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patrickjd

79 karma · joined May 14, 2020

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patrickjd··on Books by People – Defending Organic Literature in an AI World
Books written by AI is yet another case of an application of AI that does nothing to solve existing problems that consumers have (too few books in this case) but instead focuses on the producer side of things.

Worse yet, increasing the quantity of books while simultaneously decreasing the quality just makes the situation worse for readers: more slop to filter out.

patrickjd··on The best programmers I know
> worth keeping in mind that there is more to programming than just programming.

As a side note, this is what I keep pointing out when people talk about code generated by LLMs. As an activity, this is just one thing that programmers do.

I think the answer to your question (a good question indeed) is "both", or rather to balance development of both capabilities. The decision of how to spend time won't be a single decision but is repeated often through the years. The Staff+ engineers with whom I work _mostly_ excel at both aspects, with a small handful being technical specialists. I haven't encountered any who have deep domain knowledge but limited technical depth.

(edit: formatting)

patrickjd··on Henrietta Lacks Seems Like a Nice Person, but Not a Scientific Hero
I only skimmed the article but it seems like the idea that Lacks was a "Scientific Hero" is something the author implies was implied by others and then goes on to argue that it isn't the case. This strikes me as disingenuous, a way of trying to rally against sympathy for her case by addressing a claim made up by the author.
patrickjd··on Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?
Since I've seen a growing number of Chief Of Staffs in startups, I'd guess the number of companies with Prime Minister roles is non-zero.

Maybe even with very sensible titles like 'Junior Prime Minister'.

patrickjd··on Go and my realization about what I'll call the 'Promises' pattern
This is the HN thread I didn't know I needed until I saw it.

I often wonder how many of Brutalism's ardent fans grew up in an environment dense with Brutalist structures. I'm not here to bash the movement (the finest examples are wonderful) but just a reminder that the median Brutalist building is often a bleak, bleak affair.

There's probably an analogy in there somewhere for programming too. Perhaps the best of Golang is wonderful but the median just doesn't compare.

ETA: Either way, thanks for the taking the discussion down this direction. Certainly made me chuckle.

patrickjd··on Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices
The general dynamic remains: protests against specific actions of Israel are dismissed as anti-semitic by definition. Banning Nazi symbolism is a good thing. Trying to equate neo-Nazis to anti-war protesters is disingenuous.