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soneca

11,835 karma · joined January 17, 2013

I have a newsletter with writing advice for software developers: https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/

It's semi-paused right now, but I am wondering if I should make it active again. If you like it, I would appreciate your feedback.

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soneca··on Why do you suck at juggling now?
Tangentially there was this recent post for a very hard juggling web game where everyone will likely suck:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48963122

soneca··on Juggling for Blind People
Keep the phone still after throw and then move down when the sound is getting loud again (the sound is to mimic the parable I think)
soneca··on Cyberpunk Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
I think you are right for movies and TV shows, but not for "comics, manga and graphic novels" and I'll add books as well. Since those are much cheaper and easier to produce than TV shows and movies, they can be created independently, without the need to optimize for earning tons of money. Indie literature and comics are very diverse in the storytelling.

But I acknowledged (and dread a bit) that the audiovisual storytelling is such a strong force that any discussion about storytelling, even when specifically talking about literature/comics storytelling, is dominated by audiovisual references. Any creative writing workshop/course that include sci fi and fantasy genres will inevitably mention Star Wars as example for whichever technique. The more literary ones will mention some Oscar winning movie, etc.

soneca··on Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress
The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah
soneca··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2026)
I'm a product-minded fullstack software engineer with a strong eye for UX and design. I work confidently across the stack and thrive in fast-paced startup environments where quick, innovative problem-solving is key. I use AI heavily in my development workflow to ship faster, and I design and build AI-powered features as core parts of the products I work on.

Location: São Paulo, Brazil

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Javascript, Typescript, CSS, React, Vue, Ember, but also NodeJS, Postgres, MongoDB

Résumé/CV: https://linkedin.com/in/rodrigohgpontes

Email: hn@rodrigopontes.com.br

A few side projects I have

Confabulistas - https://www.confabulistas.com.br/catalog

A catalog of Brazilian fiction writers with natural-language semantic search. Author biographies are chunked and embedded via OpenAI embeddings, stored in Postgres with pgvector, and queried by cosine similarity against the embedded user query, then LLM rerank. The site is in Portuguese, but the search accepts English queries, so it can be tested directly.

Parliant - https://www.parliant.ai

an AI-conducted conversational survey platform. I envisioned, designed, and built it end-to-end, leveraging AI-assisted coding and integrating advanced AI features.

Touchline Shouting - https://www.touchlineshouting.com

A web game built to explore AI as a moderation agent on systems with public conversation. You play as a coach typing instructions for your player. Repo can be made public for potential employers.

soneca··on Various LLM Smells
Well, practice to get better at writing (and, therefore, judging writing) yourself. It seems obvious. Your skills are not frozen in time and set in stone.
soneca··on Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android
Oh, that is happening a lot to me and I wasn’t sure if it was only me!

A lot, I mean, about 80% of my ”não” (I speak Portuguese) are becoming just ”na”. And about 50% of my ”mais” are becoming ”mas”.

“o” and “i” are next to each other at the top row, so I wondered if the keyboard got smaller and my thumb automatic moviment became discalibrated.

But… I started to often see ”na” where it should be ”não” in other people’s texts.

Turns out it is a bigger issue it seems

soneca··on Michelangelo's first painting, created when he was 12 or 13
They are 18+ at Angel Academy, right? I would say they are a lot older than 11, 14, and 15. One year I think is a lot of development in the teens. Doesn't seem a fair comparison
soneca··on Do dyslexia fonts work? (2022)
> "A spectrum would involve everyone having the same problem to different degrees;"

I learned the opposite, that the term spectrum is used when it is not same problem to different degrees. That's how the autism spectrum was explained to me, because the problem differs over the spectrum. In opposition to "level" or "gradient", which is intended to be something more linear over the same dimension.

I believe this redefinition of the term comes from how a "rainbow spectrum" is perceived, as different colors (and not as it is defined, as a linear degree of wavelength)

soneca··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)
> "I suspect many job postings would become discussion battlegrounds"

I suspect they wouldn't. I suspect companies that ghost and post fake jobs wouldn't even reply. And companies that have real job posts would reply and have a chance to convince the job is real.

People already have to scroll a ton of job posts that are not for them (due to stack, location, seniority, whatever) and the [-] button is pretty efficient in hiding long discussions.

soneca··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)
I am in favor of not making comments about suspicious posts off-topic. Votes and comments is the natural way that all disputes are handled in this forum.

The [-] button is a pretty good solution for long discussions in a job post.

Let seekers share their experience is a pretty useful signal, even if there is no way to know if the seeker is telling the truth. But downvotes are even more secretive and are allowed.

soneca··on AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is
I was told that the main reason the “Who is hiring?” thread (and other job boards for startups) has much fewer remote positions that are global (the vast majority is Remote US now) is because of a legislation that reduces a fiscal incentive when hiring software engineers and the reduction is much more aggressive when the engineers are from outside the US.

Doesn’t it affect big tech companies? Only startups?

I would guess the opposite, with big companies being much more savvy and influenced by fiscal incentives.

soneca··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)
I got an error when submitting the form, "Field data constraint violation", although I could not find which field was incorrect.
soneca··on I’m Not a Robot
Got stuck in that one too because I mistranslated vegetables.

In my mind, they were all vegetables, since they are no animals or minerals. As it would be in Portuguese.

Edit: thinking about it, he wanted to make a joke about Mr Potato, but ended up creating a captcha for non-English native speakers. He could try selling that idea to ICE lol

soneca··on Samsung taking market share from Apple in U.S. as foldable phones gain momentum
I definitely did not see that coming. In my mind, foldable phones were the 3D TV of the phones.

Interesting development though. Nice to see something that is both cool looking and, apparently, useful getting traction.

soneca··on Why Everybody Is Losing Money On AI
I think the most interesting part is that, in AI, software does not have zero marginal cost anymore. You can’t build once and scale to billions just investing in infrastructure.

Still, companies like OpenAI and Twitter are doing just that. Thus losing money.

Will AI evolve to be again as regular software or will the business model of tech AI become closer to what traditional non-tech companies are?

How the WalMart of AI will look like?

Does SaaS with very high prices and very thin margins even work as a scalable business model?

soneca··on Eternal Struggle
This happened to me in the original site. I think it happens when the white and black balls collide at the exact same spot of the border.
soneca··on Why did books start being divided into chapters? A new history
But Asimov’s short stories weren’t a serialized novel from the start. They were individual short stories that he later combined with small changes to form novels. It’s different from what Dickens, Dumas, and Verne did.
soneca··on Ask HN: Do you struggle with flow state when using AI assisted coding tools?
Yes, definitely. I would love for xkcd to redraw the “compiling” one with ”My AI code agent is thinking of a solution”

https://xkcd.com/303/

soneca··on Cannibal Modernity: Oswald de Andrade's Manifesto Antropófago (1928)
The (1928) is part of the title of the article, not the usual HN practice of dating an article. The article itself seems to be very recent.

Another note is that the word “canibal” also exists in Portuguese and they conscientiously chose the (maybe neologism) “antropófago”. Which kind of means the same thing, but using Greek radicals. My translation to English would be ” Anthropophagy”, not cannibalism. The intention was to make clear the allegorical use of the term.

soneca··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2025)
I’m a product-minded fullstack web developer with 8 years of experience and a strong eye for UX and design. I lean towards frontend work but handle backend challenges confidently. I thrive in fast-paced startup environments where quick and innovative problem-solving is key.

Location: São Paulo, Brazil

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Javascript, Typescript, CSS, React, Vue, Ember, but also NodeJS, Postgres, MongoDB

Résumé/CV: https://linkedin.com/in/rodrigohgpontes

Email: hn@rodrigopontes.com.br

soneca··on Font Comparison: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono vs. JetBrains Mono and Fira Code
Do you think Atkinson Hyperlegible specifically hurts readability?

I am thinking about the regular one on text, not mono on code.

soneca··on Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?
I saw several anecdotes that were: “when he did the job, it was great, but he rarely did the job because there was always someone sick, meeting with a lawyer, or any excuse to not deliver”.

So I think that finding about multiple employment is actually about realizing he was lying the whole time with the excuses.

soneca··on Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes
I agree with GP that poetry is more suited to the spoken word that prose, not less. Ideally, by the author's spoken word.

But neither perspective is "bizarre" or "surreal", just different takes.

soneca··on Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
And if they create a hiring process? A interview script?
soneca··on Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
A recruiter, or an HR person in general, do work that “fortifies the company’s ability to make a profit in future years” as you say, by hiring people that will hopefully work there for years.

Same as a financial analyst implementing new processes and spreadsheets to better control money spending.

One can argue that most white collar worker is investing in future profit. Sales people nurturing long sales cycles, lobbyists, content marketing, SEO.

Why are software developers (and merge lawyers) snowflakes among all those types?

soneca··on Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)
My understanding is that the salary of other types of workers do not follow this rule.

If that’s correct, then the section means software developers are actually special snowflakes treated differently by the tax code

soneca··on Binary Wordle
3.125% I believe :)
soneca··on Binary Wordle
I guessed my first game in the first attempt! (10011)
soneca··on AI is not our future
> "The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process."

I can imagine. In fact, I wrote a scifi novel that imagines it! :)

In the story, the idle elite has painting classes with an AI teacher. They have levels of engagement they can choose from: see something and paint it, see an AI-made painting of that something and copy it, copy it over projected lines into your canvas, paint only the filling colors over AI-created lines delineating it, let the AI-teacher-robot fix the painting for you after you are done. Every student goes home happily with the same painting in the same high AI-made quality. :)

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