7,619 karma · joined January 29, 2019
Interests: GraphQL, JVM, TypeScript, Relational DB's (particularly Postgres), Query Engines.
Github: https://github.com/GavinRay97
Email: ray.gavin97@gmail.com
Twitter: @GavinRayDev
I had bloodwork done recently that showed excessive Vitamin B12 levels
It turned out two of my supplements had B12, so i stopped one, but had I slowly started to feel unwell i don't think I could have attributed it to that...
> Fun fact, my boss also loved to tell me about how dumb academia is because they never do anything useful and how industry makes all the real advancements.
1. "Thinkers", those extraordinarily brilliant people who spend lots of time on a single problem, discovering the optimal and most performance theoretical solution
2. "Hackers", who assemble tools by implementing designs from "Thinkers"
Without Thinkers the Hacker could not possibly solve all required problems well a single tool/product requires
Without Hackers the Thinkers work would languish in the ivory tower it was conceived in
Apparently even multi-player works which i find impressive
For example: I cannot imagine being a successful touring live performer. I am an introvert, I keep a rigid schedule so travel throws everything off, can't keep myself awake very late...
Could I perform the functions of a live performer? Yes, though no matter how much I "tried" the mismatch between the job and my natural tendencies is a recipe for failure.
> not everyone can be a CEO because most business fail very quickly
Very early in my career I used to believe that I or anyone else could be a CEO.
It wasn't until working with tiny teams where the CEO/founders devoted everything in their life to the business -- often at the expense of hobbies, romantic relationships, and any shred of free time -- that I realized true CEOs are a rare breed.
When are you ask things like "what happens if the product fails?" the answer would always be "It won't."
They both relentlessly believe in, and put every ounce of energy toward, their vision because anything less would not suffice
Again as trite as it sounds, I empathize with these people in that to them losing their vision felt like losing something dearest to them
The bigger deal about this is that KRAS was considered an "undruggable" target.
Recent advancements have allowed us to design biologics to do things we previously thought impossible, which broadens the horizons for other treatments in the future.
Baby steps.
AOT .NET is an official first party distribution target that in my experience is on par with building a Go binary
Don't knock it till you try it
- 1st chat asked about a minor shoulder injury most likely mechanisms
- 2nd chat asked about optimal bloodwork testing markers
> "Suppose you want to write a database. You'd probably start by implementing relational algebra operators — projection, filter, join, etc. The easy way is to implement them as functions that take in tables and return tables, and assemble them into a larger expression. That was how Prela worked in its first incarnation. The code was clean, but it was hella slow! Which was not surprising, because every operator materialized every intermediate result. "
DB development starts with the storage engine, file manager, buffer pool (page cache), and page access methods (heaps/indices) which are binary buffer views. Then, you add the transaction manager, the WAL/recovery bits.
The actual implementation of relational algebra and a SQL language + parsing are little icing layers on top of a transactional storage engine.
Here is what I learned:
- AWS had an in-house LLM tool that was terrible they tried to use for a while
- A lot of them still use Kiro
- Claude Code is currently the de-facto standard
- They're in the process of getting some custom Codex variant that doesn't phone-home and is audited approved
- There's no mandated organizational standard for what exact tools to some, various teams have different levels of adoption and stacks
- No org-wide/team-wide conventions for Claude Code
- They do have token budgets
- There's an intenral push for something called "Agent Spaces" which was described to me as a sort of Lovable/Bolt-type thing if I understood it right
I can't validate all of this and I might have misremembered, but just in case anyone else finds it interesting.
I really do think if you put your mind to shifting the framing/perspective of your feelings though, that you can have a much different future than past
Hoping things start to go your way, mate
(And yeah, definitely don't dump personal issues on new friends. I find that making friends is much easier if you ask thoughtful questions after listening to them and letting other people do most of the talking at first.)
> I haven't had a single friend in my life
> I can barely imagine the possibility of being able to ask a favor from someone and even receive something
> My life has been a series of rejections
I'm going to say this, and I mean it genuinely, so please do not find this insensitive:
What if you went to lunch with someone, and the first things they said to you were those 3 quotes at the top?
You'd probably much rather hear something like:
> I haven't had much luck making friends, YET
> In the past, I've not been very good at asking others for help, and sometimes I get afraid if I did, they might not give it
> I've been through a lot of hardships, SO FAR
One of the most impactful things a mentor once told me is:
> "We are the stories we tell ourselves."
I want to genuinely ask you, to give "telling yourself a different story" a try. You might be surprised at how well you can "fake it 'til you make it!"
Sorry to hear that life has been a struggle for you and that you've not had a good support system to aid you.
But it doesn't have to stay that way -- every day you live & breathe is an opportunity to start the first chapter of a very different story...
That every time he came down from his high and was lying in bed unable to sleep, the guilt was like an ocean devouring him. That tonight would be the last time he would ever touch anything.
That he wanted to stop, knew he should stop, but when you wake up sweating & shaking all logic leaves your mind and the only thing you can think of is where to get more.
That it's not your (or anyone else's) fault, you did nothing wrong, and quite probably everything right. Some of us are just born with demons on our shoulder that won't stop whispering in our ear.
He would tell you of all the the plans he had come up with over the years, to make up the lost time with you and the rest of his loved ones. Doing things that YOU want to do, just to make you happy, because he had been selfish enough and you were owed at least that much.
That when things were their darkest, and he felt his lowest, one of the few saving graces and safe havens in his mind were the times he spent with you, before he fell into this pit of darkness.
---
I am, genuinely, sorry to hear that. Not in a "my condolences way", but in a grief-ridden and deeply personal way.
I lost my father and several of my closest friends to fentanyl. I know your grief. I know the feeling of anger that also gives you guilt, that they should have robbed the people that loved them most of the opportunity to experience them, and robbed themselves of the bright future they were capable of having.
Nothing I, or anyone else says, can make it any better.
I shed tears while writing this. Nico mourns for you as much as you mourn for him.
RIP Sasha, PiHKaL and TiHKaL were, stereotypically, staple books on my shelf during adolescence.
I could not have climbed out of the hole I dug on my own, that I am almost CERTAIN of.
At the same time, if I had felt as though I were owed "more", and indignant about being "wronged", I think it would have made me slightly vindictive and less-positive.
To me, "Libertarianism" is about the power of personal-effort and opportunity. Not everything will pan out if you "just try hard and long enough", but at least THINKING it will (even if you know it's unlikely) feels like a better mindset to me than the alternative.
I'm not political, but I would consider myself left-leaning Libertarian.
My mother is an Ayn Rand-loving die-hard Libertarian that was very active in politics. She gave me a lot of her books that I read in my youth.
I was raised in a very "The world owes you nothing, you only deserve what you earn." and "by your bootstraps" capitalist family.
(Family did not pay for my first car, my community college, etc. "Go get a job, you bum!")
> I'm curious how many with similar stories think they would have or could have taken a different path with better or different parental support?
I only respond to extreme, repeated negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement never did anything for me.
If your child responds to positive reinforcement in any way, there's a good chance you can support them through it. But if they're like me, they may "only learn the hard way."
And I don't mean negative reinforcement as in physical punishment or being talked down to, but having to live through direct negative consequences of your action.
Sometimes I think "what if I could go back in time, and tell myself not to do XYZ", but I know myself well enough that I'm sure I would not listen.
I sincerely hope that things pan out for your family.
If you want the nuclear option, can you move away from the current environment? If they're young enough not to have a car, that's one way to at least guarantee a "fresh start" where they can't actively go down the current path. They'd need to find a new way into trouble, which is still wholly possible but requires more effort at least.
We need a bigger emphasis on rehabilitation. It ultimately costs LESS for society.
I can also tell you from my 3 years in prison + jail that the grand majority of people in there do not have the innate desire or intention to change.
But for the small percentage that do, they deserve the resources and opportunity.
You can help cultivate "luck" to a degree by increasing your number of experiences. Every person you happen across could be the one to change your life, and every job application could be the one that calls you back. You never know who is standing next to you in line.
And "support" you can tilt in your favor by trying to be a genuinely good person and being pleasant to be around + making others feel good. Humans gravitate towards people that they like being around.
> How can someone get up in such a difficult situation?
> and less likely to be high always while programming
It will even get to the point where you feel dependent on them to focus and "get things done", like being sober is a handicap.
Right now, the reason why you need humans in the loop is because you need someone with deep domain expertise and understanding of the particular nuances and architectural history behind a software product.
The reasons LLM's can't do this job currently is not an INHERENT limitation -- it's a technical one around context window limits and documentation.
There will always be people who don't want entirely autonomous development (who do you blame/fire when things go wrong) though.
I realize that it's not PRACTICAL advice, but I really do think if building software is what you're INTERESTED in, you should still give it your best try.
You spend the majority of your experienced life at work. Doing something you don't want to do, or find uninteresting, for most of your life (even though for many people this is the case) is a depressing and bleak prospect.
You may as well spend your time and energy trying to do something you like, because you're sort of stuck with it.
It wasn't until years later she told me this.
We were able to send her back to university a second time to study something she is passionate about; she has a great support network of friends and (my) family. (Her family are drug addicts and gang members, so my family has sort of adopted her. It's a bit sad but none of her family were invited to our wedding.)
She's unemployed, but she's trying, and she says she never imagined that she could be so lucky in life.
I had estranged my mother, didn't really talk to my adoptive father, and purposefully kept my maternal grandparents (who I am closest with) in the dark because I didn't want them to see me like this.
I also have 3 much younger sisters, who I didn't talk to for the same reasons as the grandparents.
I've made a HUGE effort to reconnect and make amends with my family. I'm on good terms with my parents and talk to both of them regularly, I explained to my grandparents after I got sober and visit them at least once a year, and I reconnected with my siblings who I now text regularly and we host a "sibling trip" where we get together over a weekend once each year.
I am very grateful that they saw my efforts and gave me a second chance. My oldest sister in particular was very wary.
> When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretting giving the chance.
She's been trying to get anything, even an unpaid internship, doing sound design, going to local meetups, online conferences, and hasn't had much luck.
But I told her: it's just a matter of persistence and time. If you're agreeable to be around, passionate about something, and just show up everyday, eventually something is likely to happen.