arecsu

  Location: San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina (UTC-3)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  
  Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Astro, 
  Svelte, Vue/Nuxt, Three.js, Electron, Shopify, 
  Python, Docker, Cloudflare, Linux, Figma
  

Résumé/CV: https://malejandro.com/resume

Portfolio: https://malejandro.com

GitHub: https://github.com/Arecsu

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-alejandro/

Email: [email protected]

---

I'm Alejandro, a software/product engineer and visual artist with 6+ years building digital products for independent studios, record labels, and creative brands. I work across product direction, UX/UI, architecture, and implementation, carrying projects from an open brief through production.

Some recent work:

- Founded martyr—, a digital art supply store. Built the brand, products, storefront, and infrastructure, with 600+ products sold worldwide.

- Rebuilt mönk's portfolio and store from Webflow to Shopify, and built a Three.js fine-art viewer with realistic materials and mobile AR.

- Created ZMOK, an open-source 3D renderer for Photoshop mockups on macOS and Windows.

I've contributed PRs and patches to Darktable, Chromium, Three.js, Astro, VS Code, and Nuxt. I use AI coding tools extensively, while keeping responsibility for technical decisions, testing, and what ships.

Looking for a remote software/product engineering role. Creative tools, websites, apps, and interactive products are particular interests, but I'm open to other domains where I can bring strong engineering, product judgment, experimentation, and attention to detail.

Ironic how they are playing "ethics and morals" given they trained their entire models for years upon copyrighted work from the entire planet (and who knows what else). Do what I say not what I do. Karma will hit them hard if they continue this path

I love Astro. It is so extensive to your liking and if you want to have complex interactive stuff at some point, you can just add a framework of your liking (react, vue, svelte, etc) and it will still work wonders. It doesn't abstract that much, and yet provides a nice UX and performance is top notch, which is why I love it so much. You can do from the most simplest website and blog on it, to the most complex content driven websites. I use it for so many different things, both hobbyist and professionally.

At least in arts, there is a true "creative" element complicated to replicate at least in the current LLMs. True artistic invention involves a "spirit of rule-breaking" that pushes culture forward. If AI is only being trained on past data, it then struggles to make the non-linear, revolutionary creative jumps we've seen throughout history.

For instance, the transition of music from the 1950s to the Beatles, then to Nirvana, hip-hop, and beyond. Before Beatles, there wasn't such thing as Beatles. Before Nirvana, there wasn't anything that sounded like that. Of course you can point out underground bands doing something like that around that era, but stray way back in time to like 1940s and chances of hearing something like Nirvana are near zero.

True art is not easy to make. It is, rather, difficult. If you lower the difficulty to make art, then it is not already a piece of art. It is just another product down the line of plenty of copy cats. Art involves risk taking that AIs I don't think are capable of producing. Art is a medium to express human emotions, and the inherent concept here is that it will end up being consumed by another human being, and it has value because you know that another human being was on the other side of the table making it. Even if you do something you consider art for yourself with an AI, the human being on the other side was, well... you. You prompted it and you guided it. I don't believe people in general would be contempt with an endless stream of autonomous AI generated stuff (if they invent such loop) because it would not only be generic, repetitive and predictable at some point, but also the fact that you know its AI it destroys the whole vibe. Same as if you get an email and you don't know if it was an AI or human behind it. If it was a human being, great, you feel a connection there. If it was AI, well... that sucks to no end, and I guess that is for a very good reason.

Although I'm using art here as the argument for creativity, I believe there may be something analogous to scientific leaps and discoveries. To my understanding, people who seem to be fairly successful in uncover the truths of the universe via science also happen to be pretty good when it comes to some artistic endeavors, even if its only about consuming and appreciating art and not necessarily creating it. So, there might be some link in creativity there. I'm open to be wrong, of course. Creativity is about risk taking and pushing the edges, not re-iterating upon what's been already there.

Maybe the endgame, the end of all abstractions, is to get rid of computers and live an analog, simpler life. Woops seems like Unabomber already thought of this one!

Title of the post hints to a generalization. Study otherwise is pretty specific in the group of people being studied.

Realtime soft lighting is possible but at what cost, for such static scene? I think the light bake technique he used is, in fact, the appropriate way to get beautiful visual results with the upside of good performance in any hardware. It's curious to say Dunning Kruger effect when I do believe the decision reached is possibly conscious about the performance shortcomings of bouncing light in real time

That's a really good point that is often missed. We go through life using software which we don't know their code at all. Like... The vast majority of it, all people basically. We just trust the people who did it. Not saying that LLMs don't deserve oversight, but how different is that from what we've done previously?

Good observation. Seems like holding strong opinions on anything is a risky move, at least in software nowadays.

The Kitchen game is a ripoff of Overcooked in pretty much everything lol

Oh boy... this argument is decades old at this point it makes no sense... are you saying people who run over pedestrians on GTA just for the fun of it or punch other people or beings in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat are all psychos, correlating with faulty and dangerous members of society? You can resort to data to see the truth for yourself on this. Anecdotal but I've came across disturbing people who would preach morality and ethics to other people more than anything else.

Yes, the same behavior as currently does for claude and codex I would say

Honestly, it runs and looks incredible (macOS). Very well done. Would love to have support for pi-agent, as is my go-to for most uses I have. Congratulations!

Pi is extensible, and to iterate new extensions, install them, create your own, even if the agents needs to, it is much faster and easier to manage that than a compiled language I would suppose. Most of the time it's really the waiting time than anything else. If any, the "resource intensive" parts of the app could be turned into low-level extensions such as writing or reading files, maybe, but the main part of the app makes total sense. The language and ecosystem is fairly accessible as well, which serves as a further argument. Interesting choice of words when it comes to calling it "joke language" really.

  Location: San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina (UTC-3)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  
  Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Astro, 
  Svelte, Vue/Nuxt, Three.js, Electron, Shopify, 
  Python, Docker, Cloudflare, Linux, Figma
  

Résumé/CV: https://malejandro.com/resume

Portfolio: https://malejandro.com

GitHub: https://github.com/Arecsu

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-alejandro/

Email: [email protected]

---

I'm Alejandro, a software/product engineer and visual artist with 6+ years building digital products for independent studios, record labels, and creative brands. I work across product direction, UX/UI, architecture, and implementation, carrying projects from an open brief through production.

Some recent work:

- Founded martyr—, a digital art supply store. Built the brand, products, storefront, and infrastructure, with 600+ products sold worldwide.

- Rebuilt mönk's portfolio and store from Webflow to Shopify, and built a Three.js fine-art viewer with realistic materials and mobile AR.

- Created ZMOK, an open-source 3D renderer for Photoshop mockups on macOS and Windows.

I've contributed PRs and patches to Darktable, Chromium, Three.js, Astro, VS Code, and Nuxt. I use AI coding tools extensively, while keeping responsibility for technical decisions, testing, and what ships.

Looking for a remote software/product engineering role. Creative tools and interactive products are particular interests, but I'm open to other domains where I can bring strong engineering, product judgment, and attention to detail.

Literally yes

Lovely!!

It's just a matter of time. The time you get freed up by these new tools are going to be used by new things, possibly learning something even more complex, and that also includes, potentially, creating more complex software and experiences.

No one is saying nowadays that they feel bad when they code in a high level language that gets converted to assembly with a compiler, wondering about the loss of not knowing how to code in assembly anymore. Because... most people didn't want to actually code assembly at the end of the day. They did it because it was the means to an end (produce software).

Of course there are people who love code in assembly and coding in whatever language with their own hands. For them, maybe the code itself IS the destination. Nothing wrong with it. It's just discovering who you are and how do you want to enjoy your own time. The same can be said about anything in life, not just code.

Speaking of means to an end, previous to AI, I've been using already existent CMS for my web projects. Be it Payload, Strapi, Directus. It was always painful, I've never enjoyed it, but something I had to do in order to get the frontend rolling for me and clients. Now I can literally architecture backends (with their own frontend!) from scratch with sqlite, bun, and minimal libraries. Control is tighter, much easier to achieve personalized experiences for each website, less buggy, creating tests suites for even the weirdest edge cases is a painless process, I'm not dependent anymore of the direction the CMS maintainers decide upon. Being able to mold shape a backend this way creates, for me and my clients, a far better experience. All while leaving more time for what I enjoy much more, which is fiddling with the UI/UX and fine-tuning down to the pixel the frontend itself with my bare hands :)

This is the real philosophical deep take of it all, are we using these devices, or are these devices using us?

Click Open in the file column

I love using AI. Getting my crazy ideas turn into software has never been easier. I like to architect software, not the code itself. The code has always been the means to my ends. I also love learning complicated concepts, from academics, math, physics, to art, philosophy, religion. It's wonderful to translate knowledge that is already out there but hard to understand somehow, because you can ask about it over and over and over and in the way you understand about things. Like a professor who understands you and never gets tired about silly questions. I don't know, it's just amazing at so many things. Of course, it's also pretty important to know how to use it, and when. I would never use it to replace my speech when speaking to someone else. That's bad. I would not like other people to do that to me either. Otherwise, why would I want to talk with that somebody when I can just ask an AI instead. We can love human beings and AI, and be critic of both at the same time.

I think you've built some awesome. Even if, as you said, it proves to be for an audience of one (you), I know some people out there are grateful for you sharing it. Comments are not reality most of the times. There is a silent portion which would like your idea and you just don't know. People here in HN tend to be very polarized towards a certain idea, come up with intellectual arguments to justify their emotional reactions. Of course you can find some light in negative comments, but still, to be taken with a grain of salt.

Someone said "a generation growing up without imagining. So depressing." This reads like old man yells to clouds. Through history you can find these comments about upcoming generations all over the place... We can make the same arguments in the past "oh you spend so much time reading others stories instead of writing your own? Yeah, you lack imagination kid, you're in big trouble."

To have nuance and avoid over-generalizing is a good exercise in today's society I guess.

Maybe they will evolve to search actual exploits live in a competition or something like that :) or a marathon to research jailbreaks for certain devices and give control back to the user, like smart tvs, I don't know! Something that would be more involved and maybe real. It's just a matter of rising the difficulty, and the bright side could be that it might be used for something even more creative and good!

This is very cool!! I'm also mesmerized about the opening animation that transforms the interface of the editor to a complete viewport state. For some reason is pretty laggy on Chrome (macbook air M1) but Firefox is super smooth. Besides that, awesome idea :)

Works and looks awesome!! On mobile clicking in a part doesn't do anything though, as it says in the description it should. (Should be tap on mobile instead of click). Android + Chrome, as reference

For what is worth, the fluent emojis from Microsoft, also named Segoe UI Emoji, have a 2D and 3D versions. They are beautiful! Although I'm not sure if the 3D ones are just complex vector images made to simulate depth with clever gradients and shadows, or were actually 3D rendered. I even saw some animations of them somewhere. Super cute

In the camp of software development, if AI really increases productivity when it comes to development, thus making it cheaper in terms of human resources, there will be opportunities when it comes to offering custom development, software and services to sectors in society where it was pretty much an obscure idea due to costs. Small business who would otherwise rely on convoluted, inefficient workflows from non-specialized software given their needs, will be able to pay a developer who can provide them with custom tools and services. This is basically new opportunities for a huge number of people in the industry in both sides: developers and people who need them. Small analogy but this can be extrapolated to so many areas. You get the idea.

Hmm I don't know about sustainable long term. Maybe with LLMs the burden of rebasing and porting the needed patches to keep it working across versions would make the task fairly sustainable vs no LLM usage.

That being said, agree that this is a horrible move and we are paying the consequences of it due to the huge market Chromium-browsers occupy. I'm a Firefox user as well, but it is really slow in adopting latest web features and I won't hold my breath for a shiny future, in regards Mozilla. Maybe there is a shiny future, maybe there is not.

At family gatherings, in their computers, it's all Google Chrome. No adblocks whatsoever. They got "used to" seeing ads everywhere. I personally can't. Web is literally unusable for me without it. I try my best to install adblocks in their devices. Most of the time, making them use Firefox is out of the question, as they are tied and "used to" Chrome profile sync and don't want to log in their pages once again, etc. My mom got me luckily, and I got her Brave with all branding, sponsored and crypto non-sense disabled. Otherwise, she's the perfect target for incorrectly clicking through a sponsored post in a google search, or similar popups and stuff in other websites, resulting in deceive behavior.

This is the worst of it, actually. It's not just "commercial ads". Sometimes, it's just deceiving behavior, manipulating people's opinions, and making them feel in a particular way to do god knows what.

WebKit being forced down to iOS user's throat is also that should not happen, but we as society for consented to it. We can say that this is the only thing holding Chromium to become pure havok. Although ublock is available there, is it in their "lite" format, same as Chromium. So, not the full uBlock that we should be getting...

There's also a part where we should blame ourselves as culture for letting all these things to slide without doing anything for it. Microsoft got sued by the US in 2001 for an antitrust case for leveraging Internet Explorer through their Windows monopoly in PC market. We have it so much worse today, and no one seems to bat an eye. I know things are far more complex compared to the past, but hey, due to it, we should have more strict systems in place to prevent these anti-people behavior.

Ladybird is a welcome addition to the scene. Hopefully something beautiful comes out of them in the next couple of years.

Awesome read! Congratulations on discovering this and reporting. Hope you get something back from FIFA. This could've lead to some huge disaster if it failed under the wrong hands.

Love your writing skills as well!

> I closed it immediately. But the damage was done (to my brain).

Laughed so hard when I read this one :D

You can also argue the opposite, that due to her working with a particular interest in proving the organic industry wrong, she is finding factual information about it. As usual, information should be dismissed or confirmed with more information, not with fallacies