Principal Engineer for Accumulate

  • 6 Posts
  • 134 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • it’s not inconceivable it could happen in the next two generations.

    I am certain that it will happen eventually. And I am not arguing that something has to be human-level intelligent to be considered intelligent. See dogs, pigs, dolphins, etc. But IMO there is a huge qualitative difference between how an LLM operates and how animal intelligence operates. I am certain we will eventually create intelligent systems but there is a massive gulf between what LLMs are capable of and abstract reasoning. And it seems extremely unlikely to me that linear algebraic models will ever achieve that type of intelligence.

    Intelligence is just responding to stimuli

    Bacteria respond to stimuli. Would you call them intelligent?








  • That’s a hot take. If you want your code to be maintainable at all, it needs comments. If you’re part of a team, write comments for them. If someone else may take over your project after you move on, leave comments for them. And have you ever tried to read uncommented code you wrote a year ago? Leave comments for yourself.




  • Ethan@programming.devtoProgrammer Humor@programming.dev<br>
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    2 months ago

    if you work in a shared codebase then PLEASE just follow whatever convention they have decided on, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

    That goes without saying; I’m not a barbarian.

    “readability” is subjective. much like how there is no objective definition of “clean code”.

    Did you not see the part where I said it’s less readable “in my opinion”?

    i am insisting that people use a common standard regardless of your opinion on it.

    I can read this one of two ways: either you’re making an assertion about what people are currently doing, or you’re telling me/others what to do. In the first case, you’re wrong. I’ve seen many examples of self-closed <br> tags in the open source projects I’ve contributed to and/or read through. In the second case, IDGAF about your opinion. When I contribute to an existing project I’ll do what they do, but if I’m the lead engineer starting a new project I’ll do what I think is the most readable unless the team overwhelmingly opposes me, ‘standards’ be damned, your opinion be damned.

    The spec says self-closing is “unnecessary and has no effect of any kind” and “should be used only with caution”. That does not constitute a specification nor a standard - it’s a recommendation. And I don’t find that compelling. I’m not going to be a prima donna. I’m not going to force my opinions on a project I’m contributing to or a team I’m working with, but if I’m the one setting the standards for a project, I’m going to choose the ones that make the most sense to me.










  • It’s not just about learning a language. Given two equivalent languages, writing a project using one or the other is always going to be less work and less of a maintenance burden than writing it using both. A competent manager will take that into account when deciding what tools to use. On top of that, learning a new language has a cost. Of course Rust and JavaScript are not equivalent, but which one is ‘better’ is highly subjective and dependent on how you measure ‘better’. So a manager needs to take that into account. But my fundamental point is that using two languages for a project adds overhead, and learning a language adds overhead, so unless cost (including time) is irrelevant, there must be a compelling reason to choose a dual-language solution* over a single-language solution, and to chose a solution that requires your devs to learn a new language over one that does not. Not to mention switching platforms has a massive cost if your project is already mature. Even if you’re creating a new project, if your team already knows JavaScript and doesn’t have any particular objection to Electron, there’s no compelling reason.

    If there is a good reason to learn a language then people will.

    Sure. Except in my experience interviewing candidates and from what I’ve seen online, there are a lot of developers out there who aren’t very good. I am not optimistic that the average developer will have an easy time learning a new language. If the “we” in “Is this the electron alternative we’ve been waiting for” is you and I, that’s not a problem. But if OP meant to suggest there will be a large-scale shift away from Electron, then the average developer is quite relevant.

    *As someone else pointed out, Dioxus is designed with the intent that you’ll right the frontend in Rust, so it’s not exactly dual-language like I thought.