sanarothe

/Not a software engineer perspective working on side projects

I guess if you're letting it vibe code huge chunks. I'm doing mostly handwritten code for my current project with a little bit of "I don't want to deal with this, Claude can handle it" and I've spent $1.26 this month for my 446 lines of code.

But yes I suppose at that rate, if Gastown or Beads or whatever is 300,000 lines of code (just to use a project known to be fully vibe coded with rough LOC reported), that would be over $800.

Don't let it vibe code hundreds of thousands of lines of code I guess.

When I was a teenager I submitted a random/unsolicited pull request to something in the spree ecosystem, got a very nice message from the maintainer/author saying that he appreciates it but it wasn't in the direction he wanted to take the library, but I could collaborate with him in some other way. Glad for the patience in that message, if it were spicy I might have been put off programming.

For similar / further reading on historical pacemakers, check out https://www.implantable-device.com/category/implantable-comp... where David Prutchi has amassed what I think is a comprehensive history of pacemakers / neurostimulators ranging from these early atomic designs up through current day devices / companies.

Summary: A winding rant about finding value as as a med device QE in new product introduction, getting along with difficult personalities and risk tolerances that don't mesh well with mine, and wondering why I'm pushing for excellence when the organization just wants to ship.

I take the opposite viewpoint as the criticisers -- they're too real, too foreseeable, that I would almost ask the Black Mirror writers not to give "them" any more ideas.

I think there's something about the physical acts and moments of writing out or typing out the words, or doing the analysis, etc. Writing 'our', backspacing, then forward again. Writing out a word but skipping two letters ahead, crossing out, starting again. Stopping mid paragraph to have a sip of coffee.

What Dutch OSINT Guy was saying here resonates with me for sure - the act of taking a blurry image into the photo editing software, the use of the manipulation tools, there seems to be something about those little acts that are an essential piece of thinking through a problem.

I'm making a process flow map for the manufacturing line we're standing up for a new product. I already have a process flow from the contract manufacturer but that's only helpful as reference. To understand the process, I gotta spend the time writing out the subassemblies in Visio, putting little reference pictures of the drawings next to the block, putting the care into linking the connections and putting things in order.

Ideas and questions seem to come out from those little spaces. Maybe it's just letting our subconscious a chance to speak finally hah.

L.M. Sacasas writes a lot about this from a 'spirit' point of view on [The Convivial Society](https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/) - that the little moments of rote work - putting the dishes away, weeding the garden, the walking of the dog, these are all essential part of life. Taking care of the mundane is living, and we must attend to them with care and gratitude.

<script src="https://cdn.gpteng.co/gptengineer.js" type="module"></script>

https://github.com/AntonOsika/gpt-engineer

I believe I have identified the culprit.

I don't code for a living, and I'm probably worse than a fresh grad would be but I use:

"Please don't generate or rewrite code, I just want to discuss the general approach."

Bc I don't know any design patterns or idiomatic approach, being able to discuss is amazing.

Though quality and consistency of responses is another thing... :)

If one is really hard pressed to use a windows box, I have found WSL to be a godsend. (eg at work, which is luckily at a relatively small company where IT isn't as locked down as other places I've worked.)

On the other hand, I tried to use powershell the other day for some simple admin tasks and ooooh wow I sure don't have anything nice to say.

Also my living is made on the Windows side, and not the Linux side, so I guess I don't know the pain points of WSL.

This is super funny when it's hitting the resource limit for a free tier. Like... I see that you already spent the resources to answer the question and send me half the response...

Classic phenomenological analysis. "This is not reality, but as a model it's good enough for a first pass design analysis"

I draw pictures. Had some difficulty dreaming up a part to create in engineering school but 3D cad programs made my own shortcomings irrelevant.

We had a 'intro engineering' class that taught orthographic drawing (by hand, about a decade ago, so thankful for it) which included puzzles on what the various 2D views should be given a 3d object, and the opposite direction. Holy crap those were so hard for me, but picked it up with practice.

I have visio open constantly at work. Lots of mind maps, flow diagrams. Take lots of pictures on vacation because the visual memories are basically gone as soon as my body is.

The 'language is a tool for communication' thread from today has some discussion on different types of thinking. For example it was inconceivable to me that someone would visualize words in their head, but I guess that's a thing for some people.

I do have to ask people to draw me a picture occasionally when they're trying to describe something. Don't need a lot of detail, just a rough sketch and I can figure out the idea.

I learned that the car rental desks in a certain airport are split up with the 'good ones' on one side and Hertz, Dollar and friends on the other side.

One fateful evening I land for a work trip and the whole lobby is a zoo with probably 100-150 people waiting in lines, milling about, trying to figure out travel plans because the cars we all reserved with the 'wrong side' rental places had all been rented out to other people.

The companies on the other side had no cars either but at least promised that if I had reserved a car with them, it would actually be reserved for me. So that's where I go every time now

Well it does say software engineering managers at the top but... This article is very strange to me as a non software engineer.

To be fair my industry has CFR mandated management responsibilities, including provision of resources and ensuring effectiveness of the company's quality systems.

But beyond being shielded from all that 'crap' I wouldn't want to deal with, my manager is...

- A resource on technical topics I'm not as familiar with

- A liasion to other groups, eg when I don't think I'm the right person to own something, or I'm hitting roadblocks

- Someone to vent to when other groups 'just don't get it'

- Someone to help prioritize and rebalance when I'm underwater

- Someone to keep shit from flowing downhill onto the engineers

- Someone to buy team lunches

The tiling-first paradigm of tiling WM feels less chaotic than using a standard floaty WM like Windows. For example, in Sway/i3 you get ~10 desktops by default, and tab between them with (eg) Win Key + [Number]. So you can set up your programs and tabs in a predictable way, eg web browser is always 1, working terminal is 2, notes program is 3, etc.

Whereas on Windows I'm always losing the tab I'm looking for, when trying to alt-tab between things. I know that there are better tools now, like Win Key + Tab (Which does also allow you to set up virtual desktops and have completely separate sets of programs visibly running) but it doesn't feel like the primary mode this desktop environment was designed for.

As far as splitting tabs, resizing, etc, Windows 11 is more polishing and feels really nice to use but functionality feels same same as Sway/i3 to me.

Ethos: I use both Sway (Wayland spiritual successor to i3 [which is X11 based]) and Windows 11 on a daily basis.

I have seen them called something like 'government affairs' - We have them in med device for various reasons. Current company is in market creation, so we have people on staff who build relationships and (ideally) change policy in VA, Medicare and other government health orgs, all as part of the fight against insurance non-authorization & non-coverage. US health insurance is evil and needs fixing, so in this case I think it is a positive.

Last company, megacorp, has a full-time guy in Brussels who does regulatory intelligence and represents the company in the legislative process.

I think EU MDR, the 2017 European medical device regulation, indicates there is probably some value in having meaningful input from the giant corporations in the relevant sector being regulated. The burden on med device manufacturers to get market access to the EU has become very high - the enforcement date of the regulation has been pushed back year after year because it's taking forever for companies to overhaul their technical documentation for this regulation (no grandfathering clause, everything state of the art), and taking forever to get review by notified bodies (not enough notified bodies, TON to review for every device family).

The result is that there are just fewer devices on the market. Companies are looking at their volumes vs the effort EU wants to maintain market access for something that's been available since 1985 and the choice is an obvious nope.

It seems like the regulation was created in a bit of a bubble. Perhaps if there were more stakeholders at the table who could say "Um this is a ridiculous hurdle and I'm going to drop from the market if you implement this" or "We don't want to be a notified for body EU MDR, the burden is just too high and costs don't work out"... maybe we wouldn't be in this absolute fi-esta.

(Source on market availability - https://www.medtecheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/med...)

Reimbursement is the #1 barrier to bringing a novel therapy to market in the US for the company I'm working for. The technology is decades old and proven (the novel part is where it's being put in the body) - the clinical benefits are now proven.

But it's a battle to get US insurance to cover the therapy - we have about 3x more patients confirmed as clinically eligible than actually get the therapy. (That is to say, US insurance rejects ~75%+ of claims).

As a result, there is an entire segment of the org dedicated to reimbursement. We have a team of professional insurance-bullshit-waders - they call, they file claims, they follow up, and I hear them asking for Document Control Numbers and Call Reference Numbers. There are 'Government Affairs' people who lobby with the VA and Medica{re, aid?}.

The payer barriers outside of US have been much lower. (But EU has it's own problems with medical device barriers... a rant for another day.)

It's become impossible to get sit down food or a drink in a US airport without using (what seems to be the same) company's QR code online order and pay to your seat system. It seems to be the same system for every restaurant or bar.

Besides needing to provide unnecessary amounts of information, it also requires a well working internet connection to load their bloated website. Which is often spotty so... very frustrating.

Luckily QR menus are going out of style.

My boss always sends a hello first, usually 1 to 5 minutes before I get the thing I'm actually supposed to respond to. If she just sent the whole thing at once, I could determine if it's something I need to break focus for immediately, or get to in a few minutes.

Substack does have all these sketchy patterns but there is a 'Let me read it first' text link on the popup that lets you continue, seemingly without tracking how many times you've done that.

BUT I made the mistake of actually signing up for one blog I liked and got smacked by a barrage of more 'sign up for this!!!' immediately after. So I agree that it's user-hostile but... it seems like most of the web is moving that way, outside of our digital gardens.

Yes used in practice! I do production support in this field.

Nitinol is used in lots of vascular devices. At least in my company, they used it first in guidewires just for the super elasticity, as a torturous vessel may kink a steel wire.

At first there were bare metal stents, steel and later CoCr alloy. But last 15 years or so we've gotten self expanding stents that use the shape memory effect to set the final diameter at body temperature during processing, then the Stent is collapsed down into a catheter delivery system. There are various designs for releasing the collapsed Stent into the vessel, but once there it springs open thanks to super elasticity and apposes (conforms) up to the vessel wall, where good apposition gives lower chance of thrombosis formation.

There are lots of other devices too... embolic protection devices (niti frame with a net over it, to catch shmoo from flowing to brain during a carotid procedure ) And various heart repair devices.

It's great for intervention devices because you can collapse a device down small enough to be advanced by radial or femoral artery access and let's you do things that would normally require cracking someone's chest open for heart surgery.

But the material is finicky, and it could take a decade for a smelter to get their niti process worked out. A very small difference in alloy composition disproportionately affects the crystal structure transition temperature, which impacts whether device will behave in service conditions

I always liked the chemical acronym LiFePO4... it has "life" right in the name!

Thanks I like STAT news but I just can't justify paying $300/year - And I know I'm not special enough to get my company to pay for it :)

From Toyota perspective yes -- they can maintain appropriate kanban stocks in their individual factories and still pull as needed. Sounds like the suppliers might be "strongarmed" by Toyota purchasing power.

I have no advice but want to send some empathy. I also typically get through work with curiosity and my own motivation, and less by discipline.

It's a constant battle to refocus on critical business objectives and not to get distracted by the hundred other interesting rabbit holes.

I know I've given too much time and too much of myself to work, but still feel a bit of shame and stress about falling behind.

I've always heard the advice to do work by discipline and not motivation but 30 years and I haven't figured it out yet :)

I've been adapting ZK ideas to my work flow. I am in med devices working on CE mark regulatory filings, and so ZK kinda fits well with my job, which is essentially to find product/process information, know stuff, and communicate it.

I think ZK works very well in team environment. I make "issue logs" - when something goes wrong, or there is a particular detail to understand, I force myself to write out the issue and resolution into ZK. (Force, because it is so much easier to just solve and move on without documenting)

If you can maintain some discipline in writing summaries and updating for yourself, this solves "we discussed x issue 2 months ago, but don't remember {some, all} details now"

I keep sublime text open to my Kasten at all times so using full text search in a database of curated notes is so much quicker than trying to find the right project folder, or searching outlook.

I don't worry about one file - one idea, I just break things up how they make sense to me. The "rules" for ZK don't entirely make sense for engineering work and must be bent to your needs.

My only lament with plain text is difficulty in using figures / images in discussions with myself.

Well, management responsibility is regulated under CFR 21 820 for medical devices. There are equivalent regulations for pharma.

Executives do go to (probation it turns out and apparently not jail all the time) because their company broke the law and they're responsible for the company.

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/new-fda-strategy-crimin...

Yes realistically it took a couple hundred residents about an hour to clean up La Mesa after the riot stopped.

We lost a couple banks and a pizza hut.

But its quite tenable. No one will mourn for the buildings or police cruisers.

One of the ideas that Sascha and Christian of Zettelkasten.de have espoused is not not giving too much structure up front. At first I flirted with the idea of markdown files, and using something like an extension to Jekyll to resolve links and generate an HTML render of my zettel archive. But that's the same mistake I always make :) Way too much for what I need.

Like you, I settled on just using a text editor (sublime text and atom) with Markdown files. I don't plan to render them, I just like the syntax highlighting.

I think your proposed system captures the important part of the knowledge intake, ie two levels of abstraction (writing a source note, and then connecting the new knowledge from source note to (or just dumping it in) some existing node.)

But one other idea from Christian and Sascha is to avoid folder structures, and allow the organization to develop over time. On a work topic, notes from a few guidances and presentations, plus my experiences, cluster to create a note which transcends a categorical boundary I would have erected with a folder structure.

So, the suggested alt strategy is dump everything into one folder and create clusters using other structures, as they reveal themselves to be useful.

Individual contributor (technical path as opposed to a managerial path)