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zanderwohl commented on Coding a new BASIC interpreter in 2025 to replace a slow one   nanochess.org/ecs_basic.h... · Posted by u/nanochess
analog8374 · 3 months ago
I love basic

Can you OOPize it?

zanderwohl · 3 months ago
Yes, meet Visual Basic 6. It has many OO features stapled on.
zanderwohl commented on CubeSats are fascinating learning tools for space   jeffgeerling.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/warrenm
bilsbie · 3 months ago
I’m really confused how you communicate with it? That seems like the most (expensive?) and technically difficult part.

I’ve got some cool ideas for atmospheric Reentry but I’d imagine there are all kinds of permits needed?

zanderwohl · 3 months ago
Why would it be difficult? Amateurs talk to the ISS all the time. You're only going 200 miles, and it's line-of-sight at all times while above the horizon since it's in the sky. You mostly have to just wait for a good window.
zanderwohl commented on An engineer's perspective on hiring   jyn.dev/an-engineers-pers... · Posted by u/pabs3
ozgung · 5 months ago
Everyone calls them Interviews but they are not really interviews. They are exams.

Oral exams, live coding exams, system architecture exams, take-home exams, behavioral examinations, code review exams, extended essay writing exams, case study exams, sample work trials.

You can't be a real professional if you have to take exams in every job change.

In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.

They don't take exams from random people in random companies that know nothing about evaluating knowledge. They take official, standardized exams prepared by professional testers/educators.

Engineering jobs can't be standardized. Engineering and required skills and knowledge is too broad for that.

An interview is not an exam. It's a meeting. The interviewer asks questions to learn about the candidate. The interviewer may ask some questions to learn about the company and the position. That's all. That's the universal definition of a job interview. All the other things are additional tests and exams.

Do they need to do those exams for better selection? Probably not. Their "hiring process"es are not backed by any science. Then why are they doing that? They have to filter somehow. If there are 1 to 100s ratio of candidates for each position, they need to filter hard. Exams are the standard method for ranking and filtering.

But we are professional engineers, not students.

zanderwohl · 5 months ago
> In serious professions, people take exams early in their careers for being certified. Sometimes they take additional exams to renew their certificates. And that's all.

The field of programming emerged from mathematics, not engineering unfortunately. So we lack any useful certification processes.

zanderwohl commented on An engineer's perspective on hiring   jyn.dev/an-engineers-pers... · Posted by u/pabs3
pxeger1 · 5 months ago
> interviews should: be applicable. reflect the actual job duties

No, it doesn't matter that much what task the candidate is doing in the interview. It matters what the interviewer is looking at. I'm sure plenty of interviewers don't understand this, and I think this is often missed when people debate about Leetcode interviews - including in this article.

> most interview questions have very little to do with day-to-day responsibilities

You're missing what the interview questions are. Yes, one part of the interview is "here is a puzzle, can you solve it?", but many of the other questions should be things like "explain why this doesn't work", "why did you start with this approach?" and "are you sure that is the best name for that function?"

Leetcode interviews are perfectly "applicable", as long as the interviewer is using them as a convenient frame to see how you think, communicate, and write/read/edit code and isn't trying purely to assess your skill at quickly solving leetcode puzzles.

> cannot distinguish a senior programmer from a marketer using chatGPT

This is empirically false, because companies haven't suddenly lost all their hiring signal since ChatGPT came out. But if a company has this problem, they suck at interviewing.

(I admit the style of interviewing I'm describing has its own problems, and in particular doesn't address what I think is the biggest issue: the fact you're partly testing people's ability to (appear to) perform under acute pressure.)

zanderwohl · 5 months ago
> but many of the other questions should be things like "explain why this doesn't work", "why did you start with this approach?" and "are you sure that is the best name for that function?"

This is important and something more interviewers should do. The blind adherence to leetcode doesn't tell you much, especially if you're silent during the interview instead of having a short back-and-forth every 15 minutes or so. The problem solving process is more important than the problem solved.

zanderwohl commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers   fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber
agentultra · 5 months ago
> “The truth is, if you want a job, you’re gonna go through this thing,” Adam Jackson, CEO and founder of Braintrust, a company that distributes AI interviewers, tells Fortune. “If there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn’t find the tool useful… This thing would be chronically underperforming for our clients. And we’re just not seeing that—we’re seeing the opposite.”

They're seeing the opposite because people are desperate. When HR teams use tools like this interviewees have no choice. Braintrust are literally holding people hostage with this. Of course the numbers look good. But you didn't ask the people being interviewed by your product what they think of it or how it made them feel.

And of course Mr. Jackson doesn't care. His company's bottom line is his performance bonus.

zanderwohl · 5 months ago
> “The truth is, if you want a job, you’re gonna go through this thing,” Adam Jackson, CEO and founder of Braintrust, a company that distributes AI interviewers, tells Fortune. “If there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn’t find the tool useful… This thing would be chronically underperforming for our clients. And we’re just not seeing that—we’re seeing the opposite.”

Person selling a product informs you that the product they're selling is good despite counter claims.

> They're seeing the opposite because people are desperate.

I hope, wish, pray we get back to the 2021 market in a few years so we don't have to humor HR persons anymore. I was very polite and reasonable when I switched jobs in 2021 but when the cycle comes around I am going to string along HR folks and recruiters as a hobby. I will try to get them to cry on the phone.

zanderwohl commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers   fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber
SoftTalker · 5 months ago
> Still, stretched-thin HR teams say it’s the only way to handle thousands of applicants.

You're doing it wrong if you're considering "thousands" of applicants.

First of all ask your current good employees if they can refer anyone.

If you need to go to resumes, sort by qualifications. Screen out obvious robo-applications, you know them when you see them just like you know spam email from the subject line alone.

Hint: if you're an insurance or financial services company in Chicago and getting applications from people with a degree from Stanford and 10 years of amazing experience at FAANG companies, they are fakes.

Hire the first candidate that has acceptable experience and interviews well. Check their references, but you don't need to consider hundreds or even dozens of people. Most people are average and that's who you're most likely going to hire no matter what you do.

Your job is also nothing very special. Have some humility. Very few companies need to be hiring the top 1% type of person, and your company is almost certainly of no interest to those people anyway.

zanderwohl · 5 months ago
> Your job is also nothing very special. Have some humility. Very few companies need to be hiring the top 1% type of person, and your company is almost certainly of no interest to those people anyway.

Right now, every company thinks that because times are uncertain, they only want to hire the best of the best, so they can be sure of their choice. Of course, everyone else has the same idea and the "best of the best" already got hired somewhere better. I'm not really sure why employers are taking so long to realize this.

zanderwohl commented on Microsoft extends free Windows 10 security updates into 2026   arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/jmsflknr
_mlbt · 6 months ago
Windows 10 came out almost 10 years ago and they offered a free upgrade to Windows 11. I know people love to hate on Microsoft, but they’ve done better than most technology companies when it comes to security updates here. You’re lucky to get even half of that length of support from most Android devices for example.
zanderwohl · 6 months ago
> a free upgrade to Windows 11

My very expensive tower PC can't "up"grade because it doesn't have a TPM 2.0 module. So unless Microsoft plans to give me a new CPU (and new mobo) it's not free for many users.

zanderwohl commented on Veloren – Voxel action-adventure role-playing   veloren.net/... · Posted by u/tete
philipwhiuk · 9 months ago
I mean they're all just Minecraft clones.
zanderwohl · 9 months ago
And minecraft started as an Infiniminer clone intended to have Dwarf Fortress elements. Inspiration all the way down.
zanderwohl commented on The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil   washingtonpost.com/world/... · Posted by u/benbreen
jeroenhd · 9 months ago
I think it's pretty obvious in hindsight that the US shifted the goalposts to claim victory here. The real space race, having the ability to nuke any point on earth, was clearly won by the Soviets. Putting a man on the moon showed that America was vastly more capable on a technical level, but that wasn't really the point of the space race.

It's also why governments are carefully watching North Korea's space program, even if they'll never be able to put a man on the moon. Their ability to launch a sattelite into orbit makes them a threat, whether or not they can make a moon lander has little real value beyond vanity.

zanderwohl · 9 months ago
That's not really the full story. The US didn't come up with the moon goal. It was the Soviets' plan already, which is why JFK publicly announced it in a speech: to force them into a public prestige battle. The Soviets had the habit of repeated private failure. If they achieved something, they'd announce it afterwards; if they failed, they kept quiet. The US broadcast launches on TV and pre-announced goals, which was a major propaganda effort and much more effective than post-flight releases.
zanderwohl commented on macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)   saurabhs.org/macos-tips... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin
reddalo · 10 months ago
I honestly think that Explorer on Windows 11 is way worse than Finder. But I'd love a FilePilot [1] for macOS...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43091466

zanderwohl · 10 months ago
Anyone who thinks finder is the worst file browser hasn't used Windows for 25+ years. Explorer can't even search files on the hard drive of the computer it's running on.

Explorer has its thumbnail processor on the same thread as the UI so if you have a lot of pictures in a directory it'll just hang indefinitely. Sometimes if you have too many files it won't display any at all.

If explorer crashes, it's the same process as your desktop and taskbar, so that disappears too.

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KarmaCake day324February 5, 2020
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