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evjan

481 karma · joined September 22, 2010

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evjan··on Breaking the Spell of Vibe Coding
The dark flows and Loss Disguised as a Win felt quite relatable. I've had 3 days in a row at work where I've vibe coded heavily with Opus 4.5 and was flowing and felt super productive and almost manic.

At the end of every one of those days when I went for a walk with my dog I realized "hold on, I don't need all that crap that it generated" and immediately thought of solutions that required a 10th of the code mass.

I've wasted hours on refining something that was crap. Maybe I needed to do that to discover the simple solutions, maybe it was a skills issue. But I was deep in the dark flow and the amount of code I generated definitely felt like a slot machine rewarding me for losing (time).

evjan··on I program without syntax highlighting
In this interview from last year he talks about using uemacs still and how it doesn't have syntax highlighting: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BHmyxsIdOHQ
evjan··on I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead
If it did then I’m very impressed because the demanding more snacks thing was fantastic
evjan··on The new skill in AI is not prompting, it's context engineering
That doesn't sound like how I understand over-fitting, but I'm intrigued! How do you mean?
evjan··on Time to quit your pointless job, become morally ambitious and change the world
But more importantly, he is not one of those people he writes about. He sets up an ideal that he doesn’t live up to.

He’s an author and journalist, not a doer of any kind as far as I can tell from his bio.

evjan··on Ladder: Self-improving LLMs through recursive problem decomposition
I had NotebookLM make a 15 min podcast about it and listened to it while walking the dogs. It was a very interesting way of trying to understand a research paper!

You need a google account to access it unfortunately. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/fbaba495-d4f2-48a3-a3...

evjan··on The Tsunami of Burnout Few See
Thanks, just placed a hold on that book at my library!
evjan··on The Tsunami of Burnout Few See
541 views, on an 8 years old video. How many of those are you responsible for? Anyway I put it on my watch later list, thanks!
evjan··on Ways to Scam the Modern American Programmer – Zed Shaw [video] (2012)
I found this refreshing after catching myself overthinking stuff lately. I want to reclaim the joy of coding in 2025.
evjan··on Ruby 3.4.0
‘it’ is a welcome addition!
evjan··on Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
”In my experience, the stronger programmers don't use an IDE and also have no problem producing code at the same speed as IDE users. I also find that the code produced with an IDE is lower quality. I have no idea why”

Zed Shaw in Learn C The Hard Way. For some reason, the most brilliant devs I’ve worked with all used Vim, so I can echo this statement.

evjan··on Rails 8: It's more fun to be competent [video]
Shopify, but yes!
evjan··on Rails 8: It's more fun to be competent [video]
The whole not being dependent on Apple or AWS etc plays into the idea of Technofeudalism and how to counter that to keep a more open society alive. I highly recommend the Philosophise This podcast episode #206 if you want to get an idea of what technofeudalism is.
evjan··on Rails 8: It's more fun to be competent [video]
Mates, I’m fired up. I don’t know if DHH has evangelised me for so long or if it’s because we’re fairly aligned in our stances, but it feels like this ticks all my boxes. No more crazy expensive hosting, all can be understood by one person. It’s so much fun developing like this.
evjan··on Rails 8: It's more fun to be competent [video]
The Tailwind reference was so quick, what made you think it was useful? I mean I think I like Tailwind, just asking because I’m curious.
evjan··on Rails 8.0 Beta 1: No PaaS Required
I’m so excited about all of this. I was about to start creating an Expo mobile app but maybe I’ll just go with Rails 8 and Hotwire Native for now. I know Rails way better and I enjoy it so much.
evjan··on Steve Albini has died
Oh wow, I'm only 5 minutes in and he's already said so much cool stuff that resonates with me around neomania, timelessness/the lindy effect etc (I've read too much Taleb recently). Thanks for the link!
evjan··on Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit
tab-bar is what I've wanted for so long without knowing it!
evjan··on Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit
I spent one day doing this a few months ago and I’m so happy now.
evjan··on Emacs Bedrock: A minimal Emacs starter kit
Oh wow thanks for this. Just deleted a bunch of config and packages.
evjan··on The computer built to last 50 years (2021)
Underrated comment!
evjan··on 'Miraculous' mosquito hack cuts dengue by 77%
Wow! I was involved in creating an app for the mosquito people in the field and the researchers for this project many years ago. So happy it's finally showing awesome results!
evjan··on Ask HN: Book recommendations for understanding financial systems?
The entire Incerto book series by Taleb (which includes Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) are awesome and they are talking about big catastrophic events like the current one. This pandemic is a classic Black Swan event: it's a surprise, it has a major impact and lots of experts will try to say that it was easily foreseeable in hindsight.
evjan··on Ask HN: Good Remote Work Literature?
I read this years ago and remember nothing about it, but it's a start: Remote by Jason Fried and DHH - https://basecamp.com/books/remote
evjan··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2019)
Chargefox | Melbourne, AU | Mid to senior software engineer | ONSITE | https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1196426058

Full time opportunity for a full-stack developer with expertise in React Native.

ABOUT CHARGEFOX

Chargefox is committed to sustainable mobility. We're Australia's largest open, electric vehicle (EV) network for modern EV's. As part of that, Chargefox raised $17 million to build a network of ultra-rapid chargers to connect major cities across the country, but that's only a fraction of what we do. We have an unwavering focus on simplifying the EV charging experience for everyone - be they drivers, fleet managers, charge station owners, car manufacturers, energy retailers or more.

Our customers can find, use and pay for electric vehicle charging using their mobile. We’re continually adding new stations to the Chargefox network. So far we've processed over 20,000 charging sessions on more than 500 plugs across Australia and New Zealand, dispensing a total of over 165MWh of electricity. That's enough electricity to power the average household for two decades, and we're still growing fast. We're excited!

Our apps are built in React Native, and we're looking for someone to join the team to help. Values really matter (really!), so we’re looking for someone who’s a great fit for these - (Customer Focus, Sustainability, Safety, Transparency, Integrity and Collaboration).

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR

We're looking for someone with a deep expertise in React Native (experts in React or Android/iOS will be considered as well) who will be able to provide both technical leadership for the team and to also deliver features. At the same time you will be working and contributing on a variety of tasks including development and support of Ruby APIs, web applications and AWS infrastructure. Remember our value on Customer Focus above? We want to see empathy for the driver and their experience along the way too. We expect you to know how to build scalable and well architected software solutions. We're looking for engineers, rather than coders. At Chargefox, we are big believers in a pragmatic and agile approach to software development. You will be participating in team rituals including stand-ups, retrospectives, occasional pair-programming and on-call support. We are based in Melbourne, so you will be working in our office in the CBD.

SO, WHY US?

A chance to join a growing and dynamic start-up enabling the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia. This is a unique opportunity to be an integral part of something that is of true value to society. We are fully funded and offer a competitive salary package. A collaborative and supportive environment that will stretch you, but give you a chance to learn from and teach others. We'll supply you with a new company laptop (if you need one).

If you think that we sound like a great place to work and you fit the bill, then please get in touch and send through your details.

We look forward to hearing from you.

evjan··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)
Thanks!
evjan··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)
Unfortunately we don't do much of that, we're a very local based business.
evjan··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)
Cogent | Melbourne, Australia | Software Engineer | Full-time | Onsite | Visa

Hi! I'm a developer who has been working at Cogent for the past 6 years and I love it here. I moved across the world for this job and I haven't regretted it for a second. Cogent is a lovely, warm and humane company. I've managed to convince my boss to let me travel the world and work remotely a couple of months per year. I also work part-time so that I can work on my videography business, and nobody raises an eyebrow at that. It's all very flexible!

Cogent is kind of a consultancy. We have a vision of becoming "Melbourne's most loved maker of novel digital businesses". So a lot of what we do is based on working out of clients' offices. But we do other things as well. I spend my time working on a pretty damn cool electric car charger startup we've invested in.

We're a values-driven company, which gives us benefits such as an open salaries model, profit share and a strong focus on work-life balance like the flexibility mentioned above. We also work with clients that align well with our values.

Cogent is looking for mid-level and senior software developers with 5+ years of experience. We use Ruby and JS quite a bit, so commercial experience with those would make us go "ooooh!"

If this sounds interesting, have a look at our site: https://cogent.co

Or drop me an email to ask me about life at Cogent or in Australia: peter@cogent.co

evjan··on Joseph Campbell’s daily routine for “the most important period of my study”
Did he achieve that by reading for 9 hours a day or in spite of reading for 9 hours a day though? I'm aware of no research showing that reading that much would make you a happier person or more influential.
evjan··on Joseph Campbell’s daily routine for “the most important period of my study”
That's admirable, I couldn't read that much!

I'm wondering what Campbell did achieve by doing all that reading and what made it the most important period of his scholarship and study.

The 10,000 hour figure (which is just an arbitrary number, not an absolute rule according to Anders Ericsson[1] whose research Malcolm Gladwell referred to) implies you can reach mastery with a lot of practice, given you do the right kind of practice.

Mastery is the ability to perform a skill, it's not about knowledge. You need knowledge to perform, but knowledge without being able to perform does not imply mastery.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-eb...

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