meter

Thinking out loud, here’s one idea for an LLM-assisted interview:

- Spin up a Digital Ocean droplet

- Add the candidate’s SSH key

- Have them implement a basic API. It must be publicly accessible.

- Connect the API to a database. Add more features.

- Set up a basic deployment pipeline. Could be as simple as script that copies the code from your local machine to the server.

Anything would be fair game. The goal would be to see how the candidate converses with the LLM, how they handle unexpected changes, and how they make decisions.

Just a thought.

For the time being, I’ve banned LLMs in my interviews.

I want to see how the candidate reasons about code. So I try to ask practical questions and treat them like pairing sessions.

- Given a broke piece of code, can you find the bug and get it working?

- Implement a basic password generator, similar to 1Password (with optional characters and symbols)

If you can reason about code without an LLM, then you’ll do even better with an LLM. At least, that’s my theory.

I never ask trick questions. I never pull from Leetcode. I hardly care about time complexity. Just show me you can reason about code. And if you make some mistakes, I won’t judge you.

I’m trying to be as fair as possible.

I do understand that LLMs are part of our lives now. So I’m trying to explore ways to integrate them into the interview. But I need more time to ponder.

In middle school we had a “computer” class where we’d learn how to type, as well as navigate a computer. This was Windows 2000 days.

As a prank, my friends and I would do the following:

* Hide all the icons on the desktop

* Trigger an error message

* Take a screenshot of the whole screen

* Open the screenshot in MS Paint

* Carefully paint over the error message to say “You’ve been hacked.”

* Change the desktop background to be the screenshot above

* Restore all the icons.

You’d end up with a convincing looking error message that wouldn’t close, obviously.

The next class, the teacher lectured us for 45 minutes on the definition of “script kiddy” vs. “real hacker” and how we should be embarrassed.

This made the whole thing even funnier.

It’s true though, I was a script kiddie.

His book, Rebuilding Rails, had a huge impact on me, especially early in my career (when I started learning Rails). Such a great teacher. He encouraged me to be curious, dig deeply, and to understand my tools.

Such a badass developer. And such a kind and genuine person.

He’ll always be one of my role models.

I’ve been using this for the past few months, and for the most part, I like it. I appreciate that it’s all configured with a single file (no GUI).

One issue: If an app uses native Mac tabs, Aerospace treats each tab as a window, which completely breaks the full screen functionality. Alacritty is one example. It’s really odd.

Edit: there’s an open issue for this: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace/issues/68

Building custom keyboards is fun, but I might bite the bullet and buy a Glove 80.

I don’t own a 3d printer, so designing a custom Dactyl is not very feasible for me.

The Sofle has been decent for me. I’m not the biggest fan of thumb key positions (especially the outer one), but I’m getting used to them.

There are only two thumb keys per side. I’ve had to get a bit creative with my layout. One trick I’ve discovered is Mod-Tap. This lets me use my space bar as a layer key (when held), or a normal “space” when tapped. Two functions on a single key. Awesome.

I’ve also been reading this person’s blog to improve my symbol layer and vim navigation (I’m tempted to try the Engram layout, but I’ll stick with Colemak for now): https://sunaku.github.io/engram-keyboard-layout.html

Thanks for the video. I’ll definitely try it out. In my original post, I should’ve emphasized that I’ve also been focusing on strengthening/mobilizing my wrists. It’s only been a month or two of concentrated effort, but I think they’re improving a bit.

Thanks!

That’s encouraging to hear that you can switch between the two. Awesome!

I’m afraid to start practicing QWERTY too soon, and risk losing my progress with Colemak. Maybe I’ll attempt it in a few months.

This past month, I’ve been reevaluating my dev environment and workflow. My goals are to reduce RSI, be more efficient, as well as learn all my tools as deeply as possible. And have fun!

- I’ve ditched VSCode and gone all-in on NeoVim. I’ve spent a bunch of time watching Primeagen, etc., tweaking my vid config and learning how to navigate as efficiently as possible.

- Switched from QWERTY to Colemak-DH to hopefully reduce RSI. I’m at about 70wpm with decent accuracy after 4 weeks. My QWERTY skills are gone. I like Colemak, but we’ll see how I feel in another month or two.

- Finished my custom hot swappable Sofle keyboard, and spent many hours customizing the layout. I think I’m pretty close to feeling comfortable. I’m using home row mods, which I love. Currently using Kailh box whites (clicky). Might switch to Gateron Brown Pros.

- Been going through a “Build your own git” course, to understand git as deeply as possible.

Your instinct is spot on.

I made 76k at the defense contractor.

I made 255k this year (6 years later).

I used to work for a defense contractor.

There was a 3 month period where I had nothing to do.

I was supposed write firmware for a piece of hardware, but the hardware was broken and wouldn’t even turn on. I was told to wait for the electrical engineers to fix it.

I sat in the lab all day, for 8 hours a day, with no internet access (it was forbidden), pretending to write firmware that I couldn’t test, with no direction on what I should be doing. There was no simulator, no tests, no guidance.

In that time, I would practice my own Leetcode problems in preparation for other jobs. All day long.

About two weeks before I left the company, I received my security clearance. That’s when I realized… they were just killing time until I had my clearance.

All of a sudden, the flood gates were opened, and I learned about a really interesting project. Not interesting enough to keep me though ;)

Six years later, I’ve 3x’d my compensation. And I love my job now (web development).

A popular theme in today’s productivity culture is “waking up early.” It’s considered a sign of discipline to wake up at 5am.

5am is reasonable... if you fall asleep at 8:30 or 9 PM.

I wish we’d stop emphasizing early wake-up times, and start emphasizing reasonable bed times. It takes just as much discipline, especially with my phone so easily accessible and the TV so easy to binge.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely look into it!

I first attempted this 7 years ago, after I graduated college. I got through the first 2 chapters. It was extremely rewarding. But regrettably, I abandoned it for other side projects.

I picked it up again 3 months ago, and it’s been a blast. I’m on chapter 8, having completed the logic gates, ALU, CPU, assembler, and half of the virtual machine.

Every chapter is overwhelming — in a good way. I keep thinking to myself, “how the hell is this going to work?” And when it does, it’s so satisfying.

As a side project, purely for educational purposes, it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve done. I’ve learned so much. It’s a damn good project. And I’m damn proud of myself for sticking with it.

Highly recommended.

Thanks for the anecdote.

As a senior engineer, I struggle sometimes with people critiquing my work. For me, it all comes down to pride and ego. It’s been especially hard the last year, as I’ve been vying for a promotion. I need to work on humbly and joyfully accepting feedback from others.

Yes! I completely agree.

I’ve been using AdGuard on iOS, and it’s not the quickest experience. It takes about 10 seconds to get a YouTube video to start. But oddly enough, I actually appreciate this.

10 seconds of peace and quiet, vs. 10 seconds of someone shouting at me about a product I don’t need.

I think it’d be neat to embed USB ports within the wood. The cables could be embedded in the wood using a router, completely out of sight.

Imagine plugging your phone, keyboard, or mouse, directly into the wood. There might be some downsides, but it’d be unique.

I prefer wired keyboards/mice for their reliability. But aesthetically, I don’t like having a bunch of cables spread across my desk.

I can empathize with the “friends” part.

When I was in college, I was either studying or running around with friends. The only time I mindlessly scrolled on my phone was when I ate alone in the cafeteria.

Hanging out with close friends, I hardly felt any urge to use my phone. I really miss that.

I love mentoring engineers. It’s been my job for the past 5 years.

But after some introspection, I’ve realized that I love teaching _smart_ people, or at least, people that are engaged and want to learn.

I can’t imagine being a traditional teacher, and having to teach kids that don’t care.

As a side note, some of the sharpest engineers I’ve mentored are interns. Maybe my company is exceptionally good at hiring interns. I swear, it’s been like that for the last 5-6 interns I’ve worked with.

I’ve noticed this as well. I’ve had AdGuard on my phone for almost a year, and it blocked YouTube ads very effectively… until about 2 weeks ago. Still investigating…

I have a friend that intentionally disables Adblock on YouTube in order to support the creators that he likes. He feels that, if he disables Adblock, the creators will get less money.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m very curious to hear other opinions.

I was curious to see how many kids it would take to lower my taxes to zero.

Apparently, you’re not allowed to have more than 15 dependents.

> the way Heroku worked…

The author implies that something has changed — and that nowadays, you can’t `git push heroku main`. But according to the docs, it’s still just as simple.

I guess I don’t understand how Heroku’s DevEx has changed. Seems just as intuitive as it’s always been. But I could be missing something.

I live in California, and received a suspicious bag of seeds in the mail after ordering something from Amazon. Happened about one month ago. The seeds were sent in their own small package, with Chinese characters on it.

I had heard about these types of shipping scams, but had never experienced it personally until this. I was so intrigued that I immediately planted the seeds for fun (I think they’re cucumbers).

I now realize that I was extremely ignorant. I wasn’t aware of the danger of invasive species.

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I decided to rip up the plants and throw them away.

You said “Costco” twice. The second time appears to be a typo.

How do avoid spam filters when sending your fake phishing emails?

Didn’t the founder of Urbit (Curtis Yarvin) leave the project last year? My impression of Urbit has always been that Curtis was fundamental to the vision of the project. Does anyone know how the project has changed since then?

I worked at Raytheon for almost 2 years, right out of college.

I worked in R&D, which sounds cool, but essentially means that you’re project’s budget is at the whim of the highest-level executives, who are utterly out of touch with the engineers (looking at the org chart, they’re literally 7-8 levels above me).

Because of that, EVERY single project that I was on was cancelled, due to budgetary reasons. The executives would get really excited about something new, and reallocate funds to new projects.

Nothing ever got done. I saw zero projects get shipped. I never saw a customer - because there’s is no customer. There’s not even a government contract. It’s internal R&D.

Why use email? Why not integrate with Facebook? Or use phone numbers? Or Snapchat usernames?

Using an email address for this seems archaic.