HN user
Agents allow for delegation, that’s something we aren’t used to as devs. But it’s very useful.
It’s why the execs get so excited about these tools: they understand how to delegate.
I still do deep work, but I actually enjoy a session bouncing between agents. And I can chose how much focus to give each tasks.
Be real, most of that flow state was typing boilerplate
*You dont*
Skill issue, not a universal problem.
(1) Spending time building a plan. I have lots of artifacts like diagrams, tables, web pages that help me think through all the details quickly. Get code snippets to reduce uncertainty, get options for architectural decisions, flesh out assumptions.
Main thing is (1) how do I verify the agent hits the happy path and (2) how can I elicit and clarify assumptions it might make.
Then follow up the build with exploring and refactoring.
(2) prioritized context switching (like playing an RTS) I have several tasks going at once, while one works I hop onto other tasks.
I usually have one or two “core” goals I’m trying to accomplish that take deeper thinking and get priority. The other tasks are smaller and require less thinking.
A lot of times I’ll have the secondary agents build research docs I can review in detail later.
every line of code written by a human should have a dollar sign attached to it.
Every line of code that adds value should have some of that value should GO BACK INTO THE PROJECT.
I'm against the idea a successful product should be open source, even when you have full conrol of your data and they only charge for convenience.
Its an assinine philosophy that makes for WORSE products. Your projects would do better with revenue. More time, better marketing, other people to help.
Octave developer gave up after 25 years[0]. Instead of a robust competitor with a full team of people working on it and generational wealth for the value he created, he gave up struggling to pay bills.
Agree wholeheartedly, but you already have that with Obsidian. You own the vault, and if you don't want obsidian, its already in markdown.
I'm mixing the two because I think developers should value their time and profit from the value they add. I want them to build viable businesses so they get wealthy from their efforts and can continue keeping useful products alive.
There's no value to their business to open sourcing the product. Open source risks losing customers to knock-off competitors or fragmenting their plugin ecoystem (which is a lot of Obsidians moat).
So you saw a product that (1) gives you complete control of your data (2) uses an open format (3) only charges for sync, publish, and commercial use, and you thought to yourself:
"What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute"
Have fun!
Why should it be opensource? Obsidian gives you complete control of your data, which it stores in an open standard.
Please explain to me why developers should act like monks who've taken a vow of poverty? The devs built something valuable, they should profit from it.
You want ENGLISH to be more phonetic?
English, a language with over 40 different dialects in its country of origin.
English, the official language of over 60 countries?
English, the bastard child of millenia of Roman, Germanic, and French colonization?
English, a language with documented vowel shift that occured over 200-300 years?
THAT language would be easier if the words were spelled how they were pronounced?
Taking a contrarian point here, I went into software to make money doing a craft I can enjoy. I love software because its *useful*. Useful enough I can finance a lifestyle I enjoy for myself and my family, while still feeling moments of creativity and autonomy.
I think there needs to be a distinction between artist and artisan. Art exists for its own sake, code exists because its useful. I don't want code that reads like poetry, I want code that works so I read actual poetry later.
Have a project in mind that you’ve always wanted to tackle but it never made sense to you to do it because it would never be used by anyone else or it would never make you any money?
I appreciate the tinker's and hobbyists, software is endlessly interesting as a career, and I'm thankful to be here. But I only want to build code that is useful.
Why is James Damore listed alongside Andreesen and Zuckerberg? Andreesen and Zuckerberg have hundreds of billions at their disposal and Damore was an employee fired for giving feedback on a company diversity program.
I mean I know why, but the antipathy underlying the article undermines an otherwise interesting point.
As a close watcher of Canadian politics, here's the best summary I can offer for those not familiar:
Overal Picture
Canada has seen gdp-per-capita decline for nearly every quarter over the past 3 years. Large stimulus spending during the pandemic fueled the housing crisis and added massive inflation. Stimulating the economy through similarly massive increases in Non-Permanent Residents has kept GDP afloat, but come at the cost of over-burdening public institutions and housing. Contiuing either policy is not possible and deeply unpopular. Canadians now pay more taxes than any US state, have housing more expensive than New York, but with productivity below that of the poorest state and our dollar running a major discount. This while our public instutions are struggling to meet demand.
1. Recurring themes in Canadian Politics
2. Recent history of the federal liberals
3. Current issues facing the government
Recurring Themes in Canadian Politics
- Unlike the U.S. where there are multiple strong centers of politics and commerce (East Cost, West Coast, Texas), Canada political power is centered largely along the St. Lawrence River where most of the country's population lives.
- Trends arising from this include: Quebec receiving, relative to its population, outsized benefits and influence in exchange for remaining part of the country and as result of French speaking requirements for the federal government. Quebec has nearly exited the country several times
- Canada is still largely a resource-based economy and possess an impressive amount of natural resources: oil, natural gas, largest uranium reserves in the world, more freshwater than all other countries combined, etc.
- The concentration of power in the East while most resource development happening in the West, creates a quasi-colonial between the Ontario/Quebec and the younger and resource heavy provinces, particularly the Prairies.
- Economically, Canada priviledges large incumbent businesses and most of its sectors are oligopolies. The reasoning for doing so historically has been to fend of larger, well funded US competitors.
Recent History of the federal liberals
- Liberals have historically have been centrist party, taking popular ideas from both socialist NDP (who have yet to win a federal election) and the federal Conservative party (itself a coaltion of social and fiscal conservatives created by Harper in the 90s).
- 2015 Justin Trudeau came in as the most popular Prime Minister in history with a majority government. Major legislation included legalizing weed and improvements to Child Benefits. The majority was lost in 2019 with Conservatives gaining the popular vote.
Overall Picture - In Detail
- Economic Issue #1: Lagging economy. Canada is still largely a resource based economy (see above) and business investment in that sector, and Canada overall, declined drastically starting in 2015, arguably due to increasing opportunities for resource development in the U.S. and the Canadian Federal Government stance towards non-reweables. Business investment is more a leading indicator, but still a major economic issue for Canada.
- Economic Issue #2: Increased cost of housing. Canadian housing costs in major cities has reached crisis levels even leading up to the pandemic. Our major cities like Toronto and Vancouver are some of the most unaffordable in the world. Most people who have been in Canada have seen housing in their cities go from achieveable-if-expensive (in major regions) to impossibly unaffordable. Most major cities now require 30+ of saving (at the average income) for a downpayment with a salary in the top 1% to purchase a home.
- Economic issue #3: Large inflation, combined with increased costs from consolidated markets with little competition. Not unlike other countries post-pandemic, but reports show major costs of living such as groceries have seen above-inflation levels of price increases due to industry consolidation. I.E. Many parts of Canada have one 2 major suppliers of grociers
- Immigration Issue #1: Non-permanent Residents. Canada has 2 classes of immigrants (aside from Refugees, whih make up a small number): Permanent Residents (PR's) and Non-permanent residents (NPR's). Our PR system is what is widely hailed as one of the best in the world and a point of Canadian pride. The NPR system has been substantially expanded under the Trudeau government and arguably exploited with millions of NPR's entering as temporary workers and university students. NPR's now consist of over 7% of the population (larger than then Indigenous population).
- Social Cohesion: most of Canada's public services (healthcare, teaching, even postal services, etc) have seen substantial degradation and a struggle to meet capacity.
- Lastly, it should be noted that Canada has tax system well above any US state. Historically, most Canadians have not have a problem with this because of the relative strength of our public institutions.
Current Issues facing the Goverment
- If the federal liberals have an election, they will lost most of their seats. They may even lose party status. They will likely avoid this at all costs.
- The federal NDP are not projected to lose seats, but will lose influence they gain by upholding the minority government. They gain little from a federal election.
- Given an early election is not likely and Trudeau is facing revolts internally (his key finance minister and deputy PM resigned publicly in the past few weeks), the choice is to stop parliment while they look for a new PM (trudeau may act as the interim). If they choose an existing MP for PM (maybe Freeland) they risk being associated with a deeply unpopular party. If they chose an outsider (like Mark Carney), they risk just as much backlash for an unelected PM.
Religion and politics have always been mixed. Prior to the founding of the U.S., religious and political identity was one and the same. Which is why heresy was often treated in civil courts as sedition.
Even when the U.S. introduced the concept of seperation of church and state, it was for the explicit purpose of promoting religion. The U.S. founders axiomatically assumed religion was necessary for morality and self-governance and believed that a free market of religions (as opposed to state religion) would lead to increased religiosity [0]. And, interestingly, it seems they were right as the countries with state churches have all seen massive religious decline while the U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the world (especially when you filter out the elite class, who as secular as Europeans).
The danger is that politicians co-opt religious institutions to help legitimize their regime and bolster support. Marsh's biography of Bonhoffer describes exactly this process.
[0] George Washington's Final Address: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/farewell-address "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Nice tidbits here. I'd summarize good conversation as balancing:
(1) Creating conversations that are fun and interesting for you. (2) Give attention to the person. Make them feel comfortable, seen, and understood.
More details:
- The better you get at creating you're own good time (and it is a skill), the more you 'energy' you have to give.
- If you feel akward, you'll make the other person uncomfortable. Being comfortable with yourself is the foundation to having a sense of presence and charisma. Even if an interaction is going poorly and its feels like your fault, it can be funny. So many sitcoms are based around comedically bad interactions.
- Focusing on giving attention and comfort to the other person helps take away the anxiety of "what are they thinking about me?". Your focused on doing something for them instead of what they think of you.
- Seeking validation is a form of trying to get something from somebody. When you seek validation, you bring an agenda to the conversation, even if unconsciously, and thats why it feels uncomfortable.
- Most people just talk to be heard, so its a real gift to give someone your genuine interest and attention.
Other tricks:
Take a guess instead of asking a question:
- "You look like your having a good day" instead of "how are you?".
- "Do you work in {field}?" instead of "what do you do?"
- "Are you from {place}"
- You're guess should be educated, something you notice about the person (remember how attention is a gift?). If you're right, you make an immediate connection. If you're wrong, the conversation has a natural place to go.
Pay attention to your body:
- Notice the sensations in your feet, hands, shoulders, etc. Don't change them, just notice them. Especially your breathe. It helps you be connected with the person in the moment instead of in your head.
(1) Live and Speak Honestly
(2) Be Childlike in your approach to life and relationships
(1) Honest Living
If your boring (and I don't know if you are), its probably because you stopped pursuing things that you wanted and excited you for something safe. Boring people also mask their emotions when speaking to people to avoid rejection.
To find people you genuinely connect with, you need to express yourself fully. Honest expressions will make you more polarizing, and you will experience rejection. But the people you connect with will be much deeper because they see who you actually are.
Honest living usually means some therapy or self reflection to identify the things in your life you stopped purusing. A simple litmus test: you are in a social situation and see a person you find attractive. Do you make excuses for not talking to them or go and talk to them, openly stating your interest?
(2) Childlike
Children play until they get hurt or get in trouble. Do you approach relationships with this attitude? Is your heart open to loving other people even if it hurts and they reject you?
My team switched our medium sized org over to Rancher Desktop with no major issues after about 10 months. We don't need kubernetes though.
Canada is intentionally setup to produce oligopolies as a defense against large American companies:
"Canada was, in a lot of ways, built on monopolies — think about the Hudson’s Bay Company or Canadian Pacific Rail. Canada has always feared that if we don’t let our homegrown companies get huge, we’ll get swamped by American competitors. That’s why there’s a tension between Canadian politicians, who often say they’re pro-competition, and the law, which incentivizes consolidation."
I think this strategy work well-enough until about 20 years ago. And by well enough I mean Canadian consumers weren't in an ideal situation, but things were good enough for most Canadians. Now the oligopolies have become basically predatory, gobbling up goverment funds and market capture wherever possible.
Case in point: our Temporary Foreign Worker program (who now make up 7% of the Canadian population) have not only strained housing, healthcare, and the job market it has even been called a "breeding ground for slavery" by the U.N. [1].
[0] https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/canada-monopolie... [1] https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/120/97/pdf/g24120...
we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships
We've doubled down on marketplaces to mediate interactions because they are rational systems. Rational systems like marketplaces, elections, and bureaucracies are the sine qua non of liberalism, which both ends of the political spectrum advocate for in their own ways. The right typically advocates more for marketplaces and corporations (i.e. market-based bureaucracies) and the left typically advocates for more government managemeant (election based bureaucracies).
Rational systems are in constrast to local cultures based on tradition, biology, and shared history. Its why there is so much homogenization in farming, music, clothing, architecture, etc.
The upside is that rational systems allow for scale, propserity, and individual liberty on an unprecedented level. On the downside, rational systems are fundamentally dehumanizing.
We mediate everything through marketplaces because we've don't have any place for non-rational organizing principles (locality, biology, shared history, etc)
As far as I understand Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach - self-referential recursive structures (strange loops) are the foundation of consciousness (among other interesting things). I've been watching to see if LLM's becoming self-referential actually improves them as opposed to degrades them.
Whatever the reasons, benefits, and challenges of population decline, the amount of disdain for human life these kind of articles bring out of people is astonishing. Sustainable growth is important - but why desire less life instead of more sustainable life? And the desire to see less human lives its little more thinly disguised resentment.
If you cannot see the value and beauty in life, that is a personal failure on your own part. And you failed because you chose not to look beyond suffering to see what is beautiful and worthwhile. You've failed to strive beyond your hardships to see meaning and beauty in your own life, so you've become resentful at life itself.
I feel like saying there's never adverse effects or that "irreligiosity does not scale" misses the point in a few ways.
I just mean irreligiosity doesn't scale as a way to provide existential value and social cohesion. This is what Henderson is getting at with Luxury Beliefs. They are beliefs that you can hold in the top, lets say, 10% of the wealth distribution. But those luxury beliefs actually damage people lower down the socio-economic ladder.
feel like saying there's never adverse effects There's definitely adverse effects! But its opposite side of the coin of having meaningful, cohesive communities. Your own examples are perfect. Belonging to a community does a lot, but at the same time it means you have to conform to the community or lose its benefits.
Also, the examples of crusades, etc are just human nature expressed through religion. If the 20th century taught us nothing else, is that you don't need religion to have murderous ideologies. In fact, I'd take the Spanish Inquisition to the horrors of 20th century dictators any day!
What's the alternative I mean, that's problem we're facing isn't it? Maybe there is some way to replace the social and existential value provided by religion, but I don't see it.
Religion ticks all these boxes
Regular participation in religious services is of the most beneficial activities a person can do for their mental health. I'm not saying this as a platitude, but as a well documented observed phenomenom [0][1]. To the point, I regularly see studies on benefits to those who regularly attend religious services and have never seen a study showing any adverse affects from it.
That is not to say religion is an unalloyed good, far from it. But human communities are built around shared values and beliefs - and religions provide community, cohesion, and existential value that is not replicable in any other way.
This kinda knee-jerk anti-religious sentiment is something I'd personally label a luxury belief that is largely damaging to the population as a whole. If you are sufficiently wealthy, you can probably fill some of the voids left by a lack of religion. But irreligiosity does not scale
[0] https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religious-belief-provides-a-real... [1] https://www.nber.org/digest/oct05/religion-good-you
So you would not consider someone who has the following CV an intellectual?
- Has published or co-authored over 100+ academic papers in multiple fields
- Has h-index of 41, i10-index of 77, with 21,000 citations [0]
- Taught at Harvard
- Tenured Professor at the largest University in Canada
- 20+ year clinical practice
- Best selling author with over 5 million copies sold
You don't have to like his ideas, but if this doesn't qualify as "intellectual" not sure what else does.
Why not both? A big part of dating is increasing your opportunities to meet someone.
Plus, asking out strangers is lots of fun. The uncertainty that comes from stepping outside scripted social interactions creates tension. And tension what sexual attraction is made of, if you can remain calm and have fun with it.
And while it doesn't have the highest chance of success, when it lands it creates this feeling of stars crossing. Two strangers make eye contact and are immediately drawn to each other? Who doesn't want that 'how'd you two meet' story?
Appreciate the even handed summary here
Canada is in a constant struggle to localize and protect local culture. And in the process there are often dubious monopolistic forces that inject themselves into that process.
I'd argue monopolistic control is the goal. The latest CRTC regulations seems a fairly straight-forward cash grab to prop up legacy media companies that would otherwise fail for their lack of competitiveness. Further, the process of putting out these regulations has been appallingly undemocratic. Bill C-11, like its predecessor Bill C-10, were not allowed to be debated in the house (only the 3rd time such a motion has been used in Canada)[0].
And lets be real, its not the average Canadian that benefits here. Its the owners and shareholders of the companies.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Streaming_Act#History
> I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.
In the west, increase in secularity has only affected the groups of people who would've been nominally religious (i.e. religious in name only). People who attend religious services on a weekly basis (a much better measure of religiosity) has stayed consistent. This is still a notable shift in religious demographic, just not the kind your portraying.
Further, outside the west, much of the world has kept or has increased their religiosity as they modernized. The belief that modernism produces secularism was abandoned by sociologists of religion some time ago after it was evidentially false (E.g. India is the most religious country in the world and still a modern state).
The fact you can't see value in religious systems adhered to by billions of people over thousands of years speaks less to those systems than your lack of understanding them.
Its crazy reading threads of people casually justifying wildlife impacts as collateral damage for wind turbines, when they would never use those arguments to justify wildlife impact for oil and gas.
"Listen, cats kill millions of birds each year. So a few more die in tailings ponds?"
Not saying either should get a pass; companies installing wind turbines should be held to the same standard and not off just because they are "renewable"[0]
[0] Even the fact we consider wind/solar "renewable" is evidence of how slick the marketing campaigns are for these companies. Solar panels and wind turbines have limited life spans, require rare earth metals that have to be mined. Solar and wind energy are renewable but how we harvest that energy is decidedly NOT renewable.
Forgiveness is about your commitment to move on from the wrong independent on the other person's action. It is more often an ongoing personal effort, and one you should always aim for after allowing space for appropriate anger.
Reconcilliation is about the other person acknowledging the accusation of wrong. A confession of sorts. I'd suggest in the face of sincere apology this is always desirable to reconcile (turn the other cheek and what-not).
Restoration is about returning to the person trust and its associated privildges. Not everyone deserves to be restored depending on what they've done. I would argue the true mark of contrition is an acceptance they may be forgiven but never restored (depending on the nature of offense, of course).
It is just as difficult to learn how communicate technical material to peers and lay audiences as it is to learn the technical material itself.
Before becoming a dev I spent almost a decade training and involved in Christian ministry, a surprisingly technical field. It's hammered into your head you need to balance technical excellence and impactful communication to lay-audiences. You can't sacrifice either. I don't think devs are given that perspective.
Some observations I've had - 'Dev in a cave' do exist though, are more prevalent in software/engineering that elsewhere. They aren't the majority, but you will interact with them if you interact with developers/engineers. - Computer science and engineerings curriculums absolutely do not prioritize good communication. Even if devs come from informal backgrounds, they are in the same boat of needing to learn how to communicate technical material. - Even if most devs understand communication is important, they don't seem to appreciate how much work it takes, and are not likely aware of the ways to develop those skills. - The only real exceptions I've found to the above are people like myself who've come into development from some humanities discipline (philosophy, history, english, etc).
Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and maybe a bit of German is the baseline for a theologian worth their salt. Include with that a working knowledge of history (Greco-Roman, Ancient Near Eastern, Mediaval, Reformation/Renaissance era, and Modern), philsophy, linguistics, and literature. These are of course extras on top of the primary area of study in biblical studies, systematic theology, pastoral theology, and historical theology.
Anything that helps you identify your values so you can align your habits and routines with them:
- Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl (existential psychologist and holocaust survivor - some principles of finding meaning in life's circumstances from someone who went through a concentration camp)
- 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (Despite the politicized figure he became, the book is more about finding meaning in adopting responsibility with each rule being an example of how to do so)
- Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Mason (light hearted self help, but some nice principles in it)
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (a little dated, but contains some nice aphorisms. Audible has a really great version read by Richard Armitage, the guy who played Thorin in the Hobbtit)
- Give the New Testament a shot (not everyone's cup of tea, but several billion have found it helpful in finding a meaningful life so its probably worth a shot)
Also, don't neglect audio books! I've found going for walkins while listening to these kind of books a great way to relax and reflect.