nbaksalyar

Similar to how students who spend most of their time practicing what they are studying with actual exercises achieve higher grades

This is spot on.

build a mental model of the code with every new line of code

This idea has been explored in depth in the Peter Naur's excellent paper, "Programming as theory building" [1] (also extensively discussed on HN [2]). If you haven't read it yet, I bet you will enjoy it a lot. :)

[1] https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/1985-naur.pdf

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Programming+as+theory+building

"Eliza" is a bit unusual for Zachtronics as it's not a programming/puzzle game but a visual novel. But it's excellent and I think it's one of their most under-appreciated games. It's well-written, well-acted, and very prescient. Highly recommended!

What a great and timely question! :) I quit a week ago to take a year-long sabbatical.

1. What pushed you to do it?

The pursuit of curiosity, for the most part. That's what makes quitting a lot harder when you have a good job and nothing to complain about: you feel like you're making a huge mistake on a whim. Doubly so when you consider the state of the job market at this time.

That said, we don't live to work; we work to live. It's a lot of risk and uncertainty, but you should remember that while some unknown bad things can happen in the future, unknown good things can happen too! [1] When you own your time, you increase your luck surface considerably: you have more opportunities to travel, to wander, to play, to meet new people, to tinker, to discover.

So I've been thinking and reading about this a lot. The final push came from two books I read: "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millerd [2] and "The Inner Compass" by Lawrence Yeo [3]. I can't recommend them enough.

2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)

I have a huge Steam backlog to beat... :) Besides that, I'll be studying computer science and maths. Programming language theory, compilers, and functional programming are particularly close to my heart.

But, most importantly, enjoying life!

[1] https://moretothat.com/take-the-leap/

[2] https://pathlesspath.com/

[3] https://compass.moretothat.com/

People keep saying things like

it's probably an issue with your usage of if

I've rarely seen a repo and a problem that claude can't chew through with the right prompt

a skill/PEBKAC issue

But then I remember how Anthropic couldn't fix the flickering issue for many months. It just does not compute.

Is it that people working at Anthropic can't prompt and it's a "skill issue" too? I mean, the terminal does not flicker in a lot of other complex TUI apps that I use every day - Midnight Commander, Emacs, tmux, etc. These are open source, Claude could be prompted to "just do what Midnight Commander does". So what is it?

It's not just Google AI Studio, it's also Google proper. Just one search result page consumes gigabytes of RAM. How did this happen? I've switched to DDG and never looked back.

Bret Victor's list of papers and references would be one:

https://worrydream.com/refs/

It's a deep, deep rabbit hole.

Is this what getting old feels like? Hating everything the rest of society is racing to embrace?

I don’t think so. Some societies are racing to embrace mass surveillance and abuse of civil rights. Pointing this out and complaining about it is not “hate” and not reserved for old people only. :)

I think spreadsheets have been severely undervalued by software engineers and they're generally under-researched. It's definitely possible to use them in more non-obvious and interesting ways. E.g., see AmbSheets [1]

[1] https://www.inkandswitch.com/ambsheets/notebook/

I have a feeling that the same idea absolutely does apply to code. Writing code is much closer to writing prose than it may seem. And the act of writing code also makes you think as you write. Even if you're writing boilerplate. Because how else would you uncover subtle opportunities to reduce the boilerplate and introduce new, better abstractions?

Why is it wrong? Please elaborate. For more substance, here’s a discussion from 2015:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10381015

    > only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later

Web servers have existed for more than 30 years and haven’t changed that much since then. Or e.g., React + Redux is pretty much the same thing as WinProc from WinAPI - invented some time in ~1990. Before Docker, there were Solaris Zones and FreeBSD jails. TCP/IP is 50 years old. And many, many other things we perceive as new.

Moreover, I think it’s worth looking back and learning some of the “old tech” for inspiration; there’s a wealth of deep and prescient ideas there. We still don’t have a full modern equivalent of Macromedia Flash, for example.

I strongly recommend to check all other papers and articles on https://okmij.org/ftp/, every single one of them is brilliant and insightful. I love the pedagogy, the writing style and clarity. Oleg Kiselyov is one of the best technical writers I've discovered recently.

In the Stalin times, yes.

But the policy in the early Soviet Union was in fact opposite:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia

you want your vault accessible across linux/windows/android/macos/ipad

For that, I use Syncthing [1] in addition to iCloud. It works exceptionally well – I see my edits in real time across different devices.

[1] https://syncthing.net/

introductory textbooks/blogs/resources on the topic

Books on TypeScript, OCaml, Rust or Haskell are usually great resources for that.

There's also "Thinking with Types" which addresses this topic in a lot of depth:

https://thinkingwithtypes.com/

SEEKING WORK

Location: United Kingdom, UTC+0

Remote: Yes

Technologies: Rust, compiler engineering (query languages, code generators, dev tools, programming languages, LLVM), Linux kernel (eBPF, io_uring, low-level networking, performance optimisation)

Email: nikita.baksalyar@gmail.com

I'm a systems engineer with 8+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in low-level programming, design and implementation of compilers and programming languages.

Has google completely stopped working for anyone else?

Yes. However, I found that https://scholar.google.com still works perfectly well. It feels just as the old Google without all the crap they've been adding in the last years.

Location: United Kingdom, UTC+0

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Rust, compiler engineering (LLVM, interpreters, query languages, code generators, dev tools, programming languages), Linux kernel (eBPF, io_uring, low-level networking)

Résumé/CV: systems engineer with 8+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in low-level programming, design and implementation of compilers and programming languages, software optimisation.

Email: nikita.baksalyar@gmail.com

Location: United Kingdom, UTC+0

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: within the UK only

Technologies: Rust, Linux kernel (eBPF, networking), LLVM and compiler engineering (query languages design and implementation, code generators, dev tools)

Résumé/CV: systems engineer with 7+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in systems programming, API design & implementation, compilers, networking (including advanced aspects such as P2P + NAT traversal), and software optimisation. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nbaksalyar/

Email: nikita.baksalyar@gmail.com

I would argue "lifestyle startups" are largely a low-interest rate phenomenon.

Could you elaborate on this?

I'm curious because I thought it's the opposite: VC-fueled startups are "growth at all costs even if it means no profits" whilst "lifestyle startups" is more like "I have a $1K MRR and it's just enough to subsist eating ramen". Maybe we understand the term "lifestyle startups" differently? :)

Just visited it yesterday - and here it is on the HN front page. :)

I was surprised to find out how they rely on modded consoles and presumably pirated ROMs. This just shows how much the emulation/modding scene means for video game preservation and how short-sighted corporations like Nintendo are, litigating and trying to shut down these efforts.

This is an excellent book explaining the wonders of Xerox PARC and what they wrought for us all.

There's another great book which puts Xerox PARC into context, "The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop [0]. It goes into much detail about how Xerox PARC came to be and how the ideas behind it developed. It's the best book on the computer history I've read.

[0] https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine

Software is more complex than it was.

In some cases software quality suffers not because of the inherent complexity but because it's changed for the sake of change.

One example is the Books app that was updated in iOS 16. The update brought some new features but also changed the UI/UX for no reason, making it unpleasant to use. There's no dearth of similar examples with Google's apps too.

does anyone use fedora as their desktop?

I've been using it since Fedora 21 which amounts to almost 8 years. In these 8 years, I've had zero problems with the OS - besides some proprietary Nvidia driver issues which are/were pretty common on Linux; since I've switched to AMD GPUs I haven't had any problems whatsoever. Upgrades go smooth every time, even when upgrading to beta versions.

Fedora is a rock-solid distro and I always recommend it over alternatives.

Mr. Robot had real phone numbers

And even real IP addresses. :) The attention to detail in the show was something else.

I watched an hourlong introduction video and could still barely grasp it

I can relate to that. What helped me to understand it though is looking through some projects using Salsa [1] and reading the document about how the Rust compiler uses queries [2]. You might also want to watch the discussion video with Anders Hejlsberg [3] that gives an overview of the problems that Adapton/Salsa try to solve.

[1] https://crates.io/crates/salsa/reverse_dependencies

[2] https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/query.html

[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/shows/seth-juarez/anders-h...

The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop [0].

One of the best books on the history of interactive computing, human-computer interaction, and networking, which are all connected in surprising and fascinating ways.

It's eye-opening how many things we take for granted were invented back in the 60s and 70s – and how many visionary ideas from that time still hold their value in this day and age.

[0] https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine

C++ Crash Course [0] should be a good start. It will teach you all the important basics without the legacy stuff.

[0] https://nostarch.com/cppcrashcourse

Yes, the O'Reilly book "Understanding MySQL Internals" [0]

[0] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/understanding-mysql-int...

If you're reading a nonfiction book (that you own, obviously), the whole idea of "don't write in the book" is complete bullshit

I'd argue that it's applicable to fiction books, too. :) I love pre-owned books with notes and comments, it feels like you share the experience of reading with someone you might not even know.