compacct27

This really gets at the issue with JavaScript in the age of AI: it’s just not a terribly statically verifiable language, and DOM work is incredibly prone to failing silently while the app itself is clearly not working. We’ve had to paper over it with TypeScript and frameworks that impose constraints just to stop several classes of bugs, and even then it doesn’t go terribly well.

The flip side is that AI is making the underlying code more like a..compilation target? At least in the sense that, yes, as this site mentions, Scheme is ugly to read and would be hell to write the old way, but with the new way..maybe we can try because it would give us what native JavaScript and the latest browser standards never could: reliability

This isn't it. After spending my morning on a code review and catching several major issues despite it being a +7kloc diff, the real question is--how do we make the tooling around code reviews better? Intentions aren't enough, they're vague and the implementation details matter. They help, though, and this is closer to the answer to code reviews: check out the intentions, get an AI-assisted overview of the architecture of the code, then dive into the more important parts of the architecture.

Maybe it's because I'm in UI dev, but intentions aren't enough at all

They have web components if you want

“Build our platform for us!”

Or less!

Integrating these web components into our React codebase has been pretty awful--more of a web components thing than a Lit thing, IMO. We have "scoped styles", except for certain important things like font sizes, so tons of little regressions everywhere when we swap in the web component in place of the old React one. DX-wise, we lost a lot, too. I assume the tooling will get better, or that we'll figure it out more, but it's mostly been a drag

Another part of what happened is that the comment section feels more succinct and insightful than the actual article. Articles have to be long form, comments get to the point. It's sort of like your comment is the LLM response I wanted all along. And now we can personalize our reading and have a more meaningful outcome.

Maybe long form content solved a need back in the day when things were printed on paper and figured out well in advance, crossing their fingers on the relevance, and with where we are now we can suss it out without all the reading-as-middleman-to-knowledge

The leverage has been flipped. We all had awful college classes teaching next to nothing, and now that you can get good grades without attending, what's left? "We lost critical thinking!" No, we were barely getting that in the first place. Now, classes need to be more valuable.

Oh my god, love these visuals. Geo data is so perfect for dataviz

Honestly it's already working great in Cursor. Even adapting one type structure to another is quickly handled.

I’m sorry, does this send your database to Claude?

Biggest fear as a new parent is basically this. What if my ideals estrange my kid? They’re not bad ideals, but the kid might just not be wired for them. Working hard, doing good for others, building skills, all of that.

I wonder what this guy’s parents were seeing, what they were going through. From what I’ve seen from parents going through it, it can be really super challenging to handle a hyperactive child while still being, you know, an imperfect person yourself

Gotcha, that wasn't obvious on mobile

Well. I guess the demo doesn’t work for react components even when prompted for them? Overall the output seemed best for static demo showcasing, it was all HTML

Obsidian Sync is great, was worried you were describing it for a sec there

In my experience, VS Code’s extension system really shines here. There are also boilerplate repos out there to get started.

The real trick here is dodging ASTs, which, after trying to use in so many parse-the-code projects, really aren’t needed all the time but are put pretty highly on the pedestal

The Austin tech culture is…interesting. I stopped trying to find a job here and went remote Bay Area, and talking to tech workers in the area gave me the impression it’s a mix of slacker culture and hype chasing. After moving back here, tech talent seems like a game of telephone, and we’re several jumps past the original.

When I heard CrowdStrike was here, it just kinda made sense

"3rd party neutral observer" Taking a look at the rest of the blog, this one's anything but.

Yup. Common. With all the performance blogs focused on time to first paint and the like, React introduced a whole new category that looks a lot like this

Any good book recs?

Where do I go to learn what you just said?

This is an amazing writeup. I usually judge an article by its comments (I know! but it's usually a good metric!), and for the absolute crickets this is getting, this article is well worth the read.

Filipino contractors essentially fulfilling what the eng team was supposed to, but didn't because their hands were tied up recruiting. Incredible.

The big rewrite. Risky even on manageable codebases, and the leftovers never seem to fully go away. Who wants to score points on re-writing a tucked-away settings page several years into these?

I've seen so many attempts at these you'd think we'd have a framework for rewriting codebases. We don't. Automated codemods require a consistency that few adhered to. The code patterns evolved so much over time, it's like looking at tree rings.

We're basically putting code in boxes, re-arranging the boxes, and rightfully saying some arrangements are more efficient. How come we haven't found a better way? Automations operate at the code level, but not at the box level.

Why compare to WebGL? Tweening is for games, and making games in the DOM or in a Canvas is silly.

Eh, would rather see a comparison to a webGL approach given we’re doing tweening here. Fine to not have one, just sorta leaves the question up in the air. Faster than Canvas at the very least!

Love it, I think dependency trees are super underused data for static analysis.

The visualization here is amazing in its own right as well, can I ask what part of the codebase renders it and handled the force-directed part?

Can’t. Three Body Problem.

It's been amazing learning about this. From "The Little Typer" book to Computerphile's videos on dependent (and homotopy, somewhat related?) type theory, to discovering Lean for interactive (math) proof construction, the history of it all dating back to Bertrand Russel trying to explain math from first principles, just wow. So lucky to live in a world where this is true.

I’ve had a big need for abstract algebra in a side project and ChatGPT 4 has been The Best tutor (on top of several books and YouTube videos). Gives examples on the spot for your specific needs in any way you want. Gives broad overviews of a subject so you can make deeper dives elsewhere (Google, Math Stackexchange). Relates concepts to other parts of math. Implements math in my programming language of choice.

I’m sure it’s hallucinated a few times, but I’m at such an early level that it’s typically fine. I learn either way in a way that’s set me way ahead of where I’d have been without it