I played writing an intro for some documentation I'm creating, and it was amazing. It felt very conversational, very different than traditional dictation software.
1. I have the same question as others, what's the privacy policy? Where is this being used? I'd like to expend for work but their first question is where the content is going.
2. And straying from focusing on core functionality, do you have a vision of a code specific version of this? Do you feel like a specialized model/tool is needed or do you believe this can take care of it.
Currently, I tried asking it to write out `def func():[newline]pass` and then correcting it but didn't get very far:
> "Just my funk. Oh no the word death try type the letters DEF FU. Okay, no let's stop."
Overall, great work!
Been working on a pi400 eink solar powered cyberdeck but haven’t done anything with cell connection yet.
So could follow long for that and for the blackberry.
Each time the company was more comfortable with mainstream dbs, so we ended going with something like you’re talking about, built on top of a db. A couple of the projects were because a mainstream dbs wouldn’t scale.
The systems definitely worked, but it was also a lot of implementation complexity on an other wise simple business prop: “store this data as facts”
The questions earlier in the series felt more “real”, where I get a sense of promotion now. It was always about the promotion (that was the “prize” in the first episodes), but the questions feel shaped to promote spots for plugs.
Still one of the best interview shows running. The wings give every sense of urgency and gravity. It’s the perfect comic relief to the weight or depth of the question, the focus on the heat disarms the guest of their routine answers and reveals a lot about the person.
3rd parties go down, it happens. In general a system that is dependent on a third party should have some non exceptional behavior when that happens.
So if I’m not setup with vcr, and 3rd party is down- I would on the behavior for what happens when it’s down.
Or if I’m lucky enough to have the time to watch the moon move slowly, it feels natural to my senses to say it’s moving across the sky. The moon feels like it’s moving around me. But I can stretch my brain and imagine the reality.
Sometimes math arrives first. We have the new maths (or an problem in current math), and that points to some possibility. Because it’s not observable, ignoring our senses is a requirement to develop that in the model and measurements and experiments. Eventually we are able to observe it.
I’m not familiar with history of astronomy. Would it be the case where the observations that lead to heliocentric thought we nuanced and had to build on more obvious perceptions that things aren’t adding up? Was the wobble of Venus part of that?
And you’re right, old models are useful and remain relevant a lot! The model of time moving linearly will likely always be the most useful model for navigating our daily choices (if we have any at all!)
I’m confuse though why you don’t just say refactor. This just reads like you redefined “refactor” to be adding layers and “defactor” to removing layers.
Textbook refactoring, changing a program internally without changing it external. It’s up to the refactorer to choose what to apply.
Applying a refactor is not only adding FactorBeanProxies. It can, and must be, used to remove parts as often as adding them.
While I agree that reading code and learning is essential, I don’t think this line of criticism is fair.
I mean like most programmers I’d imagine their years and years of industry work isn’t public. I mean what have I ever built?
Fowler was CTO of ThoughWorks for years and afaik they do really good and deep work, their content is quality. Bob Martin had a similar track record with 8th light, and as an organization is interesting.
That said, I think lumping them together is misguided. I’ve read a lot of both. To me unky bob is can be a divisive gatekeeper who wants to be right, while mFowler is boon to the industry, literally writing the book on refactoring. He has well reasoned and measured arguments.
I mean I think while formulating your own voice is important and essential, it’s also essential to learn from others and pass down knowledge. For some reason, I think our industry sees it as a threat.
Unky bob is a divisive gatekeeper who I suppose did years of industry work? I guess?
To lump Fowler in with unky bob, I just don’t see it.
I mean Fowler I think t started thoughtworks.
People’s brains, environments and situations are different. It’s a limiting prescriptive to think that everyone works like yours.
Brains are different and fortunately we can all work towards our own solution.
I don’t know if that’s your teams inspiration but there’s a a lot of overlap.
My thought would be it feels like it is helps enable “careless” PMs, rather than make better stories.
I added a simple user story “I want to be able to check our prices against competitor prices”
Imo, a reasonable and simple business ask, but technically complicated (dirty and old data, low user fault tolerance, heuristically matching).
In chatGPT fashion, it confidently provides a series of acceptance criteria that fills out the story, but is either questionable or redundant.
“The tool should be able to compare prices of our products against our competitors' prices. The tool should be able to display the results in a clear and concise manner. The tool should be able to be accessed from the administrator dashboard. The tool should be able to be used on both desktop and mobile devices.”
A PM/team could go through and audit. It would be a useful exercise, but a team who would do that likely wouldn’t need this tool. Maybe consider fashioning the UI to idea generation?
As it is now, this feels like a careless PM would copy and paste this without checking.
The conceptual clarity combined with sparse documentation, rough edged user land, and the army of edge cases give me flashes of Docker in 2013/14.
It’s a pain to use but the promise is there. When setup and working, Nix seems like _the_ way forward for reproducible builds and dev environments at any 20+ dev team.
I work in dev experience at a larger tech company. I work on many different REPLs, often jumping into unfamiliar projects- in my first three months I’ve worked on go, python, node, terraform, k8s, etc.
With nix I’m able to clone a repo in an ecosystem I don’t use, create a couple files (flake.nix + .envrc) and reliably create a working, isolated dev environment that works and doesn’t mess my other projects… gaming changing.
(Plus I took the plunge after system issues to move to a VM running NixOS, defined in my dotfile repo.)
The language is difficult, the documentation needs to get there, the amount of breaking or confusing api are big hurdles. I think some simple wrapper like https://devenv.sh may be what gets the industry on board.
“We” started selling typeset ads at some point to customers unbeknownst to the tiny fresh grad three person tech team.
So we did what we had to do which was to run open office headless on a Linux box under our bosses desk.
It would accept type setting parameters, and we would simulate one key press at a time. We would send the print command keyboard shortcut and keys to print to a pdf and retrieve the files with rsync.
We didn’t know any better and I’m still proud of that.
Then it was keeping my todos on projects at work, getting a list, etc. Then I could add source blocks and execute them.
Now it’s a literate and repl driven engine that is nearly a daily driver. I love the workflow because I build up the code and tests as I’m playing and tweaking it. The feedback loop is very strong. Plenty of maintenance cost though.
I have a couple of projects that I day dream about but are an unrealistic size for me while working:
1. Turning my emacs configuration into a electron app is a project that nobody needs but I want to build.
2. As much as I can, bring a lisp REPL experience to the python world. (or maybe I could just use clojure for the other projects.)
3. Apps and software for accessibility (including tools for the neurodivergent)
And I'd continue to spend time prototyping software to learn how it works and building developer tools.
Curious about other's choices, what would you choose?
Hypothetically, if AGI emerges and can generate code well enough so that software development is no longer a lucrative job. Let's say society adjusts, you adjust, and it goes really well. AGI is nice and gives us a life of ease with enough roofs and food to eat for everyone. You get to choose what to do with your days, everyday:Would you still code? If so, what would you make?I'll answer in the...
Either is a complete mess that no one else can understand, or they nailed the abstractions and it is infinitely extendable. I’m really curious to see how they implemented a system that provides such depth and subtlety.
For actual, non-semantic text editing, the speed of vim muscle memory can’t be beat.
Please be forward thinking and community minded.
"You don't know something now? Wait 2 seconds and you will know it. There's not time for mystery and wonder."
I prefer debuggers and imaged based REPL environments, but that doesn’t mean I get to work in them. Always fall back on print debugging and loggers at some point, so I’ve built a lot of helpers in various language that help this sort of thing: introspection of variables and source code, time stamps and traceable uuids and tools for easy viewing.