- ceuk parentIt was really poorly written in hindsight. I didn't mean for it to come across as bitter/accusatory as it does and you don't deserve to read people talking random jabs at you when browsing HN comments, I'm sorry
- As a Brit, I struggled to get much interesting out of this considering how many times he mentions "Europe" (in that condescendingly general way that only US folks seem to manage).
He talks about "European" prospects and his trip to Denmark but then cites London as a representative example?
This almost broke my brain it felt so incoherent.
Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (which I assume is what he means by "Europe"). Surely he knows what an anomaly London is? It's not representative of anything except itself.
Referencing the extreme wage dispersion and severe housing pressure of London in a rant about Europe in general is a completely pointless endeavour.
He did say one thing I agree with. If you like good food, rich culture and great surroundings, "Europe" is indeed a lovely place to be for the most part.
Maybe I'll just keep that as my takeaway. It's too early in the year for doom and gloom anyway
- Yeah I set out to build something with WebRTC rather than to build a planning poker app if that makes sense. Just wanted to test out the tech.
Having said that, I do still use this off and on and personally the limitations don't bug me too much. Would be a nightmare for more mission-critical software though
- I mean I built a pretty featureful P2P planning poker app using React and it's around 1300 lines of typescript.
More, but I don't think it's a mind-blowing difference and I wasn't playing code golf when I wrote it. I wouldn't have used redux if I was!
- A one-off software license (or even a subscription) is completely different. The issue is metered billing for something you are paying for already which costs the company nothing. The equivalent is not only paying a flat monthly fee to Adobe for access to Photoshop, but also an additional charge for how long you have it open on your machine every month.
- A few days ago I was predicting to some colleagues a revival of ideas around "server-driven UI" (which never really seemed to catch on) in order to facilitate agentic UIs.
Feels good to have been on the money, but I'm also glad I didn't start a project only to be harpooned by Google straight away
- Basically the same story here for me. I have a trove of audiobooks I've carted around with me from house to house since I left home which my kids now eagerly pick from each night to listen to at bedtime. I've even supplemented my collection considerably since from eBay and the like.
It's just such a great medium. Fairly resilient, incredibly easy to use, compact, cheap ish.
And of course there's the heady dose of nostalgia for us old gits :)
If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them. Top one from me has to be the BBC dramatised Lord of the Rings adaptation which I myself have been listening to off and on since I was around 5 or 6
- Looks like Textual[1] -- the buttons are always a giveaway
- Yes I pay for the most expensive Claude sub with my own money and use it at work.
I also have to use it via a proxy server I set up to get around the corporate firewall which explicitly blocks it. The company like the results but wouldn't like how I get them..
More corporate ridiculousness
- CC very regularly ignores very explicit stuff in CLAUDE.md for me, and I know I'm not the only one. The cycle of compacting/starting new conversations feels like a sisyphean spiral of the same undesirable behaviour and I've yet to find a satisfactory solution despite a lot of effort to that end.
I don't think it's fair to dismiss this article as a superficial anti-ai knee jerk. The solutions you describe are far from perfect
- yeah (as became a theme really until we were acquired and it was no longer an issue) we didn't get past procurement as we failed some sort of due diligence check(s). Can't actually remember what it was specifically in that case, lacking some certification or weren't financially stable enough or some rubbish like that
- Same experience from pretty much the same time.
I ran a relatively small web consultancy at the time and we were in the middle of trying to specialise in the new, more complex things people were starting to build on the web.
We had the potential to land a contract with what would be by far the biggest client we'd ever had. But they wanted us to test the water with us first by having us build a series of obnoxiously complex manufacturing cost calculators for one of their sales-focused web sites.
It was all complex rules and interdependent inputs/display values. And because it could all be hard coded it was the perfect candidate for a client-side only site (I don't think we even called them SPAs yet)
I remember thinking jQuery UI didn't feel like the right tool and React was super clunky back then so I reached for Mithril and had a great experience.
The declarative approach, automatic updates to the DOM etc that we take for granted now felt like magic back then. Being able to describe the data model/logic in a relatively abstract way and then watch as the UI changed in response was pretty cool.
- I think it depends on one's goals maybe.
Big communities are more diverse and easier to find like-minded people. Good if you want to blend in whilst being part of a subculture.
However, if the point is to stand out/be different then small, more homogenous communities present a great opportunity for those with the requisite confidence or apathy
- 100%
I live down the road from OP in Harrogate and it's an incredibly desirable and affluent place
Also while I'm commenting. I know OP isn't saying the North is shit. Just poor(ish).
Nevertheless I just want to say I love the north of England and genuinely think it's one of the best places in the world. We've already established that I'm in one of the better areas so my perspective might be a little skewed, but I honestly think it's an incredible place and I hope this doesn't put people off visiting.
- > I think as devs we often think of our site or application as the center of the user's universe
Jakob's law is a thing but I actually think in the case of GDS they are in the fairly rare position of perhaps being able to justify the hubris you speak of slightly.
Not only are they directly or indirectly responsible for the UI of a frankly staggering number of online services, they are also one of the most influential bodies - perhaps in the world - when it comes to this sort of thing.
- I wrote a really similar thing only a few weeks earlier than you also using bubbletea: https://github.com/ceuk/git-file-history
I wonder if we were influenced by the same things. Did you also want something to plug the lack of git features in Zed by any chance?
- Can you expand on the idea that slave labour is "vastly less efficient"? Is it just a motivation thing?
And is there any good evidence/sources for this? Surely both groups generally performed pretty extreme levels of backbreaking labour. I can't exactly imagine a slave slacking off while literally being whipped.
Also, even if feudalism made us more efficient at food production as you say* - did it not also make societies less effective at producing great works of infrastructure (roads being a good example) than imperial Rome? One just needs to compare the dark ages/low middle ages to the Roman era to see the stark contrast.
Isn't the entire narrative basically: Roman prosperity -> bad times -> rediscovery of classic values (renaissance) -> parity with the Romans 1000 years later?
Genuine questions, not trying to be combative. My history just might not be very good
* Also I'd be interested to find out if there were more famines during pax romana or in the period after the fall of the western empire..
- Superficial and banal. Sorry.
Thinkers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or even modern existentialists have far more interesting things to say on the nature of ambition, the search for meaning, and the human condition. Is a surface-level analysis by DHH (referencing other awful role models such as Musk) really the best we can do?
The clichéd dichotomy of the corporate grind vs thrilling, chaotic adventures lead by visionary leaders is simplistic to the point of redundancy. It's a pretty old theme by now and reiterating it barely tells us anything useful.
This whole blog post is just a collection of broad comments and claims without any meaningful critical examination. Harmless enough, but hardly worth taking the time to read IMO.