HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

burnstek

155 karma · joined September 8, 2011

submissionscomments
burnstek··on Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
Yeah dude. Amen. In my 20's I could literally code a side project all day into the evening (sometimes overnight) and it was absolute serendipity. Coding in and of itself was a vibe. Then, life happened, more life happened, and eventually software development just became a career instead of a passion. Coding became a means to an end.

"Resentful" is a perfect way of putting it - I may just be old and grumpy now, but I think it's sad what we as a community have done to the process of web development. It's such a circle jerk. Node in my view is the worst thing that ever happened to building web applications.

Enter Claude Cowork. I've spent the past few days building an app that would have taken me weeks of time in the past. It's using a framework I've never built with, and I don't have to learn the intricacies. Shipping this to Vercel and hosting the database on Supabase is incredibly easy and it's very exciting. The only drawback so far is the unsettling fear of the unknown regarding leaking secrets and whatnot, so I'm going to have to manually audit the finished project before deploying.

And here I thought my days of "side projects" were completely over.

burnstek··on Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
50 here. Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever - as if solving business problems just became too boring for software developers, so we decided to spend our cycles on the new hotness at every turn.

Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate cheat code for me and have breathed new life into my desire to create. I know more than enough about architecture and coding to understand the plumbing and effectively debug, yet I don't have to know or care about implementation details. It's almost an unfair unlock.

It'll also be good to see leetcode die.

burnstek··on Loose wire leads to blackout, contact with Francis Scott Key bridge
Post mortems are absolutely key in creating process improvements. If you think about an organization's most effective processes, they are likely just representations of years of fixed errors.

Regarding blamelessness, I think it was W. Edwards Deming who emphasized the importance of blaming process over people, which is always preferable, but its critical for individuals to at least be aware of their role in the problem.

burnstek··on Walmart Fires VP in Tech for Taking Daily Kickbacks Starting from $30K
Reminiscent of the Netflix drama when Mike Kail was accused & eventually convicted of similar.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...

burnstek··on We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews
Every day I thank god I finished my career in software before Leetcode-driven interviewing became so popular.
burnstek··on Old, Good Database Design
I am imagining an industry where half of developers don't know how to design a relational data model. Scary if true.
burnstek··on The Epstein scandal at MIT shows the moral bankruptcy of techno elites
If you have a problem with MIT taking Epstein's money, then you have a problem with money in general. We all take money in some fashion from disgusting, psychotic, and evil people on a regular basis. Particularly so when we're on social security, medicare, or another social program.

It's like the people who are against hunting, but who are happy to eat store bought meat.

burnstek··on Say no to Venn diagrams when explaining SQL joins (2016)
What a silly little article. Venn diagrams are an extremely illustrative and useful way to visualize joins.
burnstek··on VMware acquires Heptio, the startup founded by 2 co-founders of Kubernetes
If you're in executive management then it's a big cause for celebration, and it's been that way since the dawn of M&A
burnstek··on Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
I love this! Maybe the absolute fetishism over the overrated GitHub and Git will finally cease.
burnstek··on The Pop-Up Employer: Build a Team, Do the Job, Say Goodbye
It takes a large technical team to pull this off:

https://www.craigslist.org/about/craigslist_is_hiring

burnstek··on Database Design: Relation Predicates and “Identical Relations”
I would say the biggest decision point here is how either entity might evolve. If these are truly different domain entities then one may end up with different attributes than the other in the future, meaning these should definitely be different tables. They just happen to have the same set of fields at this point in time.
burnstek··on The Imposter's Handbook
It also helps communicate with colleagues who prefer to leverage their CS background when discussing algorithms, issues, etc.
burnstek··on You May Be Broke and Not Know It
I'd call that a broke person with potential, but that person is still currently broke. I would hope that person looks in the mirror and also agrees they are broke, and will make financial decisions with that in mind.

In many ways, this is how so many folks end up drowning in debt. They "bet on the come" by assuming they are investing in the right education, will be successful in their field, etc.

They delude themselves into thinking that just because they make $75k/yr that they aren't broke.

burnstek··on Research indicates that only about half of perceived friendships are mutual
W Edwards Deming, one of the most famous and respected individuals in the business management and industrial engineering space, would firmly disagree with you.

Driving out fear (of colleagues, of management, etc) was one of his key principles in creating quality for the organization.

http://www.quality-assurance-solutions.com/Deming-Point-8.ht...

burnstek··on Netflix Billing Migration to AWS – Part III
Workday.
burnstek··on PHP Sucks
A lot of software developers are are also business people. They focus and make decisions based on the needs of the organization, given the local job market, current staffing, past investments, the future roadmap of whatever product they are working on, etc. If PHP is the best route, then that's not something a business person is going to spend a lot of time worrying about.

In many ways, if a "coder" comes in and starts wanting to change a bunch of things purely because they are opinionated about languages, then that person is not going to go very far.

burnstek··on Obscurity Is a Valid Security Layer
Great sentiments. I don't see security being discussed nearly enough in terms of risk and ROI. I usually see it discussed only in absolute terms, i.e. unless a solution fits the "CIA" model to a T, then it's unacceptable.

I think that we should layer the CIA triad on top of the Time-Cost-Quality triad when implementing application security.

burnstek··on Simple Rules for Healthy Eating (2015)
This is a great article. We seem to love the act of complicating healthy eating habits.

Vegetables are good. Processed foods (including sugar) are bad. Mix in some fish and chicken from time to time. Don't pour salt all over it. There you have it. A healthy diet.

The bottom line is that eating healthy is not hard, nor is it prohibitively expensive. It's all about priority. If you would rather have the flat screen TV than a budget for Whole Foods, then that's your prerogative.

burnstek··on Pebble 2, Time 2 + All-New Pebble Core
Man! I hate Basecamp too! I haven't bothered trying it with my Fenix, but I used it on my Colorado handheld GPS for a few backpacking trips, and it was terrible. Especially the early versions.
burnstek··on Pebble 2, Time 2 + All-New Pebble Core
Love my Fenix 3.

Garmin does a nice job bridging the cap between the "smart" watches like Pebble and the Apple watch, and the more serious fitness devices like those from Polar and Suunto.

I have much "nicer" watches, but this one is just far more utilitarian, especially for an active person.

It's also very sharp looking in comparison to the cheaper/plastic looking option.

burnstek··on Context switch logging with the Windows Event Tracing API (2014)
"If you're doing simple stuff with <insert high level tooling here>, no problem, but as soon as you need to go deeper, good luck."

This is how technology works in general. The deeper you go, the more abstractions you remove, the more difficult the job becomes.

burnstek··on How Breakfast Became a Thing
But "ve" doesn't create confusion?
burnstek··on How Uber conquered London
Fair enough, but again, YMMV. Agreed that black cabs in London are even more awful, but its much easier to find a ride, which is the core idea. When Uber in London provides the same level of service as it does in Dallas, NYC or Paris... then it will have taken over. Right now it's just competing.
burnstek··on How Uber conquered London
London has definitely not been conquered by Uber. YMMV, but I've had nothing but bad experiences in London (multiple driver cancellations, slow pickup times, etc.) especially compared with Paris and many cities in the US.
burnstek··on MSBuild is now open source on GitHub
Most professional developers will view this as a shameful and classless move on your part.
burnstek··on Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple
Apple is a fascinating phenomenon. It rightly interests everyone; investors, economists, managers, consumers, and from the look of this thread, even those who it doesn't interest. :)
burnstek··on Flipboard releases React Canvas
At first blush, the mental model reminds me of ASP.NET WebForms.
burnstek··on N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say
Not at all. In the US, we computer scientists have a wealth of opportunities to which we can apply our knowledge and education. Presumably in NK, you are limited to doing their government's bidding.
burnstek··on Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses
The US has a lot more capability than that. Wrong or right, the US (and many other countries) could knock North Korea from the map entirely. Lives are much more important than Internet access.
Page 1 of 2Next →