jdkoeck

While I don’t read the implementation of anything any more unless there’s a hard algorithmic problem, I do make an effort to read and document APIs thoroughly.

I have some questions.

Are you doing this for client-facing production code?

It seems you believe painting over APIs with some amount of documentation will guarantee the implementation is correct and well designed. Am I misreading that?

You say you still read code when code is « algorithmically hard ». How do you define that?

Software systems have requirements that are essential but not algorithmically hard. For instance, access control in a web application must be thorough and cover all REST resources. How do you know the implementation has the desired properties if you don’t read the code?

Do you have tests? How do you know they’re correct if you don’t read the code? Moreover, how do know if their coverage is sufficient if you don’t read the code?

Do you refactor code or is that not needed anymore?

I don’t understand your answer to the question of why anyone would publish a library if no one reads code anymore. « For the exact same reasons as before ». How so? This isn’t making sense.

Your job is to produce the best working result.

This is as misguided as « don’t make mistakes ». Do not expect good decisions from something that does not feel the pain of bad decisions.

This is so obviously written by AI that it’s turning me off the whole thing.

Last time I used it, it was a a flicker fest. Has it been fixed?

Just look up how cameras give uber drivers protection against wrongful accusations and go off your high horse.

I’ve had plenty of uber drivers with a camera inside the car. I was not offended by their seeming lack of trust. They had stories to tell that made me realize these cameras were very much needed.

A study from 2025. Might as well be from five years ago.

The honest counter, and it matters here more than usual. This is most likely the dip in a J-curve, not the destination.

Oh, the irony of this post being AI-generated.

This is Linus Pauling all over again.

Would love to see you convince the landlords to refurbish the building to use expensive heatpumps when gas is already in place.

They've been redoing the insulation since new regulation was enforced in France and Germany, it's been years now. So, that kind of thing is doable, except billions have been spent for a dubious result (look it up, Germans heat just as much as before). I am appalled at the complete lack of information on these subjects. For shame.

EDIT: Fact checking myself, the Germans have been reducing their heating, but significantly lower than expected because of a rebound effect (part of the efficiency gain is converted into comfort).

That’s a fair point. More years of life lost due to gun deaths.

I still like to draw a parallel, because they’re both deaths that we have the means to prevent, but the culture perpetuates the problem. That culture needs to change (doable in Europe with regard to AC because heatwaves will snap people out of denial, much harder or impossible to solve the gun culture problem in the US).

« Heating is absurdly expensive with leaky building so people prioritize insulating. »

Nope, heat pumps are cheaper and more efficient. Insulating did not even make a dent in reducing emissions in Germany after years of trying.

Whataboutism about cold related deaths doesn’t change anything about the heat related deaths. Did you know the Philippines lose fewer people to heat than Europe, per capita? They have AC.

Again, you’ve been misinformed. Please research the subject, use an LLM, whatever you need. The information is right there.

Something needs to be done with the heat. The common euro talking point: aircon doesn’t solve the problem, let’s insulate instead (an order of magnitude more expensive). Apparently you entertain an even more absurd idea: let’s just do nothing, because everyone is too poor. That’s just wrong, plenty of home owners or real estate owners have the means to foot the bills, especially if regulation mandates or subsidises heat pumps.

Besides that, just know you’re participating in a system of belief that needlessly kills thousands each year (and many more to come, if you believe as I hope that climate change is real). Just dwell on it a little. Thousands dead because of ideological comfort and resistance to change, which in and of itself is a weird form of climate skepticism.

If you answer this, please address each of my points from both comments. You have adressed none so far.

That’s because you pay attention to your body and you’re not in denial. Above 37 degrees, your body cannot regulate itself, and it starts being seriously uncomfortable before that. Going outside for a run when it’s 40 is unbelievably stupid.

Thousands will die, but one guy went jogging at 40 degrees outside so it’s okay.

Unless the aircon is a heat pump, in which case it’s also useful in the winter, it’s more efficient and carbon neutral if your electricity grid is decarbonised.

If most people can’t afford a heat pump, why do we entertain the idea of making them pay an order of magnitude more to better insulate their home, which doesn’t even work in the end?

You’ve been misinformed by European media. Please do your research, it’s all online.

Same in France. The trick is to wait for a control visit, and then turn on the cooling.

That kind of thinking kills more people each year in Europe than guns do in the USA. Let that sink in.

If he is confident enough to make economic predictions, it’s only fair that we take him to task on these.

Does the « greed of the few » include the masses who use air travel across the world, who use cars, who rely on energy infrastructure? I guess the answer is somehow no, because this is populist drivel of the worst kind. Did not expect that here.

This is honestly a very, very naive statement. We are social animals and we naturally gravitate towards devaluing and shaming certain styles of speech. We police speech already! It’s often unfortunate, but it’s not devoid of function. I, for one, am happy with shaming LLM speech. It’s never been so easy to detect lazy thinking.

What a strange way to spell Zelda Ocarina of Time!

It’s short term happiness at best, and at the expense of every other possible architectural characteristic (maintainability, performance, reliability, scalability, you name it).

I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable.

You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it in the slightest. It is just a vehicle for their resentment.

A cursory look at the fall of extreme poverty across the world, over the last few decades, is enough to refute the idea that the world is largely based on exploitation.

Interesting! Is it any good? Did it age well?

A nice bonus is that sysadmin tasks tend to be light in terms of token usage, that’s very convenient given the increasingly strict usage limits these days.

No need for any AI-specific tool, this is exactly what devcontainer is for! Just tell your agent to use devcontainer up (and docker compose down the other way).

Tell me you’re using Codex without telling me you’re using Codex :)

The thing is, with manual coding, you spot a view in the distance, you trek your way for a few hours, and you realize when you get there that the view isn’t as great as you thought it was.

With LLM-assisted coding, you skip the trek and you instantly know that’s not it.