kbuchanan

I didn't even know what a cycloidal gearbox was! Good work—you've kicked off an exciting career.

I agree this is a problem too, but I suspect mostly for novel(ish) software problems. For me, LLMs have expanded the solution space, because, while I used to be decent with SQL in Postgres, now I'm operating on a whole new level—the LLM's ability to make sense of Postgres' full suite of options, and the performance implications of the queries, is far beyond what I could have accomplished.

I think this list demonstrates the OP's point—entrenched, resource-heavy, and reputable firms have and will continue to capture most of the markets, not for lack of competition, but by ownership over the distribution channels.

Having said that, I don't think it's all AI (this trend's been going on for a while), nor do I think startups can't thrive—as the pie gets bigger, competitors can carve out yet smaller niches, as the OP points out.

For me, working mostly in Planning Mode skips much of the initial misfires, and often leads to correct outcomes for the first edit.

Thanks for this. I'd never heard of Chiang, and now I've bought my first book!

I've had the same experience, although I feel like Claude is far more than a junior to me. It's ability to propose options, make recommendations, and illustrate trade-offs is just unreal.

Supported by my experience too. My tinnitus is very real, but when I discovered just how much of a psychological component was there, it became more manageable. Little by little I thought I was losing my hearing until I had it checked—it was perfect. The audiologist helped me understand that my constant "tuning in" to the tinnitus was creating the perception that my hearing was being harmed by loud noises and leaving a high-frequency sound in its place. Which is there, but when ignored, it largely disappears.

I think the bottom line with Clojure is it's not an ecosystem well-suited for non-veteran programmers. For as simple as the language is, effectively using Paredit, navigating partially documented libraries, diving into source code to see how things interact—it's tough as a new developer. I don't believe Clojure is overtly hostile to newcomers; it's just crafted by veterans, for veterans. And this is the result.

We embraced Hotwire with a Clojure backend. Favorite things:

- One language model (i.e. no JS, just our favorite backend language)

- Extremely minimal front-end tooling

- All data is manipulated with the same tools

- No client-side routing, validation, or... really much at all

P.S. We even wrote our own import-maps solution to avoid needing a JS bundler for the small stuff you can't do without JS.

How do you prevent ⌘+Tab from automatically jumping you between desktops? At that point, the desktops feel like impediments, not boundaries.

Yeah, I see no reason a terminal should require an account. Turned me off too.

Folks will naturally ask, "How did you get to this point?"

One insight into successfully walking away from addictions is recognizing that this thing (e.g. alcohol, cigarettes) is unambiguously poisonous. "When I [take/do] this, it will take more than it gives."

Hard to articulate, but it happens when the scales that painted the substance with redeeming qualities falls from your eyes. Sorta like discovering you've entertained a damaging relationship for too long. However much worth this person has, being in a relationship with them is not good for you (or others, usually).

I offered a counter example to the comment author too (Clojure has been wonderful for us), but I do wonder if there is one area where OO languages excel above functional: the shape of the code hints at the shape of the data.

In Lisp, function names describe actions. In OO, classes, inheritance, static properties, and getters and setters give at-a-glance hints as to the shape of the application's data model. In Clojure, we compensate, as you pointed out, with forms of documentation. I'll take that trade-off any day—I never want to go back to classes! But it's perhaps one reason for which Clojure has a reputation of being hard to read by other devs.