevstev · 9 days ago
I still check it out a few times a week, and the discussions have just fallen off a cliff, and that was the biggest draw to me as well. The articles are far less technical these days as well and tend to lean more political - and I see the draw there, those posts are the only ones that can attract over 100 comments these days, when back in its heyday pretty much everything had around 200 comments on the front page.

And it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger. On more than one occasion I have suspected bots have stolen accounts. Looking at post history on some particularly unhinged posts after the previous election, there was a pattern of people posting regularly in the 00s about only technical things and then going quiet for 5+ years and then only making comments about politics. It was fishy enough I sent some examples to the mods but never heard anything back.

It's a real shame, slashdot used to be a juggernaut, and it's just a shadow of its former self.

yodsanklai · 9 days ago
> it's a weird snakepit of conservative anger.

I've noticed that on teamblind as well (started to use it only recently). I didn't realize there was such hate towards foreigners in the US, especially, in the tech world which I assumed was more educated/progressive. Don't know if it's fueled by Trump or the other way around, but it's pretty scary.

yodsanklai commented on OCaml as my primary language   xvw.lol/en/articles/why-o... · Posted by u/nukifw
noelwelsh · 10 days ago
I saw a talk by someone from Google about their experiences using Rust in the Android team. Two points stuck out: they migrated many projects from Python, so performance can't have been that much of a concern, and in their surveys the features people liked most were basics like pattern matching and ADTs. My conclusion is that for a lot of tasks the benefit from Rust came from ML cicra 1990, not lifetimes etc. I feel if OCaml had got its act together around about 2010 with multicore and a few other annoyances[1] it could have been Rust. Unfortunately it fell into the gap between what academia could justify working on and what industry was willing to do.

[1]: Practically speaking, the 31-bit Ints are annoying if you're trying to do any bit bashing, but aesthetically the double semicolons are an abomination and irk me far more.

yodsanklai · 10 days ago
> aesthetically the double semicolons are an abomination and irk me far more.

I think they have been optional for like 20 years, except in the top-level interactive environment to force execution.

That being said, I still don't get why people are so much upset with the syntax. You'll integrate it after a week writing OCaml code.

yodsanklai commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file   al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez
yodsanklai · 12 days ago
I'm quite happy with Apple Notes. I use it all the time, for todo lists, for taking notes during meetings, for anything really. Actually, as a general principle, I try to embrace the tools that are readily available and limit the amount of customization.
yodsanklai commented on I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid   thomasorus.com/i-tried-co... · Posted by u/mikae1
yodsanklai · 13 days ago
I recently had the following experience. I vibe-coded something in a language I'm not super familiar with, it seemed correct, it type-checked. Tests passed. Then reviewer pointed many stylistic issues and was rightfully pissed at me. When I addressed the comments, I realized I would not have made those mistakes had i written the code myself. It was a waste of time for me and the reviewer.

Another thing that happens quite often. I give the task to the LLM. It's not quite what I want. I fix the prompt. Still not there. Every iteration takes time, in which I lose my focus because it can take minutes. Sometimes it's very frustrating, I feel I'm not using my brain, not learning the project. Again, loss of time.

At the current stage, if I want to be productive, I need to restrict the use of the LLMs to the tasks for which there's a high change that it'll get it right in the first try. Out of laziness, I still have the tendency to give it some more complex tasks and ultimately lose time.

yodsanklai commented on Ask HN: Would you get a CS degree today?    · Posted by u/reilly3000
yodsanklai · 13 days ago
I work in a big tech company and interview candidates for software engineering jobs every day jobs. I don't pay too much attention to the resume but I don't think I've ever interviewed a candidate that didn't have a college degree. A lot also have PhDs too.

I don't know if AI will reduce demands for SWEs, but it seems pretty risky not to get a degree IMHO.

u/yodsanklai

KarmaCake day8376August 19, 2013View Original