trentnix

The job market is the pits and feels more like a game of musical chairs than an evaluation of aptitude and ethics. Lots of old paths are getting very narrow. Some are closing.

But we now have tools that let you just build big things, all by yourself. In this new world, bonafide coding expertise is helpful. But it's not required. New graduates should just get out there and start making things.

- plan youth soccer practices

- develop well-formatted soccer game substitution schedules

- build and ship software in languages I haven't used in 25 years on platforms I've never programmed for

- do meal planning and build shopping lists

- prepare grocery shopping carts

- solicit medical advice

- perform Garmin watch data analysis

- administer devices (with SSH access) using natural language

- avoid counterfeit soccer jersey purchases

- create "Warrior Cat" graphic novels

- make cartoon strips

- troubleshoot appliances

- manage finances

- review accounting ledgers

- diagnose malware infections

- so much more

And we do it all from a simple prompt that we can talk to if we choose.

I've built more (and better) software in the past month than I did in any given year in the 30+ years I've been programming.

I can understand pessimism regarding how this affects society. I can understand pessimism regarding how this gets abused. But for the life of me there's no good reason at all to be pessimistic about how quickly this has improved.

What a time to be alive.

I’d even settle for Apple opening up the Music app so I can upload music to my iPhone from Linux. But once again, that doesn’t make the spreadsheet sparkle.

MiSTerFin is written in C and I'm much savvier with Go these days, so I (and my helpful Codex prompt) forked it and ported it to Go (where appropriate). I've since been obsessed, making improvements, smoothing out rought edges, and adding features, all get a great Jellyfin player on my CRT.

And I have to say, watching Robotech episodes on my 4:3 CRT from Jellyfin is a shot of nostalgia directly into my veins.

I'll add a bit more polish and get it published this week for others that might be interested.

Omarchy looks like a simple way for a developer like me to test drive hyprland and write code. It also looks like a great way for my kids to get into computers as there's an agent harness ready to help them manage their machine and use free software, even the stuff that's a bit obtuse.

I'm bewildered that people are mad about any of this, but then I remember I don't care what the gatekeepers think anymore.

For too many, building and celebrating things just because they are cool isn't enough.

In some organizations, maintainability may be the biggest risk being mitigated in a code review. But for me, that's selling code reviews short.

In my experience, code reviews are the single most important quality control process in the entire development life cycle. Engineers often don't have a lot of influence over the quality of requirements. Engineers often don't have a lot of influence over the competence and thoroughness of the QA process (and it often doesn't exist at all). But engineers frequently have total control over code reviews.

If I can't depend on the rest of the organization for QC, code reviews are the first place I look to mitigate that risk. That means code reviews find bugs. That means code reviews identify code smells. That means code reviews pressure test requirements and whether the implementation matches the assignment. That means code reviews transfer knowledge and serve as a teacher for both the PR author and the reviewer. And so on.

Thorough and pedantic code reviews are challenging and tedious, at least at first, but the team adapts and both the code and the review process gets better.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

- Louis de Bonald

Yep. A lot of cyberpunk fiction from that time that demonized corporate influence and power was inspired by the rise and perceptions of Japanese technology companies.

I can remember one of the American news magazine shows, maybe 20/20, showing a Japanese school with long hours and intense discipline and contrasting it with fat, illiterate American kids (the same stereotypes were made about the Soviet Union).

A lot of the perception of Japan, especially among Gen X and younger, is influenced from exports of Japanese culture. Nintendo, JRPGs, Manga, Anime, and even the quirky stuff reflects well on the Japanese though American eyes. No propaganda is needed.

- Luke 4:24

It's why people often trust consultants over the people inside the organization. It's why people often want to elect new leaders even if the current leaders are doing a decent job.

The baby almost always gets thrown out with the bath water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_throw_the_baby_out_with_...

When I see "interesting" people doing "interesting" things they look fake, exhausting, or both.

What type of latency-sensitive applications are appropriate for a small-model, high-throughput solution like this? I presume this type of specialization is necessary for robotics, drones, or industrial automation. What else?

If you can't write requirements an engineering team can use, you won't be able to write requirements for the robots either.

It's a racket never ends.

I was a bit too young for Stand By Me. The subject matter was just too serious for me at that age. But I also grew up in a small town in the country where exploring was a normal thing.

I would meet kids from college that were from much larger towns and they'd complain "I grew up in so-and-so and there's NOTHING for kids to do there!"

I'd think to myself, "you have no idea what you're talking about. I used to go to your town to do stuff!"