sarreph

It won the Booker Prize last year.

Please give reading (especially fiction) another chance. I had a stretch of about a decade where I finished maybe two or three books total. Partly, I didn't think I "needed to read" because of how much time I spend reading HN and other non-fiction sources, especially on the internet: or that I was "too busy".

I was running my startup, and had a copy of Infinite Jest on my bedside table for nearly 2 years -- telling myself that I would finish it. It's an amazing book (the part I've read anyway), but it was such an intricate piece of work that I managed to convince myself I basically had reading-ADHD and there was no point in me trying to read other books.

Last year, I started reading (fiction!) books that were just interesting to me or that other people were talking about, instead of picking up "aspirational" fiction or non-fiction and reading the first chapter.

I've been getting through a book every month or two since and am absolutely loving it. I read a lot of fiction as a child and teenager and I'd forgotten just how visceral good fiction can be. Reading properly again also helped convince me to write stories, too.

If this sounds like you, I challenge you (with kindness) to pick up a piece of approachable fiction and see how much more you get out of it than you expected to!

> I do not agree with this simile.

I spent a while believing that the transition to AI-based development was similar to the shift to lower → higher level programming languages. However, like the author I now believe that this is an apples to oranges comparison, albeit with a slightly different take.

Chiefly it's because working with an LLM is working with output that is stochastic by nature and involves a different kind of broader, systems kind of thinking. The LLM ultimately outputs a deterministic product: code. You can decide (as a junior or newcomer) if you want to understand the code, or not.

I don't think it will matter that much in the end -- in the general sense -- whether software developers take it upon themselves to understand code though. I think if you want to become a well-rounded craftsperson or a "true engineer", you are always doing yourself a service to understand inner workings and "how the sausage is made".

Plenty of roles today which are instrumental to software products do not rely on code understanding. Product managers, Product designers, Designers (in general).

Somebody who designs an object or appliance made by injection-moulding plastic doesn't need to understand how to create moulds or make a model using wood -- but it sure helps them, as a thinking person, understand their products and the world better.

I spent a large portion of my early twenties learning (through doing) about how important it is to "get to the point" by "keeping it simple", but it took me a great deal longer to understand how much more valuable it is to actually make a point by taking the listener on a bit of a mental journey first.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

[0] - https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/599831

It's a puzzle game -- numbers on a board -- where the gap between numbers dictates the arithmetic operation done to them.

The goal is to use all the spaces on the board to make sums of 12.

Have shared it a few times on HN already, but keen to hear from anyone who hasn't tried it yet!

However, I can't read this, not because I refuse to -- I want to -- but because my the cogs in my mind just stop whirring at all of the LLM-isms, my eyes glaze over, and I stop being able to follow what the article is trying to communicate to me. I would love for the OP to call me out and correct me (that they haven't used LLMs to write this).

This is a great follow-up that I don't have a satisfactory answer for, because I can't really recall. I _think_ I was trying to do something with Firebase w/ high parallelism using goroutines. I just remember the feeling of imperativeness when I was iterating through results, etc, and not having a built-in mapping function.

Elixir was totally different -- was just scratching an "intellectual" itch, and it fit my needs like a glove in terms of feeling.

I'm confident that I could learn to like Go, though, lots of people I know rave about it.

> The OTP is not that useful to me

Also agree, didn't really get into OTP even, just enjoyed the style and structure of the language itself!

I'd tried Go, which I didn't really like because it was too imperative for my taste and also required you to write every... single... thing you needed from scratch. (Not trying to start a flame war here -- it's just how I felt using it).

One of my engineers was kind of obsessed with Elixir (he was / is extremely smart) and he convinced me to give it a go over Christmas break. It really was the functional Valhalla he had made it out to be. I felt like I'd finally found a language that "got" how I wanted to approach writing code. Unfortunately, startup life got in the way, and I was hardly going to suggest an Elixir rewrite (well, I did try, but anyway).

I'm planning on re-approaching Elixir, as a haven to write code as a human. I still use LLMs for writing code pretty much daily, but if you're looking for something that's different and fun, I would recommend checking it out. It's just a shame to hear that the author is, for now at least, stopping their engagement with the community due to how they perceive it's changing!

[0] - https://adventofcode.com/

I tried to build a Polymarket bot during Christmas break last year, and didn't get as far as I'd have liked to. But I spent a lot of time thinking about prediction markets thereafter and it certainly became a germination point for this story idea.

> The airgun is a subtle touch. I am in Florida, all kinds of cowboys here, are BBs legal in the UK?

I'm not sure actually -- it's great that you picked up on that detail though as I was trying to make that part more feasible for something based in the UK.

You should! Tom MacWright's website[0] was a big influence on the design of my site. I especially took inspiration from how they structure their reading list and how I could apply that to more abstract objects that I wanted to document.

[0] - https://macwright.com/

Another commenter suggested I could have made a parody site / post -- maybe an idea for next time...

> I also liked your WhatWeSee art exhibition, pretty interesting concept.

That's kind of you. I've been experimenting a lot recently with getting agents to make art, and the results are certainly interesting!

Also see a lot of comments echoing your point about missing the fact that it was fiction... Next post might have a stronger disclaimer! (But I fear it actually worked in my favour here)