scorpioxy

Joined 18 years ago

Karma
829
Submissions
582
Member since
May 8
Entrepreneur, Programmer living in Melbourne Australia.

Website: http://codedemigod.com Email: [email protected]

Side projects:

- https://moneytracker.codedemigod.com/ - https://aussieshopper.codedemigod.com/

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Recent submissions

Comment · 18 days ago
This part is one I have trouble understanding. Why bring on all this anxiety? I can't see an outcome for all this vibecoding except one that involves crashing and burning.

I saw many comments here saying SaaS is dead, for example. That any service can now be vibecoded and replicated internally. And I can't help but think if they've ever tried running, supporting and maintaining a piece of software. The code was never the hardest part. Not even close. In fact, cheap "coding" has been a thing for over 25 years now if that's what you wanted.

To me this feels like saying everyone can be a carpenter now because it's so cheap and easy to just buy a hammer and some nails and go at it.

I do think it's great to hear that people can now vibecode their own custom fit tools that work exactly the way they want them to. But that process is not free.

Comment · 20 days ago
I agree and I've seen a similar argument a few times before. All of those times had the same ending.

SQLAlchemy is a beast for sure. But the complexity is not for fun. It gives you a lot in return. If your needs are simple, it's probably overkill. And this library is not for running queries, it's an ORM. Which has a component that will eventually need to send the queries to the database but it's a lot more than that.

Comment · 24 days ago
I tend to describe it as "a language not optimized for raw processing speed" as opposed to being a slow language. As in, it is an abstraction that is meant to speed up development(and be easier to read etc) rather than be the fastest while running.
Comment · 1 month ago
Yes, I don't think it's new either. In fact, this illusion that machines are suddenly "thinking" or are "intelligent" is just coming from ignorance and/or falling for the current hype cycle.

I've been around for a few of these and I remember what was being said and written at the time. The after effect is very different to what was being predicted. Is it the same this time? Who knows. But the hype machine is at full power for this one.

Comment · 1 month ago
Sorry, I don't remember. But I think it was in this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukpCHo5v-Gc

Though I believe the core of his opinion hasn't changed so any video would tell you a similar thing or at least that's how I understood it. That LLMs, in the hands of an "expert", can enhance the way you work. Which is very different and a lot more realistic to what the current AI companies are saying(or were saying before they toned it down a bit for their IPOs).

Comment · 1 month ago
That's what Terence Tao said in one of his recent videos about it. That what the LLMs can provide is scale that humans can't. The example he provided is checking many possible solutions in a short amount of time because they can review all the previous literature and, for example, rule out ones with errors. He was realistic and practical about it and said that the tools working this way can be very helpful for a human mathematician to use even if they're not "thinking". I find that to be a good balanced view that, unfortunately, seems to be rare these days. Even on this forum.
Comment · 1 month ago
For a while, I used a firefox extension called "Temporary Containers" which would, as the name implies, create a temporary container for each site you visit. Combined with specifying some custom rules for ones you want to open in a specific container, that was a very convenient setup. But the extension at some point corrupted my firefox profile and has been unmaintained for a while so I didn't try again. I am not sure what happened and it may have been the combination of extensions that was the cause of that. Sadly, the author passed away, if I remember correctly, and it's been difficult to find maintainers for the project so I gave up on that.

You can still install that extension but from the reported issues the functionality and bugs were increasing with every new firefox version. And obviously that setup only helped with the cookie aspects and not necessarily any security issues from javascript and so on.

Comment · 2 months ago
A suitably specc'ed VPS from any provider with a good enough reputation. You can start small and upgrade if/when needed. I used to be a fan of Linode, also Hetzner but their recent price hike was unfortunate. Any provider that's been around for a while will probably have similar services.
Comment · 2 months ago
"Coding" has been a solved problem for a couple of decades now, in my opinion. If what you're after is producing a large amount of code while paying very little, that was always an option. The results were, as businesses who went down this route discovered, not satisfactory. Now LLMs can do this even cheaper and faster. But was this the problem? Is this the magic that was missing to move us forward?

I don't know the future and can't say if you're wrong or right. But I do wonder what "more code, faster" is meant to address exactly.

In my point of view, it depends how you describe your role. If you're a "coder" then yes, you can't compete with machines. I do have to tell you that we're in a bubble and probably in the shrinking phase of an economic cycle so it's all difficult now but you can't predict the future from this temporary phase.

Comment · 2 months ago
Depends on your risk appetite I'd say. But the most straight forward set up that I believe gives you a decent amount of protection would be to use a VM to host the LLM and then execute any agents that would be running the various apps on your machine via a sandbox with access to only the things it needs.

There are many variations to that(firewalls, sandbox abilities etc) but it's a good start in my opinion. And, most importantly, is a far cry from all the people I read about running agents on their machines with admin access and access to their emails and calendars and lives.

Comment · 2 months ago
In my culture, that's the goto herbal drink for when you have a stomach ache due to indigestion or gas by the way. I don't know how or why they work but some of these things do work. The footnote here is that it is for pain/discomfort that would also go away by itself if untreated. It just speeds up the process and provides some comfort. For different kinds of pain/discomfort, a doctor needs to be consulted of course.
Comment · 2 months ago
This whole article is very strange to me. Consider the following quotes "I have been launching new game features so fast that the players asked me to slow down." and "using magic tricks that are a year ahead of their time. It's a system that we can ride so hard that it scares the players and they tell us to slow down. " That tells me a lot about the operation.

Maybe I'm out of touch but none of what was described seems like a sustainable operation or business. Fun experiment perhaps but that's it.

In another section there's also boasting of how the problem was that more code was needed to be produced and faster. I don't know. Was that really the problem all along before LLMs and agents showed up?

Comment · 2 months ago
Thunderbird has been great for me. With internal email systems, connection issues were usually due to proprietary protocols doing things in weird and undocumented ways that was the problem.

I've had a few issues with it for sure but still on it as nothing compares. Definitely not for the price. You didn't say what's incomprehensible about the UI, it seems fine to me. I don't need my email client to look slick(subjective anyway), I just need it to work and work well.

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