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This thread shows for itself the state of desktop app dev in 2025 :) The question was about "toolchains". For me, the word "toolchain" in the context of programming means compiler and linker stuff for some programming language(s) (e.g. LLVM toolchain, or MSVC++), not e.g. Chromium/HTML5 web environment, C#/Java managed languages, Flutter/Electron bloats, or Qt all-batteries-included library etc.

Checklists are one of the most powerful universal tool I know for avoiding/minimizing disasters/failures. In the context of software, I try to create user interfaces as masked checklists, because it forces making critical steps/decisions visible and clear (common domain specific understanding for both developer and end user), and guides user to goal. It's almost like old-school "wizard" UIs, but professionals in mind instead of beginners.

Also, critical business processes are great expressed as checklists.

He has recently co-founded NDEA company, so he has to align himself for that. Same kind of vibe change feels for Joscha Bach after having some position in Liquid AI company. Communication is not so relaxed anymore.

That said, I'd still listen these two guys (+ Schmidhuber) more than any other AI-guy.

Great tip for finding no/minimal-BS appliances is to download their user manuals and check how they actually work instead of their marketing material.

Getting disgusted by seeing unnecessary complex and obfuscated code, and seeing how my own naive most obvious and intentfully explicit code describes the program execution like a story.

Oh, and if you have opportunity to start the codebase from scratch, making one semantic change per version control commit is insanely powerful explainer of how/why your code became as it is. They are like chapters/paragraphs in a story.

Also, separation of concerns: having clear separation of libraries and your "own" code. Including not mixing "business logic" (changing human rules/parameters/requirements) with technical non-human machinery.

Great corrections from both of you.

The original intent of Unicode was great: a standard that creates a mapping between a unique number==codepoint and specific character of language (and here character means only abstract non-visual symbol==meaning, not visually rendered glyph with stylistic font of any kind). The updates for Unicode versions added more languages, even dead ones. So basically it was a historical knowledge effort also.

Then came emojis, and now the Unicode Consortium's efforts for Unicode version updates seems to be about adding more different kinds of poop emojis and shades of skin colors. Well, maybe it projects accurately the language and culture of this modern time.

UTF-8 is great because it is a superset of ASCII, but because its byte-width varies, it has more complexity for decoding/encoding it (similar to constant/variable width ISA's in CPUs).

Different languages have different concepts, e.g. text direction==flow (left/right, up/down, characters/logograms, different kind of visual cues etc.). Humans create problems when they want to combine different languages at the same time. E.g. mathematical notation is in my opinion 2D graphics, and it cannot be (usually/always) inlined with text glyphs (to be aesthetically pleasing). Same kind of problems may come when trying to inline e.g. languages with different flow directions. Its like trying to combine native GUI widgets in Win32 and Cocoa/SwiftUI and GTK/Qt/WXwidgets - the (visual) languages doesn't have the same concepts or they are conflicting.

There are so many, but the first to come into mind was Knuth. The body of work is just insane for a one person (TAOCP, TeX/Metafont, literate programming/web, etc.).

Factorio has the best game UI widgets. It is a result of long development effort, as explained in their dev blog.

This premise is how AI is sold by the AI companies. It is the software-level equivalent of perfect cheap obidient slave (employee) for the master (employer).

I really wonder how all this AI stuff feels/seems to a management person who is not a programmer/low-level-minded person. I remember the time when large portion of average workers could barely understand how to "use computer", let alone the wonder of some simple Excel-VBA/Python magic, and as of now, humanlike magical text prompts. Now after decade(s), some of these persons are in a management position dealing with "AI".

So, the design language of 2025+ is wobbly "organic" 3D'ishly morphing UI elements, either translucent or not. Surely it was hard work after engineering round-cornered windows and centered taskbars. Can't wait to see the future innovations of these $1T+ companies.

- https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-de...

- https://m3.material.io/blog/building-with-m3-expressive

- https://fluent2.microsoft.design/design-principles

Google search is already dead/zombie. Borderline useless cesspool.

Oh wow, that must have been magical. Have you seen "Halt and Catch Fire"? These two masterpieces are my top 2 watchings. Both so amazing but generally unknown/underrated.

Freedom of computing/information, i.e. having ability to control computer hardware from software as one wishes. Windows and macOS + driver systems are not anymore allowing this freedom, so on the software-side Linux is our only hope as of 2025.

The General Magic movie/document (2018) is amazing and underrated. Always getting teardrops while watching it (watched it ~3 times). A true old-school startup story. And the soundtrack is also beautiful.

Compare the quality and intentionality of this writing versus 2025 LLM generated/assisted stuff.

The article is poorly written. No clear message, topics jumped weirdly, and the overall style is like written by teenager/intern trying to be as impressing as some professional.

But here's the thing with "GUIs/UIs/UXs whatever":

The best UI/UX is created by a domain professional, who knows why and how it serves as the best designed tool for that domain - a tool made by a professional for himself and/or for other professionals in the same domain.

This is why Bloomberg terminal UI/UX is like it is for finance professionals, as are DAWs for music professionals, as are CAD tools for EE/architects etc. They act as the right tool for the right job.

Coders, (figma) designers, and other "implementers" (including management and "product owners"!) has to understand the business domain in order to fully manifest their craftsmanship talent. It is very hard to start and/or iterate UI/UX design if the implementers are not personally using the tool in some professional domain, and therefore know what is right and cool design and what is not.

Yes, modern internet stack is a cesspool, and it cannot be saved.

- Specs (be it for hardware or software) are too complicated. The complexity can be controlled only by large companies (e.g. HTML5 == Chrome == new IE). And software/hardware companies fail to implement specs securely.

- "Self-hosting" is becoming harder. Microsoft & Google controls (blocks) the email traffic for own gains. Public static IP address from ISP costs more than the whole thing (IP, virtual machine/hardware, electricity, etc.) from cloud. Additionally, Cloudflare etc. can take control of internet traffic.

- "Cloud-hosting" has uncontrollable pricing. DDOS attack can make $100k bill in a few hours.

- There only couple of "OKish" non-scamming/no-dark-patterns domain name registrars.

- Google Search is dead (results are only AI-generated stuff + ads + scams). LLMs are the greatest manipulation machine ever invented.

It is quite funny and insane, that there isn't any quality vendors in the router/switch market (though can't say anything of $10k+ hardware). Same phenomenon is with domain name registrars (except one or two are feasible). Oh, and printer market (one or two are feasible).

I don't understand how somebody can code like this and reason/control anything about the program execution :)

async (() => (e) { try { await doSomething(); while (!done) { ({ done, value } = await reader.read()); } promise .then(goodA, badA) .then(goodB, badB) .catch((err) => { console.error(err); } catch { } finally { using stack = new DisposableStack(); stack.defer(() => console.log("done.")); } });

Your writing style reminds LLM for some reason.

The writer seems to be Eskil! https://www.youtube.com/@eskilsteenberg/videos

I hate that "scientific papers" do not have date of publication.

The real problem with "vibe coding" (or any coding, or with any product what so ever) is that the end user probably is not a programmer, and therefore cannot have professional judgement on the quality of the implementation. The only thing typical end user care is the perceived behavior, not the implementation details.

As it is easier and cheaper to do anything, the result is low-quality products. This of course serves well for the real professionals, who can now sell premium quality products at premium pricing for those who know and want the quality.

If the sites are bluffing maybe you can too.

If the actual page content is loaded and the cookie is just a modal box slapped on top of it, right click the cookie modal box > open inspector > remove the child element of body that contains the cookie box. If cookie box disabled scrolling, select body tag at the inspector and tick off the overflow and position stylings to default.

Sounds bad.

- "Firefox uses AI that runs locally on your device to read the linked page and create the key points." --> Last time I played with local LLMs they were gigabyte sized models. So this has to mean Firefox is shipping with a very small model, not gigabyte-size?

- And so does this mean Firefox visits these links beforehand, or when you hover link or what? How many unnecessary requests are made? Since this is "local", I assume you reveal your IP/browser fingerprints to unnecessary sites?

- If the content behind the link is already LLM generated, it gets double LLM generated.

- And what about webservices (shopping carts, management dashboards, banking..), if it is hover based, it might easily and accidentally request url that cause some action, right?

I use plain and simple .txt files.

There is also a distinction to be made between "technical" and "political" dependencies. Technical dependencies usually track some spec or common consensus, and political dependencies are e.g. timedate-library. Political dependencies are almost like business logic, because they have to track changing political decision made all over the world (or be local to some country).

Timedates are hard, and units may require even harder historical/present "political" tracking as how they are defined, and I would never want to maintain this kind of dependency: https://github.com/ryantenney/gnu-units/blob/master/units.da...

And what comes to timedate problems, I try to keep it simple if the project allows: store and operate with UTC timestamps everywhere and only temporarily convert to to local time (DSTs applied, if such) when displaying it in user-facing UI. This functionality/understanding can be locked into own 20-line microlibrary-dependency, which forces its responsible person to understand country's timezone and when e.g. DST changes and where/how/who decides DST changes and what APIs is used to get UTC time (and of course, its dependencies, e.g. NTP, and its dependencies. e.g. unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom, which result is then combined with the Pope Gregory XIII's Gregorian calendar, which is a type of solar calendar mixed with religious event for fixing the time, which which is then finally corrected by rewinding/forwarding "the clock" because its too bright or dark for the politicians).

Google Search is 95% unusable as of 2025. I don't want to use it anymore (as opposed to always wanting to use it because it did the job best). Search results it offers are either paid or LLM generated garbage. From Google's perspective, it is insane to destroy the quality of a market-leading product like this, or it is very intentional to drive users to LLMs for much better user manipulation and cashing opportunities. Of course, at some point users must pay LLMs. They will become like O365, it is just mandatory to pay at least 4,99/month at minimum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-opBifFfsMY