devrob

missed opportunity to do book.google :(

The other day I got into some pretty weird territory with Claude, trying to map out what an immortal ASCII cat would look like. Basically an autonomous Tamagotchi.

The idea was to create a quine that runs forever on something like Akash network with its own crypto treasury to support and pay it's bills and try to replicate. It would then talk to an LLM for support and actions on what to do to stay alive.

It got pretty out there. Stored some of the ideas here.

https://github.com/aquaflamingo/catfi

I'm trying to build a simple, local, and semantic code + context search for coding agents like Claude Code.

I noticed that when trying to work with Claude Code I burned my token allocation really quickly and with parallel agents, no better. But when I looked at the other repos things felt really complex, for me at least.

I call it "contextd" and imagine it kind of like a context daemon you can always query in your repository for implementation plans, specs or code, etc. I always liked that git lived in your repo in the .git file, so I wanted this to work like that too but without 3rd party hosted databases or multi-repo pollution.

It's written in python at the moment, uses some local models and lanceDB but I might have it re-written in rust for speed :)

https://github.com/aquaflamingo/ctxd

The freedom and optimism is always rooted to the communal and ritual release in dance, the freedom to be as you are, or dance as you are. This gets harder and harder when there is fear of "documentation', if one can't "dance right" or "doesn't fit in".

Don't beat yourself up too hard though, you can always pickup a DJ controller and start again :)

And too: the scene has radically shifted, so being a promoter is a large part of the work. It's kind of like eSports in a way.

Oof - beautiful writing.

That sounds like it was out of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life [1]!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_a_DJ_Saved_My_Life_...

Indeed, I've written about this a little bit [1], they are growing in popularity due to a number of factors, one of which being, living in the moment. DVS1 has spoken with great eloquence on this subject as well [2]. These policies are the norm in Berlin places like Tresor. The industry culture has been really saturated by social media, live sets and destination sets [3], so many events are differentiating themselves by taking an different approach. It was a cool strategy when it started with Be At TV (RIP), (old) Boiler Room & (maybe) BBC R1 but it's lost its novelty at times I feel.

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DDkjBJhP1Sh/?utm_source=ig_web_c... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISoPHerYsn4&t=1181s [3] Think Cerce, Boilerroom

I think there's a lot of nuance here. I teach DJing (house/techno mostly) and there's never been more interest in electronic music & DJing. Folks who thought I was a bit out there in high school for liking electronic & dance music, have recently all now become more interested in DJing and raving. The DJ today is continuing to grow into the modern rock-star (albeit, in terms of real $ of music money, it's no where close).

Moreover, as several commenters have pointed out there has been a big growth in festivals and awareness. Lots of people talk to me about "house music" now, whereas before it was a relatively "underground" thing.

Now, I think there's a question about whether the scale of such events have maintained the same cultural ethos as the early rave days, and that, though I'm not old enough to have participated, is likely a categorical no. There's a greater focus on 'documenting' experiences at these events rather than living it. Here's a clip of an rising group called Kienemusik [tik tok link](https://www.tiktok.com/@as.anca/video/7359750430345186593?q=...), where you can see there's more video taping than dancing. I would venture to say, we are so filled with wonder sometimes that we forget that part of experiencing awe is letting go of ego and just experiencing.

Hi there, no offense taken! As in the copy or the design? The design is a very stripped down NextJS Boilerplate template I use for launch pages :) https://github.com/aquaflamingo/nextjs-product-boilerplate

u/lifeisstillgood look into "Building a Second Brain" and Tiago's PARA method, could help?

Somewhat off topic, does anyone use Paper/Pencil (specifically bullet journals), Apps and Digital Calendars with what feels like not much effort? I haven't been able to come to a happy medium between them all.

Also Concern #3, is there a subscription for things? o.O

Side tangent: I love Ruby, but strongly dislike and discourage `unless` in the code base. It still trips me up having written Ruby 5 years at this stage. Maybe its just me but I still pause every time for myself when looking at `unless` with a multi conditional. Example:

def do_the_thing

  return do_not_do_it unless first_conditional || second_conditional

  okay_actually_do_it

Glad that Rubocop is shipping with Rails though!

https://blog.robertsimoes.org/

Lot's of random stuff from tools, to troubleshooting, to how-tos to random essays mostly with a philosophical bent I guess

- Tool: Indexed Book Note Taking https://blog.robertsimoes.org/posts/tool-indexed-book-note-t...

- Notes: How Dropbox scaled 2007 to 2023 https://blog.robertsimoes.org/posts/notes-how-dropbox-scaled...

- Social Network Behaviour and Taxation Strategies https://blog.robertsimoes.org/posts/social-network-behaviour...

- Four wings of a Software engineer: https://blog.robertsimoes.org/posts/four-wings-of-software-e...

- Return on Intelligence: Transhumanism, Stagnation or Bureaucracy? https://blog.robertsimoes.org/perspectives/on-return-on-inte...

Built one of these as a ruby gem in case it's useful for others. I use as a dev log and mini issue tracker for projects where a project mgmt tool feels like overkill. It can sync to your local knowledge base (for me obsidian) if you want too. https://github.com/aquaflamingo/devlogs

This would be the contrarian perspective, and it's an interesting thought to consider. If memory serves, I think Marc A points out in an old Youtube conference video how most new technologies follow the Promethean myth in their relationship to society.

Funny enough your observation of

"There are more accountants now than then."

could be extrapolated from in two ways

The optimistic perspective might suppose technological development gives rise to new marketplace adaptations and creation of new and tangential jobs. For example, Facebook / Social Networks / Search creating new roles like: Influencers, Social Media Managers, Search Engine Optimization, et cetera.

For the pessimist perspective, I think you could suppose the "end state" of all technological progress in human societies is, eventually, an oligopoly of two industries: bureaucracy (legal) and politics (marketing).

Yes completely agree, I should update the post to account for the assumption of version control (thanks!)

This is hilarious! cool idea!

Reminds me of 21 Co's Earn Product RE pay for answering message

Yep this is really fair and good feedback :) For a first hacky iteration the 0,99 was an average iTunes track.

Hi there, funny enough part of the motivation for me to build this was that I am a DJ and purchase a lot of music. I'm actually building an app right called Crates which is focused on DJs and music purchasers https://getcrates.xyz. I was thinking of integrating purchases into the app somehow, we will see!

Some e.g. / Links: - https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/news/252525968/NPM... - https://github.com/bitpay/wallet/issues/9347 - Leftpad

if I'm hiring someone to solve problems, I'd like to see how they solve a problem; and certainly your github is a record of you solving some problems.

Is this to do with your comfort level in understanding their approach?

need to invest considerable time understanding the codebase you are working on and the problems your changes are solving before I can even begin to properly think about your changesets

Completely fair.

during We Just Got New Budget So Let's Recruit All The People month.

Lol

One might then go look at github repositories as well as scheduling longer meet-and-greets for the most interesting people to make the final selection.

I see, so using the activity and portfolio _after_ the fact as a means to gauge additional signal once the baseline has been met

Moreover, many publishers don't accept direct applications, or only accept them during specific, brief, time periods - by requiring the author to get an agent to agree to represent them, they are effectively outsourcing that initial screening step)

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

For most of the hiring funnel you want to evaluate everyone the same way so that you can compare each candidate apples-to-apples and so the hiring team builds expertise in the interview process

That is a great point! Similar to admissions tests to a college I suppose.

Their activity might be mostly in a natural language you don't understand, and how could you evaluate that fairly?

Good point as well.

That said if a candidate provides their GitHub or other portfolio then I think you should consider it just like any other part of their resume, not to replace the coding challenges but as part of the chat about past experience.

I think I understand. Would it be fair to say that, you consider the the "score" of the coding exercises as weighted higher than potentially significant contributions and maintenance of open source projects _because_ they are normalized?

Agreed, obviously there are considerations of:

A. System design and architecture

B. Problem understanding and solving

C. Team work and communication including navigating and working with stakeholders

D. Building requirements and negotiating tradeoffs

E. Ability to deliver consistently and reliability

F. Inventive and resourceful thinking

(Obviously this is non-exhaustive, but some top of mind considerations)

But at the end the deliverable is a combination of documentation, code and software is it not?

Supposing $COMPANY had an interview structure as follows:

1. Basic technical screen: Confirm candidate can program

2. System design: Evaluate candidate's ability to design systems

3. Algorithmic problem solving: Evaluate abstract problem solving

4. Behaviourial interview: Determine if candidate is good fit

Where would you map the above A-F or any other critical elements which I may have missed to how they manifest in 1-4?

That's a great point.

My only counter consideration might be that one's resume which states:

"I built XYZ at $COMPANY and resulted in $Xm in revenue growth" and one could simply show the person the product or area under which professional worked.

Per your point regarding candidate pool to evaluate, would you consider it fair to say that you see the purpose of the live problems and technical projects as a means of normalizing the ground of analysis (i.e. comparing apples to apples versus apples to oranges)?

Apologies, I just thought it was kind of cool. Thanks to whoever added the 2008 tag !

Stack Exchange maybe?

I find it funny how every year there is another "Is Rails being relevant in $YEAR" article or two posted. I love Rails and still think it's a great framework, piece of technology for building companies (but you don't need to take my word for it: https://stackshare.io/rails). However, I also worked professionally and in a hobby cadpacity with Rails and been bitten by it too.

I can say from experience Ruby is not for everyone.

Rails is a tool, and it depends on _what_ you need to do with that tool. If today I needed to build a basic web app quickly and wanted minimal cognitive overhead with a plethora of "solved problems as libraries", I'd strongly consider Rails. It's fun to work with and gives great development speed, and it's manageable architecturally for a solo development team (MVC, Service Objects, API Clients, et cetera). I think it's a useful thing to have in your back pocket if you need to get an MVP up ASAP. That being said, with regards to building a prototype ASAP the fastest track is probably going to be the stack you are most familiar.

If I were building a company, choosing Rails would be an important question to consider. Programmers who know the framework and language well can ship things quickly. So if you're a solo or main technical co-founder you can go FAST. However, building a company is more than just technology considerations. For example, with each hire you will need to consider the cost-benefit of hiring or training for familiarity with tech stack. For example, Ruby is ranked #16 on most popular technology ~6% of respondents, and split 50/50 for loved versus dreaded on the Stack Overflow Dev Survey 2022. This could present a real challenge to the business in terms of sourcing and hiring qualified folks.

If you wanted something dynamic like Rails but with a higher potential talent base, using Python, Flask and Django might work.

Some books I enjoyed:

- Psychology of Selling - Sales Dogs (Managing sales teams) - some of Jim Rohn's seminars are great

Hope it’s cool to link our own stuff ?

I’m writing one right now on building a mini trading bot platform.

It would be great to hear what you like/dislike in these types of books.

I don’t have any marketing website up at the moment but I created this mailing list if you’re interested in following the developments http://bit.ly/tradingbotplatformbook

(Link redirects to https://cdn.forms-content.sg-form.com/f306b813-475c-11ea-9be...)