morningsam

I would theoretically prefer that as well, but it doesn't give you shell completion of targets/tasks for free like Make does. So for "UX parity", you'd also have to write a completion script and get users to source it into their shells somehow, which isn't great.

I kind of knew this was going to be about using make as a "task runner" instead of build system as soon as I read "ten years ago" :-)

Before clicking, I thought this was going to be the next step in the evolution of "frameworks" like http://vanilla-js.com/

Same here. I have become stressed about deadlines that were actual deadlines imposed by external dependencies (e.g. API deprecation) or stakeholders (e.g. launch of feature needs to be coordinated with efforts in other departments), but never about "deadlines" I've just had a hand in making up out of thin air myself during sprint planning.

As soon as software development can be fully performed by AIs, it won't take long before all other jobs that can be performed in front of a computer follow, and after that it probably won't take long for practically the entire rest.

This release has shifted my personal prediction of when this is going to happen further into the future, because OpenAI made a big deal hyping it up and it's nothing - preferred by humans over GPT-4o only a little more than half the time.

What sticks out to me is the 60% win rate vs GPT-4o when it comes to actual usage by humans for programming tasks. So in reality it's barely better than GPT-4o. That the figure is higher for mathematical calculation isn't surprising because LLMs were much worse at that than at programming to begin with.

You're right, I was getting two relatively recent posts mixed up:

1. After a DDoS attack, someone got a $100k bill from Netlify for his static site and after he asked to have it waived, they generously reduced it to $5k. Only after his posts about it blew up did Netlify waive it completely. [1]

2. Someone got a $1k bill from AWS because lots of people made _unauthorized_ requests against his empty S3 bucket. AWS did agree to waive it immediately, prior to any social media posts. [2]

I probably just remembered (2) as "that ridiculous billing situation involving AWS" but got the details of what exactly happened mixed up with (1).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39520776

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40203126

>If you do something luridly stupid and rack up costs, AWS and GCP will probably cut you a break. [...] Everyone does.

If the incidents that made the rounds here in the last few months are any indication, they'll start out insisting you pay no matter what. You'll then have to write a blog post about it, post it to Twitter, HN, and Reddit, get a couple hundred comments expressing anger at the provider, and wait for someone from their PR department to see it. Only then will they finally waive the costs.

Good on Fly.io for trying to handle such situations more sensibly.

I think they meant "unified" here in the same sense in which BusyBox is unified, i.e. several things you'd normally use different tools for combined into one executable/project. They're not trying to invent any new standards, most of these tasks already have PEPs that the existing tools and uv both implement. Maybe not the best word choice though because I normally have the same instinctive reaction in response to someone claiming something is "unified".

These arguments aren't very convincing IMHO.

Using SNS as an example when it's neither micro nor a library but a service (and a huge abstraction over native push notifications, whereas most micro-libraries provide simple utilities that aren't very abstract), saying that complex libraries are harder to audit and hence a security risk (which should be a point in favor of micro-libraries that are small enough to audit in minutes), saying libraries might have large footprints (which is surely another reason to go for micro-libraries over all-you-could-possibly-need-libraries), saying transitive dependencies are bad, (yet again, this points towards an advantage of micro-libraries, which are less likely to have many dependencies), ... I don't know.

I'm a bit confused: Can this static information system be used for run-of-the-mill static type checking as well or not? And if so, does a static type checker for this language exist or is one in the works?

That study got retracted. The professor responsible explained he was on medication that put him into a manic state and impaired his judgement.

https://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have...

I meant specifically that you can quickly see all your custom scripts (and only them) by tab-completing comma itself. Of course aliases have regular tab completion in bash as well.

An alternative method for avoiding collisions in PATH is to use really long executable names that are unlikely to be used by other executables and then have shorter aliases for them in your bashrc. The aliases won't affect executables called from within scripts and you can still refer to your executables by their long names in your own scripts.

One drawback is that this doesn't have the same tab completion ergonomics, which I have to admit is really nifty.

EDIT: And another is that collisions can still occur in scripts that need to be sourced rather than executed as a sub-process (like Python's venv activation scripts). But those are rare.

Same thing in LessWrong post form from back in April: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40242939

As usual with these kinds of things, European standards bodies to the rescue [1]:

>Euro NCAP – Europe’s leading automotive safety industry body – has stated that from 2026 new guidance will be introduced over physical buttons and touchscreens.

>Euro NCAP’s rules are not mandatory for manufacturers to follow, but the threat of losing points will likely impact the decisions of many of the leading brands in the years ahead.

Although I would prefer a hard ban of touchscreen-only car controls in EU countries, which would obviously have more of an impact.

[1]: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/driving-tech/is-the-beginni... (5th Mar 2024)

I don't know if TrueUp incorporates this data, but https://data.indeed.com/ shows the number of software dev postings in the US has started to plateau at a level roughly matching the early-COVID crash (Spring 2020), while in central Europe (Germany and France) it's also around that level (bit higher for France) but still rapidly declining with no end in sight.

The article made it sound like it's commonplace. Thank you for this perspective.

I don't know how it works in other countries, but at least in Germany, the judiciary essentially provides this service: When you have your will notarized, they will offer to send a copy to the district court who will keep it safe until you die, at which point they will retrieve it to decide what happens to your inheritance. As far as I know, you can also put non-inheritance related things in there, including asking people to forward messages (in sealed envelopes, if you wish) on your behalf.

In countries with this kind of system, the only use case I can imagine for an additional commercial e-mail based service is if you don't trust your next of kin at all, so you don't want to leave the message forwarding up to them, or have messages whose recipients you want to keep secret from them.

I find that even when type hints are made "mandatory" using Mypy's strict mode, having a dynamically typed language underneath that allows you to cheat using Any or cast() where necessary makes writing Python feel much less cumbersome than writing in actual statically typed languages.

Presumably, a Python with "mandatory" type hints would still allow you to cheat in those same ways.

You're right, but on the other hand, I like that they mentioned DisplayPort as a viable alternative that doesn't suffer from the problem at hand. Not too thrilled about the exact phrasing, describing DP as "the likely best option", which is too opinionated for my taste. But I'd appreciate if other publications did this, so that e.g. every article about Microsoft's subscription model for Office 365 mentioned LibreOffice, every article about Steam users losing access to some of their games mentioned GOG, and so on. Especially when the alternatives are not well-known among one's readers.

Yeah, that really off-putting mixture of slavish subservience, patronizing familiarity, and appeasing corpo-speak should give it away immediately to anyone who has read their share of LLM output.

What I don't like about rich is that, dependencies and all, its installed size comes out to around 20 MB. 9 MB of that is due to its dependency on pygments for syntax highlighting, which a lot of people probably don't even want/need.

If anyone knows of a smaller, more focused library providing something similar to rich's Live Display functionality, I'd appreciate it.

"Coding" meant something different back then, didn't it? The enumeration on p. 2 has it listed as an activity distinct from "programming".

There have been other instances in which exit fees, which is what this amounts to, were considered anticompetitive, e.g. [1] (although this was settled so there is no ruling). Google itself has started to waive egress costs for GCP customers leaving the platform last month, which, according to some sources, is simply a direct consequence of new EU legislation (Data Act) [2], but according to others is in anticipation of wider-reaching EU antitrust investigations [3].

[1]: https://www.agriculturedive.com/news/koch-foods-antitrust-ch...

[2]: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366566360/Googles-data-e...

[3]: https://blog.min.io/googles-new-egress-policy/

That's making three assumptions: 1) That everyone has something they're really talented at, 2) that they'd want to do that thing if they found out what is is, and 3) that the time, money and effort to do so would pay off compared to having remained an average developer.

Personally, I'm not a great developer, but I was even worse at all of the other things I put a lot of time and effort into. And at the end of the day I do enjoy programming. So remaining an average developer it is.

>It's just refactoring the codebase a bit, reorganizing it, making it cleaner and more structured

Famous last words.

Great, thanks!

It says on his bio page that he was "blacklisted" from working. Does anyone know what exactly he's talking about there?

Rule of thumb from my anecdotal experience: If the dentist's office looks all fancy and feng-shui, they're usually the kind that does pointless work (which is where the money for the fancy office comes from). You can't turn this around and say that any dentist with a humble office will be honest and only do what's necessary, but the likelihood is higher.