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theshettyon 73% of AI startups are just prompt engineering

Prompt is code.

theshettyon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

I worked on Dockside last year (https://hachipoo.com/dockside-app) — a small macOS app that makes use of the unused space around the Dock (especially nice on widescreens). It’s non-intrusive and lets you drag & drop files, jot quick notes, or add shortcuts right beside the Dock so they’re always handy without cluttering the desktop.

Right now I’m adding few of the most requested user-requested features (vertical Dock support etc.) and working on refining it for Tahoe release.

theshettyon Show HN: PageIndex – Vectorless RAG

Can you eloborate on this please?

theshettyon Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

I completely agree with this. I never understood how this became the new normal and mostly acceptable in the new generation vehicles (especially the EVs) in the name of progressive/futuristic design.

I hope the automobile manufacturers take a note of this, and bring back some of it that’s worked for decades. I believe few German manufacturers like the Mercedes-Benz to have a sense of this, hope they don’t get along with this trend too.

theshettyon COBOL – Still standing the test of time

I started my career with a first job in 2009 (not long time ago!) as a COBOL/JCL programmer (and went on to do TELON programming later) for one of the biggest retailer in the country.

The systems that managed the forecasting for replenishable and non-replinshable products, markdowns (i.e., discounts) on products in the stores, stock warehouse etc. across the country was completely built on COBOL/JCL+DB2 stack combined with TELON online screens for business to manage the solution/system.

This system practically worked round the clock with hardly any downtime, and in the peak season (like Christmas when the sales/transactions were at it's high) too worked without any major issues. I'm sure IBM still earns a big chunk of revenue from mainframes from these big customers.

I remember an attempt was made to migrate some (if not all) to a new generation data analytics platform and it didn't go very well, so they just stuck with what they had.

One of the main reason I can think of is the the cost of this migration was too high (vs. the realised benefit) as the system just worked for the business and was quite resilient.

I since then jumped ship to the very technology they were trying to migrate too and have never looked back really. I think I can still work my way out of COBOL/JCL + TELON/CICS, perhaps I will forget them very soon :)

theshettyon PostgREST: REST API for any Postgres database

It looks like, there are a few already using this in production

You can see it on this page: http://postgrest.org/en/v7.0.0/

theshettyon Motivation – Keli Language

Why is no one talking much about Scala? (https://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/scala-book/functional-...)

theshettyon Colorize Your CLI

I can't agree more!!!

I wrote this simple SAS program/job scheduler (https://github.com/PrajwalSD/runSAS) using just bash script (with few utils) intentionally to allow for maximum adoption in projects and just made it more more colorful. In short 75% of the code in there is just handling the terminal (keys, scroll, progress bar etc.) and 25% is the actual load balancing logic.

theshettyon Guide to Python Debugging

I have a complete off the topic question, how do I create a slick blog like this - simple and minimal?

theshettyon Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

Many desktop apps these days seems to be built on Electron, a JS framework for building desktop-class apps.

https://www.electronjs.org/