sthuck

I would definitely trim like 20% off scala, but I think slow compile times were the main reason. To a much lesser degree but sbt being one of the first things you deal with when learning the language didn't help.

If you put a gun to my head and tell me you can't write in kotlin, you must choose either Java or Scala - for a small project I think I choose modern Java. If you tell me I need to choose for a large cross team and mission critical project - I think I take the bullet.

Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for scala, learned a lot from it.

yes, but when I think simplicity I don't think string handling in C

Im sure there are more reasons but updates to prompts and tools coming from the server side is a major one.

It's typed so you can build some governance around it, by allowing only some tools or parameters for your org (this is a pretty weak point, but still)

A skill has one giant description from the frontmatter loaded into the context, where MCP loads a smaller one for every tool. Not necessarily better, the skill approach is often better actually, but sometimes the MCP approach fits more

Expectations are a funny thing, a year ago I thought all software industry will cut at least 30% in a year. It's very far from happening. A big change is obviously coming but now I think I'm good enough to last at least the next 5 years, which suddenly feels like a long time if you see it coming.

The truth is despite these very impressive improvements, most impressive work done by agents require many iterations running in a loop, with tens of thousands of dollars in API pricing. And it's still far from being always reliable. Somewhere along the way hardware will get better, energy will be cheaper, the market will be flooded by chips. There a physical world issues that limit all of these for now, thank god. I think 5 years is a good number.

The real damage is that enterprise work became unbearable. Slop code with slop code review, and overly verbose emails with repetitive presentations. And on the other hand, I now enjoy "coding" for myself like I'm 16 again. All I want to do is sit at home and build apps for myself and family. I barely go to work

In the world of web apps, I find the agent's ability to write good e2e tests to be a real game changer. Turns out with enough rigor you can write pretty stable mostly not flaky e2e tests. And even flaky ones are fixed quickly due to a fuck ton of assertions at every step.

Test code looks like a mess, even more than the usual LLM code. takes a while to let it go. Test report looks beautiful though.

Whenever it gets back I recommend everyone to use it. My go to prompt for demoing it to others is "I eat poop off the floor"

And I'm scared to hardcode some negligible config value that will never change

I played with it for 10 minutes, very impressive. Couldn't get vscode to work, will try again later with different apps. (vscode is not that important anyway as it has a remote mode)

I understand (well, "guess" more than understand when it comes to graphic stack in Linux) that it being it's own compositor probably means running a full desktop environment in it is infeasible, but a good way to run software remotely is painfully missing in Linux right now, even one app at a time. The built in servers in kde/gnome are problematic in general and require the monitor to be turned on.

I might be mistaken, but both need a physical monitor turned on. If your monitor goes to sleep you can't connect/see a black screen.

The kde one doesn't support remote user login, and while the gnome one does on paper, I never got it to work. The remote connection situation in Wayland is a major regression.

Fair enough, I probably wrote most people just as an automatic phrase when it should be "some people"

Check my math here, but 1 is larger than 0.

The maximum battery save mode on Samsung (or maybe on all android devices?) does just that - you can set the limit on which apps can be opend. Turn the display to greyscale. Homescreen only shows like 8 apps.

I think for most people, just putting an extra step between you and whatever toxic app(s) you have can be enough. It mostly works for me, and as an added bonus you get insane battery life. I would try that before buying a new phone.

I kinda miss that in the early 2000's kde and gnome shipped with a fuck ton of window decorations based on all those (then-not-so) old OS. Teenager me had fun switching them every day and playing with windowing behavior (focus follows mouse! hover to select and only one click needed!). I wonder what techy kids today do to explore and have fun.

Speaking of the early 2000's, man, Aqua was such a good design. I appreciate the nextstep paradigm and design, but Aqua was just so futuristic, in a good way.

I don't think article misses it, it's exactly the point it makes

Very very strictly speaking relying on models in it's essence is not the problem I think. There is enough "meat" there you can build a nice small profitable company.

Those tools are better than vanilla agents by dedicating expensive human time on evaluating and fine tuning models. You can also build various integration, management and reporting features to add value. If you freeze model progress today, or 12 months ago when most of those companies started, it's a viable business I think.

But any gains you make on the first part will be lost to newer models, and the 2nd part is not as valuable when llms allow people to build fairly complicated features quickly.

I don't if worthless but all those companies have very limited time to gather customers and at least make themselves valuable for an acquisition