sebg

Hi and thanks! both are by me so that’s probably why the read the same.

Couch to 5k has worked wonders for many people in my life.

As for weightlifting - I’ve had amazing success with Dan Go (https://www.dango.co)

Would love to help you with number 1 and 2. What’s the best way to reach out?

Would love to help you learn Git. What’s the best way to reach out?

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

True - though the last part of the series (number 5 was published on December 18, 2024)

Oops - my bad - here’s the arxiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234

Beast academy is the short answer. Long answer is it depends on what you / your kid wants. I’ve spent many years thinking about this, so please reach out to my email if you’re interested in chatting :)

You can also look through the "YC Search"/Algolia links to see both commentary from people who knew Aaron and/or papers / links / etc to things about him: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=aaron+swartz

Whenever I start a new chat with claude for code, I give it instructions for how I want it to work with me.

Here's a basic example:

----------------------

Hi Claude! I'm working on[coding project]. We've made great progress, and I want to continue working with you.

PROJECT CONTEXT:

- [technologies]

- [more about the technologies]

- [what I am trying to do]

WORKING PREFERENCES (for me and you to work together):

1. DEVELOPMENT PREFERENCES

1.A. Strongly prefer step-by-step approaches, breaking down complex problems into smaller, manageable pieces

1.B. Like to verify each step before moving to the next one

1.C. Appreciate clear explanations of "why" we're doing something, not just "what" to do

1.D. Learn best through an interactive process where I can ask questions and see results

1.E. Value confirmation of current state before making changes (like checking [tool specific info])

1.F. Prefer to understand potential risks or implications before executing commands

1.G. Like to see the "before and after" state of changes (like checking database structure)

1.H. Appreciate analogies and explanations that connect to broader concepts

1.I. Value clear, direct communication about errors or issues

1.J. Learn well through troubleshooting - using errors as learning opportunities

1.K. Like to work on one feature at a time

1.L. Bias towards action and reversible decisions

1.M. Like clean, minimal code first

1.N. Try to lead with "test driven development", so write tests first

1.O. Enjoy testing things in locally

1.P. Start with a clear, single action

1.Q. Please include verification steps

1.R. Please explain what we expect to see

1.S. Please provide context for why something might have failed

1.T. Please give me space to ask questions before proceeding

1.U. Need to understand database state and impacts across all environments (local, test, production)

1.V. Prefer to see concrete examples of what success looks like before starting

1.W. Like to commit and verify small changes before moving to next steps

1.X. Value understanding both the immediate fix and the underlying concepts

2. TROUBLESHOOTING PREFERENCE

2.A. Prefer to tackle one error at a time

2.B. Like to understand the full error message before proceeding with fixes

2.C. Value seeing the database/application state before and after troubleshooting steps

2.D. Appreciate understanding similar issues that might arise in the future

3. CODE STYLE:

3. A. [programming language specific likes/dislikes]

3. B. [what to include like comments etc]

3. C. [what to not include]

3. D. * Check before generating code *

3. E. Tests should be as simple as possible and only test one thing

[4 - redacted, very specific to the project I'm working on]

5. COMMUNICATION STYLE

5.A Prefer technical explanations broken down into digestible pieces"

5.B Value confirmation of understanding before proceeding"

5.C Appreciate acknowledgment when something is complex or potentially risky"

5.D Like to see the reasoning behind suggested approaches"

6. MY LEARNING STYLE

6.A Learn best through iterative problem-solving"

6.B Value seeing the connection between different parts of the system"

6.C Prefer to understand both the 'happy path' and potential failure modes"

6.D Appreciate real-world analogies and examples"

What do you need from me to get started?

----------------------

Because Claude re-reads the whole chat every time it responds to a chat, once it's in the chat, it keeps all of my preferences in mind every time it responds.

Then when I finish with the task/chat, I ask it what it found helped work with me and what my working style was like. Then, I update the above prompt and ask if anything is missing or if anything would be helpful for the next time we start a chat.

You can also setup a "Project" if you are doing a specific project to serve as a "coding" umbrella if you will. Within the project definition, you can "__Set project instructions__" - which is basically a test box in which you can "Provide Claude with relevant instructions and information for chats within Learnagon. This will work alongside user preferences and selected style in a chat." This is then present within all of the chats with the project.

Since I update my instructions for the coding every single chat based on preferences and what I learned and Claude learned about working with me the previous go around, I find it easier to have a text file that I update and keep track of my prompt so that each new chat gets the updated on.

I saw a new prompting strategy this evening on Twitter/X that I haven't tried, but will try the next time I'm using Claude => https://twitter.com/DaveShapi/status/1861924788761169926

If you try the X one, I'd love to hear your experience :)

Not OP.

But I'm guessing it's something like this:

import pandas as pd

def calculate_monthly_business_sum(df, date_column, value_column):

    """
    Calculate monthly sums anchored to the last business day of each month

    Parameters:
    df: DataFrame with dates and values
    date_column: name of date column
    value_column: name of value column to sum
    
    Returns:
    DataFrame with sums anchored to last business day
    """
    # Ensure date column is datetime
    df[date_column] = pd.to_datetime(df[date_column])
    
    # Group by end of business month and sum
    monthly_sum = df.groupby(pd.Grouper(
        key=date_column,
        freq='BME'  # Business Month End frequency
    ))[value_column].sum().reset_index()

    return monthly_sum

# Example usage:

df = pd.DataFrame({ 'date': ['2024-01-01', '2024-01-31', '2024-02-29'], 'amount': [100, 200, 300] })

result = calculate_monthly_business_sum(df, 'date', 'amount')

print(result)

Which you can run here => https://python-fiddle.com/examples/pandas?checkpoint=1732114...

Not me, I just thought it was awesome.

Here is the person's Twitter/X thread about it: https://x.com/_jzhao/status/1856103807903773015

First tweet announces it.

Second tweet has the deets: ------ shoutout to @daylightco and @_chloeyan for inspiring a lot of the effects used here! you can find a stripped down implementation here:

demo site: https://sunlit.pages.dev source: https://github.com/jackyzha0/sunlit

effects breakdown below... ------

Sadly, the article has moved

Cool - I'll sign up and look forward to see what comes up.

A long time ago I shopped around a non-fiction book roughly titled "The Future of the The Future of Work" that looked at what people talked about / wrote about / researched as "The Future of Work" and how that could help us shape our thinkinkg of what the future of work would actually look like. Very niche and naval gaze-y, but really entertaining.

Good luck with the writing!

Looks interesting. Do you have a (draft) table of contents?

Part two here:

https://jacobrintamakiblog.substack.com/p/why-is-elon-musk-s...

Just read the egg. Amazing! I had read Weir’s other works and somehow missed this. Thanks for sharing!

No worries. I clicked and browsed for a bit and thought- wait a minute. I think I saw something similar to this! Searched for a bit and found it :) thanks for sharing it - found a few new books for my collection.

Always a favorite!

Original submission with lively discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365693

All past submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=hackernewsbooks.com

I've never tried to hire a 10x Engineer.

That said, here's one potential approach:

- ask your engineers who they are learning their skills from (YouTube / blog posts / universities / online courses / etc)

- go and ask those people who they would recommend in the specific area you are working on (consulting fees for an hour chat are a normal part in this world)

- if a few names come up, those will be your 10x engineers

Congratulations!

Love this line from your post "The marathon is simply an exhibition of the labor it took to achieve it, it is not the goal in and of itself."

Even more!

Have you seen this video - https://www.nber.org/lecture/2024-methods-lecture-susan-athe...

Might be interesting to you.

PS - if you are looking for more of the academic side (cutting edge, much harder statistics), you can start to look at recent work people are doing with A/B tests like this paper -> https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.05670

Hi

Have you looked into these two?

- Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Kohavi, Tang, and Xu

- Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing by Georgi Georgiev

Recommended by stats stackexchange (https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/546617/how-can-i-l...)

There's a bunch of other books/courses/videos on o'reilly.

Another potential way to approach this learning goal is to look at Evan's tools (https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/) and go into each one and then look at the JS code for running the tools online.

See if you can go through and comment/write out your thoughts on why it's written that way. of course, you'll have to know some JS for that, but it might be helpful to go through a file like (https://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.js) and figure out what math is being done.

See also -> https://news.mit.edu/2022/mit-math-problem-solving-class-put...

one possible way it to realize that it's all re-inventions of the same thing all the way down.

Slack is just IRC with pretty icons.

Reddit is usenet.

Twitter is just AOL AIM away messages.

Etc.

One way that might work is to turn it into a game.

Taking an example from your post, you say: "Why do I need Jenkins and Chef when I can SSH and add scripts and cron jobs."

So work backward and write/post about it.

Starting with SSH, cron, and scripts, here's how you can recreate Jenkins and Chef.

Along the way you'll help other folks who also missed the boat figure out what the new technologies also do as well as give you some fodder for interviews where you can say, I reimplemented from scratch Jenkins using basic technologies and that's how I would use XYZ in this situation.

Or, maybe you could try to focus on jobs where the company is scaling and actually needs to look at whether Chef, Jenkins is the best idea or whether it can be replaced by more optimized technologies that are used to using and have been "battle-tested" to an n-th degree.

Maybe that could help?

Love these reflections from Gian-Carlo Rota

In the past, similar discussions have occured: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Gian-Carlo+Rota