MattHeard

it can tell you if your spec is bad, but it can't tell you if your spec is good

One thing I haven't seen addressed in the post or comments (sorry if it's there and I just missed it) is for apps and websites that sell non-digital goods to customers.

For returning customers, a customer with an app installed is simply going to have a lot less friction to open the installed app and place an order than a customer who has to open their browser, log in again, and then place the order.

That alone is worth the investment for many companies in making an app, even if a minority of customers actually choose to install the app and keep it installed.

> It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort.

Karpathy clearly wrote something different that what you say he wrote.

I use Github Copilot with PlantUML. I use PlantUML comments to describe what I want the diagram components to show and then the syntax is written for me. I can then edit it pretty easily and iteratively.

It appeared for me about thirty minutes after I first checked.

Hello, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic. I'm currently writing a blog post where the thesis is that the root disagreement between "AI doomers" and others is actually primarily a disagreement about materialism, and I've been looking for evidence of this disagreement in the wild. Thanks for sharing your opinion.

I got as far as here:

> If you need to introduce a new pattern, consider refactoring the entire codebase to use this new pattern, rather than creating one-off inconsistencies.

Putting aside the mis-application of "pattern" (which _should_ be used with respect to a specific design problem, per the Gang of Four), this suggestion to "refactor the entire codebase" is impractical and calcifying.

Consistency increases legibility, but only to a certain point. If the problems that your software is trying to solve drift (as they always do with successful software), the solutions that your software employs must also shift accordingly. You can do this gradually, experimenting with possible new solutions and implementations and patterns, as you get a feel for the new problems you are solving, or you can insist on "consistency" and then find yourself having to perform a Big Rewrite under unrealistic pressure.

the pythagorean theorem is not named after its discoverer, unfortunately, as historians of mathematics have dated its earliest known usage to well before pythagoras

If the quality is too low, it's not viable. This was always true.

i was going to ask if turtlebot was too small for you, but thought i should check the price first so uh, yeah, i'm guessing you're thinking the 250 price point instead of the turtlebot's 1000+

My working assumption has always been to check the docs of your specific regexp parser, and to write some tests (either automated or manually in a REPL) with specific patterns that you are interested in using.

"I would like website operators to assume that I consent to being tracked, so I'm annoyed that website operators are not allowed to assume that everybody consents to being tracked."

surprisingly common to find oneself caring strongly about bullshit

I have/had this cat water fountain too (my cats are now happy with a normal bowl) and I believe I just threw the wall wart into a box with the rest of my unused USB A wall warts. A little bit like electrical Russian roulette now, I guess.

Barely related, but I remember the joy as a kid of putting a computer game CD-ROM in my Walkman CD player just to see what happens and discovering that I could listen to the game's soundtrack just like a normal soundtrack CD. Can't remember which game, but it is a fond memory of mixed-mode CD technology. Can't do that with your Steam games and Spotify!