Interests: Programming, Remote Work
Email: r.glynn@proton.me
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- rglynn parentThey are basically the same, long black is water with espresso poured on top, americano is espresso with water poured on top.
- I've had a number of occasions where claude (et al.) have incorrectly carried out a task involving existing code (e.g. create a widget for foo, following bar's example). In these cases the way I would have done it would be to copy said existing code and then modify the copied code. I've always wondered if they should just be using copy tool (even just using xclip) instead of using context.
- How many civil engineers or architects know how to put up scaffolding or lay bricks?
That was a little tongue in cheek, but I am genuinely curious what you think the correct approach is? I have seen many teams that do need to have someone overseeing the overall architecture, even if that person isn't writing the code line-by-line.
If you have that capacity baked into "Backend Programmer", then great, but not every team is the same.
Is there something inherently wrong with an "architect" who hasn't written code in a decade but is instructing seniors? One might believe that the answer is self-evident, however, I would argue that the organisational structures we see in the world (functional or otherwise) do not bear this out.
- > The truth is that design patterns are at best stagnant in quality and quantity over time (GoF is over 30 years old!), but the quantity and quality of problems is infinite.
I think once you have spent enough time in a software space, nothing is really new under the sun. That's why I think the GoF has aged well (controversial opinion I know!).
- I agree with the first half as it echoes my experience, but the second half hasn't been my exp.
To talk about design patterns as not as useful, only to then mention big O notation seems strange to me unless you are in a context where performance is critical?
Worrying about O(n) IME is far less important than choosing the right architectural pattern. O(n) issues are usually observable via metrics or QA and are typically straightforward to fix. By contrast, recognising that your pattern choice is wrong is harder (since it manifests during dev rather than in prod) and takes more effort to rectify.
I also disagree that patterns don't deserve a name. I have found it very useful when discussing with both seniors and juniors to have a common name for a pattern being described. Seniors known instantly and it can be helpful to have a resource to point juniors to if they aren't familiar. I have also found it useful when English isn't the first language.
I do agree that seniors don't typically try to fit standard patterns to their problem in a way that a junior might, that's a fair point.
- I think "collapsing" might be hyperbole.
It certainly seems clear that a purely upward trajectory of peace and living standards in the West was not supposed to last. History has its ebbs and flows, I'm sure we have a long way downhill to go, but I suspect there are peaceful times on the other side.
- I think the attack vector most are considering are going to be government-sourced mass-targeting of individuals based on data triggers rather than any particular interest in the individual. The current example being many of the 12,000 annual arrests in the UK for online speech, many based on private messages. For many of those cases, these were private individuals in whom the government had no prior interest.
It's not difficult to imagine something like pandemic restrictions, where a digitally-enabled government could fine/arrest people based on location data, either because they travelled outside an allowed area or into a restricted one. Or they have data showing they were in close-proximity with too many people etc etc.
- I have little sympathy for the ad business failing to properly track ad fraud. I don't think the world is fundamentally better off for advertising.
On the bot traffic, do we not have better ways to do this that don't involve violating privacy of free human beings?
Proof-of-work captchas provide minor friction to an end-user but massively restrict the types of high-volume + low-compute attacks that would be doing this. That's just one example, I'm sure there are other ways too.
- Yes and no, it's a fair criticism to some extent. Inasamuch as I would agree that different models of the same type have superficial differences.
However, I also think that models which focus on higher reasoning effort in general are better at taking into account the wider context and not missing obvious implications from instructions. Non-reasoning or low-reasoning models serve a purpose, but to suggest they are akin to different flavours misses what is actually quite an important distinction.
- You are absolutely right to point this out. However, I don't think many people in this thread are actually confused. It's rather clear that this scheme has about as much to do with immigration as the Online Safety Act has to do with protecting children. The UK government is just getting more and more bald-faced about these sorts of things.
- I think this episode of Yes Minister is rather relevant, albeit EU focused.