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win311fwg

183 karma · joined December 18, 2025

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win311fwg··on Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM
Theoretically the LLMs could go straight to machine code. No need for any intermediate language. However, the HN stories have made it clear that LLMs are not great at going directly to machine code or Rust. Rust is, time and time again, is being used used as an optimization intermediary. If LLMs were better to target it directly they wouldn't be reading report after report about translating to it from another language.
win311fwg··on GPT‑6 and Intelligent UI for everyone
Having a product requires customers, who are pains to deal with. The AI end game is for the one left standing to be completely 'self-sufficient'.
win311fwg··on Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM
It is beginning to look like the future is treating Rust as an optimization pass. Write your program in a higher-level language like Typescript, Go, Python, etc. and then have LLMs compile that to Rust.
win311fwg··on Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM
WASM is also a first-class target for Go (gc).

However, it has a relatively large runtime, so TinyGo is often preferred when bundle size needs to be small.

win311fwg··on Questions for believers in AI consciousness
It doesn't need to be able to change the output, only be aware of some kind of environment. How have you established there is no awareness?
win311fwg··on Screens Aren't Destroying Young Minds. I Should Know
> All of these, with the exception of fewer high school dropouts, are examples of people doing less.

I'm not sure the exception even holds. The data indicates that most high school dropouts end up going to work which is more than coasting through high school until graduation. It is not like the would-have-been dropouts have hunkered down working hard to become straight-A students. They're just there for the free ride, so to speak, with, as you suggest later on, no real consequences for just being physically present and doing nothing more. Staying in school is now the path of least resistance, lazy choice.

win311fwg··on Questions for believers in AI consciousness
> There's only math and calculations moving tokens from the input to the output.

Unless the consciousness exists in the CPU/GPU, which is what I think is already implied? Clearly there is a lot more going on there than just math and calculations — unless you think that is all the human brain does too, in which case why wouldn't it be conscious?

> It's as conscious as a spreadsheet.

In the animal world animals considered conscious are deemed as such because we observe greater network activity than animals we believe don't have consciousness. Like some animals, maybe spreadsheets just don't do enough computation to be conscious? Or maybe spreadsheets actually are conscious alongside all natural beings? Nobody knows. We've never found an objective way to measure consciousness.

That is, except you. But since you haven't shared your methodology or what the secret sauce is...

win311fwg··on Questions for believers in AI consciousness
Couldn't it have consciousness only during the brief moment it is activated?
win311fwg··on Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours
We have, according to another commenter, what cloud actually refers to: "Cloud kind of means that it's a service hosted somewhere on the Internet, that you don't control directly"

Which is what, back when network diagrams were still cool, would have been drawn as a a cloud — something that your network depends on, but something whose details don't matter. And what one would have called a cloud if they were talking about said diagram.

The word didn't magically appear out of nowhere. These services were named cloud services because that's what name we had already reserved for them.

win311fwg··on Sites in ChatGPT
> We aren't anywhere near that.

We aren't, but the AI Labs no doubt are. They just can't release it right now because their bread and butter is still developers burning tokens, so there is still a business problem to solve.

win311fwg··on Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours
I know it only feels like 15 years, but the 90s was, at very least, 26 years and some months ago. Although I suspect the usage goes back even further than that. The internet suggests it was used as far back as the 1960s.
win311fwg··on Sites in ChatGPT
> why isn't it getting better?

Lack of information. When you are on the building side you become blind to its faults. Consumers almost never tell you what isn't good about it.

> why is it all still so buggy?

Also lack of information. I haven't seen any bugs in years in the things I've worked on. LLMs have closed every last obvious testing gap, squashing any outstanding bugs there. That's not to say it is all bug-free now, but what bugs users may be experiencing aren't being reported.

AI is good at building software, but it is still not good at consuming software like actual consumers do.

win311fwg··on Sites in ChatGPT
> honestly we're struggling to find things to do.

I have been the lone developer on a project for quite some time and was already feeling that way. Yet, recently found out that a second is being added to the team and a third is to come. I guess I'll enjoy what is effectively a paid vacation before it all comes crumbling down.

win311fwg··on Why are people excited about Jev?
That's what the Jev marketing claims to do better than previous approaches, yes.
win311fwg··on Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours
> whose details didn't matter to the diagram in question.

Exactly. Hence why services like AWS were said to be cloud services. The details not mattering was the value proposition being sold.

> PaaS, which didn't exist in the 90s.

It did, except we called it time-sharing back then.

> The cloud could be a symbol for a telephone network, a packet-switched network (including the internet), a company WAN, etc.

While you are right that the parent did specifically say internet, I am not sure there is a meaningful distinction anymore. Telephony, packet-switched networks, WANs, etc. are all, for the most part, a part of the internet now. The exceptions are exceptional and thus can be ignored.

win311fwg··on Why are people excited about Jev?
People are excited because it claims to solve an open problem many people have better than their existing approaches. Same reason people get exited about any technology.
win311fwg··on Big Tech ruined the cloud, so we're renaming ours
> I feel like Cloud means something now [...] Cloud kind of means that it's a service hosted somewhere on the Internet, that you don't control directly

Hasn't it meant that for many decades now? Originating as a cloud symbol on network diagrams, but not long after used as a word when people wanted to talk about said diagrams. I certainly remember using it in the 90s, so it has meant that for at least that long. You make it sound like we've only recently come to this determination.

win311fwg··on Vote on which of Hacker News' challenges for AI have been met
The exact market value cannot be known without a sale, but it seems highly unlikely that nobody would be a willing buyer, even if just for $1. You'd have a better chance of winning 100 separate lotteries while simultaneously getting struck by lighting and attacked by a shark than those companies having no market value. Speculative valuations, while never perfect, tend to not be that far out of whack.
win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
Engineering is ultimately all about managing tradeoffs, so the more important question is: How often does reliably picking failure modes and applying appropriate safety factors actually matter in software, especially when most designs are little more than simple line-of-business CRUD with a (if you are lucky) slick UI?
win311fwg··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2026)
Those in tech, at least on average, are fantastic at producing more value in increasingly less time. That doesn't translate to less time in the seat, though. It only means higher and higher expectations.

What he needs instead is a moat.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> You say "who cares if they suffer? They're obviously all just bad people".

This comment aside, I do not see that text anywhere, lest my own comments. Get back to us when you return to reality.

> The people who attacked blue collar workers said "who cares if they suffer? They're obviously all just dumb people (and thus bad)."

Whether or not calling them "dumb" was justified, there no implication of "who cares if they suffer". In fact, in the context I remember, those comments were made around trying to figure out how to help those who were deemed "dumb".

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> To me, an engineer is a licensed professional

Again, we’re talking about jobs (and whether they will remain in the future), not professional designations. Licensed professional engineers are usually referred to as PEs, but even if you want to call them engineers it is clear that not all engineers of that sort work in engineering. In context, we can establish that we are talking about engineers in the worker sense, not the professional license sense.

Is English a second language for you? Maybe context doesn’t translate well. English is certainly bad for assigning multiple meanings to words and relying on context to figure out which meaning applies.

> I think lots of software people want to call themselves "engineers" because it sounds like someone who should be paid more money.

How would describing the job by what it is, literally by dictionary definition, garner more money?

I am aware of the time physicians started calling themselves doctors to try and ride on the coattails of academics, so I think I understand the angle you are trying to come up with, but this isn’t like that. In this case engineer was already the word in the dictionary that existed to describe the work.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> Ok so why is all their software such garbage, then?

Because the people involved weren't good at their job...? We've been over this multiple times now. It doesn't seem like it should be hard to figure out. What do you continue to miss?

> but they are not engineers

Sure, software involves lots of different types of work. Engineers are just one tiny piece of the puzzle. But design is exclusively the domain of engineers. Anyone working on the design is an engineer, by definition. That, again, does not imply that they know what they are doing, are good at their job, or bold enough to push back against out-to-lunch stakeholders. Having someone doing engineering work does not magically mean you are going to see an excellent product on the other side. Most people are pretty lousy at what they do.

You, again, increase your chances if you involve PEs, but that's not a job, just a designation.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> I'm very very curious where all these mythical software engineers are working.

Boeing, Microsoft, and medical device manufacturers mentioned seem like pretty good candidates. Were you under the impression that the software designed at those places just magically appears?

As before, being an engineer does not imply being good at the job. It only implies designing things. The designation of Professional Engineer institutes a vetting process to try and weed out those who aren't good at the job, which may be the source of your confusion, but PE is a designation, not a job. Not all PEs even work as engineers, although certainly many do.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> Do you actually write software for money?

No. I am paid to be involved in the software industry, but as an engineer, not as a coder. Writing software is not part of what I do. That is, to use your bridge analogy, for the construction crew.

> over the course of repeated "agile" "sprints".

It is true that not all engineers know what they are doing, are good at what they do, or bold enough to push back against out-to-lunch stakeholders.

> so someone gets angry, throws it away, and starts again growing a new monster.

I never understood that. Untangling the messes was always the fun part back when coding was still a job. But I don't really see any coders in industry anymore. Any last remaining ones I knew of have already been replaced by LLMs. LLMs will also happily untangle the messes, though, so still no reason to abandon code.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> I don't think "software engineering" is a real thing.

You don't think anyone designs software? It just magically appears?

> So-called software "engineers" do not practice engineering in the way that a mechanical engineer or a civil engineer does.

And? The dictionary defines engineer as someone who designs and builds things. It does not prescribe how the thing is designed.

> How often do bridges collapse?

Not often, but often enough to know that we still consider the designer to have been an engineer and not a project manager. I still have no idea where the idea that project managers do the design work came from.

> passing messages back and forth to the computer, or passing messages back and forth to the customer.

When AI can handle the judgment, anticipation, and deal with ambiguity neither are important. The customer will go straight to he AI. Hence why "white collar" jobs of all sorts are ultimately doomed. Unless you believe AI cannot reach that level, in which case software engineers will be fine, since that's the whole reason for their existence.

What we do see happening already is the decline of the project owner/manager role. More expensive money and technology increasing engineering efficiency has made it such that it is becoming hard to justify an assistant to bridge the telephone tag gap. That doesn't really affect engineers much, though. Before ZIRP allowed budgets for project managers/owners engineers also played that same role, so it is nothing unusual for them. Engineering getting secretarial assistants for a time, something historically reserved only for the upper brass, is but a curious aberration.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
Product owners/managers typically act as the communication channel between customers and software engineers, but engineers are responsible for designing the software. It is they who have to use judgment, anticipation, and deal with ambiguity in order to find software customers want to use. The product owner/manager does not. They simply pass messages back and forth. Of course it is possible for one person to be both a product owner and a software engineer, but often the engineer is separated from having to play telephone tag with customers so that they can more efficiently focus on their primary task.

Perhaps you have confused software engineer with coder? LLMs are most definitely the final death knell for anyone still working as a coder, but that profession was on the way out for decades already. The earlier comment was clear about software engineer.

win311fwg··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> You (or Claude) implements the feature, you run the tests, you fix the bugs.

...you then take it to the customer. And wait, and wait, and wait, and maybe eventually they'll get around to trying out what you created, and if you're lucky they'll even give you some feedback to loop back with to try again. They will only try your application a few times before giving up on you, so even if the feedback loop is immediate like you claim (its not; not even close), you aren't afforded many iterations. A software engineer's job is, of course, to get ahead of the customer using judgment, anticipation, and dealing ambiguity to minimize how many round trips are required to satisfy the customer.

If AI can replace the software engineer, why can't it replace all "white collar" work?

win311fwg··on Suits Are Better Tech Than Modern Clothes
> people wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes in the name of fashion.

Some people do wear all sorts of uncomfortable clothes and shoes, but they do so when they want to reject the fashion. Fashionable people blend into the wall, so naturally some people gravitate towards anti-fashion in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of the heard.

I do agree that it has become fashionable to practice anti-fashion on special occasions, although that isn't the type of fashion we've been talking about.

win311fwg··on Suits Are Better Tech Than Modern Clothes
> good suit serves you for years and decades

Don't all clothes? I buy bargain rack t-shirt and jeans and get decades out of them just fine.

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