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avighnay

180 karma · joined January 9, 2014

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avighnay··on Vibe engineering
Totally agree on this. It has delivered a substantial value for me in my projects. The models are always going to give back results optimized for using minimal computing resources in the provider's infrastructure. To overcome this I see some using/suggesting, running the AI in self correction loops, the pro being least human intervention.

However, personally I have got very good results by taking the approach of using the AI with continuous interaction and also allowing implementation only after a good amount of time deliberating on design/architecture. I almost always append 'do not implement before we discuss and finalize the design' or 'clarify your assumptions, doubts or queries before implementation'.

When I asked Gemini to give a name for such an interaction it suggested 'Dialog Driven Development' also contrasted it against 'vide coding'. Transcript summary and AI disclaimer written by Gemini below

https://gingerhome.github.io/gingee-docs/docs/ai-disclaimer.... https://gingerhome.github.io/gingee-docs/docs/ai-transcript/...

avighnay··on Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model
The models are mostly I believe capable of executing however as you rightly indicated 'lazy'. This 'laziness' I think is to conserve resource usage as much as possible as given the current state of AI market the infrastructure is being heavily subsidized for the user. This leads to perhaps the model being incentivized to produce an optimum result that satisfies the user by consuming the least amount of resources.

This is also why most 'vibe' coding projects fail as the model is always going to give this optimum ('lazy') result by default.

I have fun goading Gemini to break this ceiling when I work on my AI project - https://github.com/gingerhome/gingee

avighnay··on To AI or not to AI
I decided to adopt AI assisted coding for a recent project. Not sure what defines 'vibe coding' but the process I ended up was a iterative interaction at a measured pace.

I used Gemini AI studio for this and I was very pleased at the result and decided to open source it. I have completely captured and documented the development transcript. Personally it has give me considerable productivity boost. My only irritation was the unnecessarily over politeness that AI adopts in My take is

AI yields good ROI when you know exactly what you want at the end of the process and when you want to compare and contrast decision choices during the process.

I have used it for all artifacts of the project: - Core code base - Test cases - Build scripts - Documentation - Sample apps - Utilities

Transcript - https://gingerhome.github.io/gingee-docs/docs/ai-transcript/... Project - https://github.com/gingerhome/gingee

avighnay··on Show HN: Gingee – A GenAI Authored JavaScript App Server
I understand your point.

Since AI code is inherently bound to face a critical review, we have kept the goal of security at the top. We have taken the following steps for it.

- 1. Code execution is sandboxed

- 2. Access to all built in modules of NodeJS is prevented, with option to whitelist using the server configuration

- 3. Platform APIs which access system (within the sandbox) also need to be whitelisted with explicit permission grants

Yes, we would like to make it ever more secure, with the help of the community and feedback from our customers. Like with any code human or ai there is bound to be bugs, the issue list of even the most popular, major projects out there is a testament to it. We intend to ever make it better for ourselves and for our customers.

avighnay··on A letter to open-source maintainers
Yes this is exactly what it is. I think there is so much haze built around it for last 15 years because corporates started using OSS as a means of viral marketing. Individual developers on the other hand saw it as a status enhancer. In this, the original principle of FSF, 'Free as in Freedom, not Free as in Free Beer' was forgotten completely. This in principle is what you have stated above.

The freedom to choose, not the entitlement to demand was the original promise of OSS

avighnay··on Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
I dont think Zoho was ever acquired. They were and are still are a private company with no external investments. Interestingly the confusion seems to be with Zimbra and here is a blog post on Zimbra acquisition by Zoho themselves.

https://www.zoho.com/blog/general/the-real-cost-of-acquisiti...

avighnay··on BASIC was not just a programming language
BASIC was my door to programming and computers. I experienced it in my 7th grade in the late 80s when I had the fortune of one of my friends owning a Commodore 64. What a thrill it was, so many weekend afternoons vanished into thin air...
avighnay··on Show HN: I made CSS Pro, a re-imagined Devtools for web design
Also there is an inherent 'I can do this way better myself' as part of the developer psyche. Though no one gets around to actually doing it.
avighnay··on Fourth-generation programming language
4GL was a buzz word in the late nineties when I entered software profession. It was pushed by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software majors of that era such as SAP & BaaN.

Even though such software are the core of an enterprise today. Many technologies that they pioneered did not gain mainstream adoption after the entry of Internet software companies such as Google/Facebook/Amazon.

Take for example what is now a buzz "Low code No code", it is a poor ghost of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) - https://www.omg.org/mda/ . Enterprise software always wants to push software to the realm of standard components and modules. That cycle was broken around 2010 due distraction from the smart phone wave.

Other techs of that era - ESB, WSDL, SOAP, SOA, UDDI, BPM, Business Rules, EDI, Data Mapping (all are almost but forgotten). Many of them are getting re-bottled e.g. Microservices

Enterprise software has not had any major breakthroughs since. Glamour of new tech from Internet giants who invent it for their specific purpose is pushed more often than not, on to enterprise systems by other software vendors/consultants pouting it as the new and best. This has made standardization almost impossible and hence kept software always in the "handicraft" mode.

avighnay··on Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey
I have come to view religions as organisms in an eco-system. The behavior is very analogous. The goal for both is survival and propagation. As within an eco-system, organisms evolve and adopt survival strategies. Religions do the same too. Organisms evolve due to genetic aberration, Religions evolve due to social aberration. In any eco-system, the young organisms are known to adopt harsher survival strategies, in religions you find the younger religions (Abrahamic, at this point of time in history), adopt strategies of violence and coercion. The more tougher to get out of a religion is directly proportional to how young it is. The principles are hard wired for survival, hence more emphasis on mandatory daily/weekly rituals for all in the religion, unlike in older ones where rituals in general are more often than not a domain of the priests. The older religions on the other hand are less virulent and more susceptible to younger challengers. Some organisms in nature beat this challenger possibility by adopting a more distributed structure, there by surviving in spite of assault from challengers. Young religions on the other hand prefer a centralized control structure which helps in keeping the line discipline. As within an eco-system, strategies of some organisms might be damaging to the eco-system as a whole. When it comes to religion, the ecological balance can be obtained only when damaging survival strategies are identified and discarded by the said organism, in other words it just needs to grow up...
avighnay··on Building a web app with no framework
Totally! Have been 23 years in tech now (specifically in enterprise software) and am still amazed that we keep reinventing the wheel over and over again. Then again that is the only way software can keep demanding a premium. Standardize and you are racing it down to being a commodity. This is the natural cycle in any industry but software adamantly keeps it self in the handicraft stage.
avighnay··on How Early Megacities Emerged from the Jungles of Cambodia
Angkor Wat was and is a prime example of human civilization and its early prowess. However, the title is not entirely right. The Angkor Wat by itself was built by Suryavarman who was apparently a descendant of the Cholas of Tamilnadu, India. The Cholas and Pandyas are very under documented empires.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Suryavarman-II

There are tamil inscriptions in Angor Wat and the architecture is highly influenced by Chola/Pandya architecture.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Tamil-Kingdoms-influence-Angko...

Some examples of what the Cholas and Pandyas accomplished which stands to today are

Tanjore Temple (Cholas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX9-__GWHnA (Edit: Unfortunately, this video also has a lot of old western cliched ideas of Hinduism, hope I had a better documentary to share...) (for scale, this can fit 200 Taj Mahals)

Madurai Meenakshi (Pandyas) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQjI3DPt9Tk

You can see that the architectural pattern of 4 directional gateways with a central temple complex is basically the same as Angor Wat.

avighnay··on Please stop using CDNs for external JavaScript libraries
A key reason for this, if I may guess is that most libraries today provide tutorial/get-started code which uses CDN. I assume most just copy paste these code snippets into their projects.

My go to test for my QA team is to have them add a zero internet test case. Test your product in localhost with the network switched off.

avighnay··on One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020
I can understand and relate to the point you raise. Constructive criticism and self retrospection is a key marker of any progressive society. The slight caveat is that each society is in a varying state at any given time. India has gone through a full circle from peak, to trough to hopefully a rising future. At this stage of the society, confidence is very fragile and mindset conflicted across the glorious to the defeated to the hopeful. This why you see the spectrum of emotions. As with personal image and attitude being sculpted for success, a nation's image and attitude need to be sculpted for success too.
avighnay··on One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020
Glad that no offence was taken, my intent was to throw spot light on the root comment where it is easy to generalize on any human community. We all need to restrain ourselves from that urge. I don't mind it being flagged either, it does happen when perspectives are not fully understood either side.
avighnay··on One Guy Ruined Hacktoberfest 2020
One more very Indian thing perhaps also is we like to gladly flog ourselves and jump at the chance of discrediting our people. We will start with "As an Indian" but end with "They" instead of "We"
avighnay··on Ask HN: Cloud infra cost model for a typical SaaS?
Thank you for responding. I had hoped to get a typical configuration based cost to insert into the business model cost projections
avighnay··on How I Make Yogurt (2019)
Walk into any Indian home for a free lesson, they make it every day for a few thousand years now :-)
avighnay··on Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?
For me it is the joy of creation that always rekindles the fires of programming passion. I build an application even if it is to learn a new concept.
avighnay··on Ask HN: Personality traits of a founder?
'Founder/Leader is one who can take actions with least possible amount of information and face the consequences of their actions'

This is an everyday necessity for any founder

avighnay··on Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
Back in the peak years of ERP (90s), as a fresh graduate i started my career in a company called BaaN. It was one of the big two SAP (Germany) & BaaN (Netherlands). To give a sense of its capability, it is the product that Boeing chose as its ERP, Boeing being the most complex challenge for any ERP!

BaaN were pioneers in this kind of 4GL thinking and made some revolutionary stuff!

The product since then is sadly now a living a zombie life with its existing customer base. The link below gives a sense of what they provided.

http://www.baanboard.com/node/46

avighnay··on Ask HN: Why this bloat in Angular?
This article echoes what I felt and here it is compared against Angular 1 itself

https://medium.com/dirtyjs/why-angular-2-4-5-6-sucks-afb3656...

avighnay··on Ask HN: Why this bloat in Angular?
Found this article on setting up Angular with minimal dependencies

https://blog.angularindepth.com/setting-up-angular-from-scra...

[edit] this does not work well with Angular 6 and also it reduces dependencies only to 100Mb

avighnay··on Ask HN: Why this bloat in Angular?
Thank you, this really says it! But why is the community still accepting it?
avighnay··on Ask HN: Why this bloat in Angular?
Would that not be in the global Angular module install? why repeat per app folder?
avighnay··on Google, but for colors
A very good example how engaging and useful a simple idea can be! Now the source images are also shown in the results!

I do not think it uses any AI/ML, the beauty is in the simplicity of the solution. Awesome!

avighnay··on How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?
This might not be the case going forward for cloud, SaaS models with zero touch sales. Most software would move to this category sooner than we think as there is high vendor motive. It is hindered only by regulatory or compliance needs in certain industries/countries
avighnay··on Ask HN: Who is the target audience for ~$1000 software?
It should be quantified whether we are talking about $1000 one time or $1000 per month or $1000 per year and for how many users;

$1000 one time (multiple users) - this is an investment quite affordable by small scale enterprise ($2M-$5M annual revenue) even in developing countries

$1000 one time (per user) - this is usually for the medium and large scale enterprises. But actually really affordable if the expected ROI is large, typically will apply to any software that deals with direct revenue generation e.g. Sales enablement

$1000 per year (per user)- this falls under the radar of even professional individuals if the software delivers something really critical for them. E.g. Adobe CC single user license

$1000 per month (per user) - this falls under the reach of medium and large scale enterprises depending on how many users need the software

$1000 custom built software - if you get yourself a custom built software for $1000 by paying a freelancer or a really low profile dev shop, then it is jackpot especially for an Enterpise. I assume/hope this is not what you had in mind.

All this is typically is for enterprises and I firmly believe the enterprise demand for software is why the software industry is as large and as sustainable as is today.

We should all thank software that are priced $1000 and above, they are in a way the reason for our existence (as software professionals/companies)

Strive to build such software and don't hesitate to price it as such.

avighnay··on Pencil and Paper Games
Great collection! it should also have Hangman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangman_(game)
avighnay··on India's Misguided War on Cash
Here is a financial expert view on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Bjw_SFNdM,

There are multiple opinions and counter opinions but no one seems to know exactly how this is going to turn out. Its wait and watch for now...

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