MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mg | 2025-05-06 13:52:28+00:00
Refactoring is indeed one of the areas where LLMs already shine bright. And I love it.

I have been coding since I am 12 years old. I always loved writing code. But I also always loved reading code. I don't know, for me code is a kind of art. Never met anyone else who sees it like this. When a friend was hiring for his startup a while ago, I was happy to sit down for multiple hours and read all the code the applicants wrote and gave him advice on whom to hire.

So for me, the new times are paradise. I try to not touch code directly anymore. I write prompts that would enable a really good developer to implement features and then let various LLMs work on it. Afterward, I rate the results so I have an overall score for each LLM. I pick the best solution for my codebase and manually finetune it to perfection.

After each commit, I also ask the LLMs if they can find anything in the files that can be refactored to make the code shorter or more logical. The result is that the codebase becomes better and better. Because the LLMs often find stuff to improve. They usually come up with 10 ideas I dislike, but also one idea that I like. And so the codebase becomes better and better over time. Instead of worse and worse like in the past when you had to keep a balance of refactoring for the sake of beautiful code and building new features. Nowadays, refactoring becomes more and more free.
by Desafinado | 2025-05-06 13:52:37+00:00
Try retiring at age 45 and see how that goes.

As I'm trying to re-iterate, work-life balance. Others in this thread are making the assumption that work is always bad. People like working, without work we have no purpose. But finding work that offers work life balance offers both - purpose and leisure time. Not an excess of one or the other,

When we have an excess of work and money we have no leisure time, when we have an excess of leisure time we have no purpose. This isn't that controversial of a point, read up on any number of uber-wealthy people that attempted to retire early.

Sure they were financially free, but in practice they were beholden to the work they chose.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-05-06 13:53:07+00:00
That's a good insight, tech work is brain work, leaving little room for your own thoughts or processing stuff.

I had a summer job once at a production line, pick up foam piece, place on plastic piece, repeat for two hours, then a break. I did have a CD player at the time and earbuds, but other than that it was completely devoid of mental effort or stimulation. There was something weirdly meditative about it. Not something I'd want to do as a day job but I wouldn't mind for a bit.
by aravindputrevu | 2025-05-06 13:53:36+00:00
I completely disagree and feel MS would never do it. Not a MS Employee, but they have moved on from such battles.

They should have restricted the Marketplace several years ago, however, they are doing it now.

With C++, they are part of MFC's, they are the legal owners, not like Google vs Oracle in case of Java.

Lastly, with AI Code IDEs I think yes, there is a case, the need for IDE might be very less. Like a steering on a self driving car.
by ignoreusernames | 2025-05-06 13:53:51+00:00
> Folks I know in the industry are not very happy with databricks

Yeah, big companies globing up everything does not lead to a healthy ecosystem. Congrats on the founders for their the acquisition but everyone else loses with movements like this.

I'm still sour after their Redash purchase that instantly "killed" the open source version. Tabular acquisition was also a bit controversial since one of the founders is the PMC Chair for Iceberg which "competes" directly with Databricks own delta lake. The mere presence of these giants (mostly databricks and snowflake) makes the whole data ecosystem (both closed and open source) really hostile.
by ericmcer | 2025-05-06 13:54:55+00:00
Seriously Cursor (using Claude 3.5) does this all the time. It ends up with a pile of junk because it will introduce errors while fixing something, then go in a loop trying to fix the errors it created and slap more garbage on those.

Because it’s directly editing code in the IDE instead of me transferring sections of code from a chat window the large amount of bad code it writes it much more apparent.
by panny | 2025-05-06 13:55:16+00:00
>Declare victory and walk away: go and do something else

That works really well if you're a contractor/job-hopper and can actually walk away. Otherwise, someone who doesn't understand the code will be asked to make modifications and you, the original author, will be called back in to rescue the thing when it has turned into a dilapidated mess.

The problem the OP is having is not failing to please his boss, but working for a boss that isn't technical and has no idea what is happening. Those bosses are generally terrible for your career and if you have one, you should just quit.
by IAmBroom | 2025-05-06 13:55:33+00:00
A confusing chapter, so I asked AI for guidance (or prayed to the simulator, if you prefer)...

AI Overview

In the Book of Job, chapter 40, God challenges Job to address the wickedness and pride in the world, highlighting the fact that only God can truly subdue the forces of evil. God uses the examples of the Behemoth (a powerful land creature) and the Leviathan (a sea monster) to demonstrate his immense power and to show Job that he cannot handle these issues himself. Essentially, God is revealing Job's limitations and his own divine power, urging him to submit to God's justice and wisdom. Here's a more detailed breakdown: God's Challenge: God asks Job if he can "tread down the proud" and "make the wicked turn to their place". This is a test to see if Job can embody God's justice and power. Behemoth and Leviathan: God uses the Behemoth and Leviathan as examples of his power. They are creatures of immense strength, representing the forces of chaos and pride that only God can control. Job's Submission: Through these examples, God is showing Job that he cannot understand or control all of God's work. Job eventually acknowledges this, expressing his humility and submission to God. Theme of Divine Sovereignty: The chapter emphasizes God's power, wisdom, and justice, contrasting it with Job's limited understanding and ability. Suffering and Justice: The suffering Job endured is a backdrop to this chapter. God uses the suffering to demonstrate the mystery of his ways and the importance of trusting in his justice.
by laborcontract | 2025-05-06 13:55:34+00:00
Disagree gently here. Vibe refactoring is so much harder than vibe coding. I understand the temptation of having LLMs refactor code because that's ostensibly what they're great at – "transforming" the code. But LLM's are opinionated enough where they love to arbitrarily drop features or constraints for no particular reason, and they won’t tell you what they dropped along the way.

Proper refactoring with an llm requires full testing coverage and, by the time you do all that, is the refactoring really necessary? I prefer 100% stability. If you're refactoring the because it's poorly structured and unreadable, that’s okay.. LLMs can help understand it.

In my use of llms, i find it’s actually much easier to rebuild something from scratch rather than refactoring flawed code. It’s much less likely to inherit strange assumptions and code smells that way.

With all that said, the one prompt I do use when refactoring is to tell the llm to do a lossless refactor and then follow up with a "was this really lossless"? It's not foolproof. LLM's love to lie.
by Aurornis | 2025-05-06 13:55:51+00:00
Public schools are funded by taxes. Wealthy people already pay those taxes.

If you force everyone to use the public schools, you’re just dividing the tax money across more students.

In the context of school lunch, they would just send their kids to school with a packed lunch.

The whole concept of forbidding people from taking advantage of other educational opportunities is half-baked class warfare fodder. It doesn’t make sense if you think about the numbers, but it appeals to people who are more interested in punishing wealthy people than fixing the situation.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-05-06 13:55:52+00:00
Alternatively... just let the thoughts be. I think writing them down, or even the compulsion of writing them down, sounds like a kind of anxiety in itself - "this is Important, I Must Remember it and Do Something with it as soon as I'm out!"

But if it's important enough you'll remember or it'll come back to you next time you shower. Or not. Either way is fine.
by davidw | 2025-05-06 13:56:32+00:00
The Romans are 'ancient history' and not directly connected to current events in the US. Sure, we have some cultural inheritance from them, but they're many, many generations removed from us, whereas some of this 'western lore' stuff is not, really. I have a photo of my own great grandfather on a horse with a rifle in Montana. He was a ranger with the Forest Service.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-05-06 13:56:46+00:00
The better question is: why would you think popular democracy is a good thing, especially where the Church is concerned? In the Church's understanding of itself, the pope is the vicar of Christ, which is to say, he represents Christ on earth, not the people. What you suggest is an inversion. It would be horrifying to authority, especially moral and religious authority, to democratic rule. And self-refuting.

It is a common fallacy in liberal democratic societies to believe that not only is democratic rule necessarily a sign of social political progress, and that democracies somehow guard against bad politics, but also that anything that isn't democratic is ipso facto a dictatorship. This is not the case and it is a caricature that has been encouraged by some with an ax to grind against monarchies, categorically. Monarchies in general are bound by numerous obligations, traditions, duties, institutions, etc. that weigh heavily on a monarch. He is not some god who is at liberty to do whatever he wants. Indeed, as is the case with the presidency, even the honor that is due to a monarch is not because of who occupies the throne (he may very well be a scoundrel), but in virtue of the office.

The pope is no different. In fact, his role as pope is highly constrained. He only has authority to guard the deposit of faith, not to innovate. He is "not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on" [0]. Prelates, including the pope, if they err, can be corrected, even publicly if the error was publicly made, for his own benefit and the benefit of the Church. The pope is not supposed to micromanage the Church either. They should instead enable bishops to do their jobs. This is the true meaning of leadership: to serve those you lead by enabling them to be who they are and to do what they are called to do. Popes and bishops are best thought of as referees. Frankly, that is what a good monarchy is like.

(Curiously, contrary to the image peddled by the media of the "kindly pope", Francis was unusually dictatorial in temperament. Many felt alienated by his imperious, heavy-handed style. He routinely avoided discussion with bishops and allowed problems to fester as a result. In part, the excess centralization of power in the papacy beyond the authority prudently circumscribed to it is a development that arose in the 19th century, most notably in the form of an ultramontane reaction to Gallicanism and hostile revolutionary attacks on the Church, like the bloody ones in France we like to downplay.)

[0] https://firstthings.com/the-future-of-the-catholic-church/
by vlovich123 | 2025-05-06 13:57:22+00:00
Interesting post & problem. I wonder if the reason that the idea of running the tasks on the same queue fails is for the same reason you have a problem in the first place - variable clock rate means it’s impossible to schedule precisely and you end up aliasing your spin stop time ideal time based on how the OS decided to clock the GPU. But that suggests that maybe your spin job isn’t complex enough to run the GPU at the highest clock because if it is running at max then you should be able to reliably time the stop of the spin even without adding a software PLL (which may not be a bad idea). I didn’t see a detailed explanation of how the spin is implemented and I suspect a more thorough spin loop that consistently drives more of the GPU might be more effective at keeping the clock rate at max perf.
by numbsafari | 2025-05-06 13:58:21+00:00
Hiring a bunch of recent college grads to build your startup is fun. They're great drinking buddies and they make you feel young again. They'll inefficiently work around the clock, sleep at the office, and treat it like their mom's house, and make you think you're a big, important boss.

Coming in as a gray hair to fix their disaster definitely pays the bills.
by s5ma6n | 2025-05-06 13:58:30+00:00
I am also using conda and specifically mamba which has a really quick dependency solver.

However, sometimes repos require system level packages as well. Tried to run TRELLIS recently and gave up after 2h of tinkering around to get it to work in Windows.

Also, whenever I try to run some new repo locally, creating a new virtual environment takes a ton of disk space due to CUDA and PyTorch libraries. It adds up quickly to 100s of gigs since most projects use different versions of these libraries.

</rant> Sorry for the rant, can't help myself when it's Python package management...
by headcanon | 2025-05-06 13:58:51+00:00
Where do you draw the line though? Is it only vibe-coding if you don't touch a single line of code? If I ask Cursor agent to implement a basic refactor vs doing it by hand, does my level of "vibe" increase?

Why do we need a term anyway? Neologisms are nice for writing articles but I feel like we get lost in the weeds unnecessarily trying to categorize things. Its like trying to come up with genre names for electronic music. The more terms we create, the less useful they become.

I always thought of it as a temporary term anyway while we reconcile this technology with the status quo. In a few years I'll bet it will go back to be just "programming" or "development".
by cometapi | 2025-05-06 13:59:22+00:00
GPT-Image‑1 represents a significant milestone in the evolution of multimodal AI, combining advanced natural language understanding with robust image generation and editing capabilities. Unveiled by OpenAI in late April 2025, it empowers developers and creators to produce, manipulate, and refine visual content through simple text prompts or image inputs. This article dives deep into how GPT-Image‑1 works, exploring its architecture, capabilities, integrations, and the latest developments shaping its adoption and impact.
by Dylan16807 | 2025-05-06 13:59:35+00:00
> I'm calling into question the idea that modern treatment of children is responsible for the world we live in.

> They're replying to someone with the obvious implication that this program is in some way critical to children "learning and becoming productive members of society."

They were not saying it's "critical" or that the specific treatment of children is responsible for anything.

It was a very simple argument that everyone should care about children growing up well because we need them.

> Does this career have the effect of increasing the number of children they care for in exchange for greater profits?

This doesn't make any sense. I understand your incentive argument but what is Big Lunch going to do, make pro-birthrate propaganda? We're already sending children to schools and expecting them to eat the school lunch by default. It doesn't matter who pays as long as the school has motivation to reduce costs.

> The tragedy here being that schools consider their primary obligation to the child and not to the family. So when parents are in a situation where they cannot care for their children successfully, for whatever reason, we completely ignore the core problem and instead patch over it.

It would cost so so much more to do that, and while I agree that it would be good, fixing poverty is super far outside the scope of a school's job.

> Worse it can sometimes create negative stigma for the child and work to further destabilize their living situation.

This is an argument for giving all students free meals. No stigma.
Ask HN: your one-off HTML applet tailored to personal use?
by xeonmc | 2025-05-06 14:00:01+00:00
I recently had to frequently log stuff with my phone while outside, so I wrote a ~30 line HTML form that is just an input box and three buttons (Timestamp/Newline/Clear) that lets me quickly log a message.

Turns out that making it into an offline PWA is just a matter of adding a short manifest and a sw.js for cache requests, and two lines of localStorage for persistence, so now I have a trusty app on my phone that’s the digital equivalent of a carpenter’s self-crafted ugly-but-works shop tool.

It felt good that hand-rolling a barebones HTML app is actually so easy, giving me a new appreciation for the webstack if you don’t overcomplicate it into a car made from Legos.

What are some of your tailored-for-personal-use hacky toolets that leverages a minimal use of vanilla webstack?
by philistine | 2025-05-06 14:00:31+00:00
> Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development target.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple is very difficult to work with indeed, but they have a shit-ton of paying users. Still to this day, iOS is a better revenue maker than Android. Same for macOS compared to Windows. You want to make a living? Release on macOS. People there pay for software.
by mjburgess | 2025-05-06 14:00:32+00:00
My preference is to have better dynamic models of devices (eg., how many memory cells does ram have, how do these work dynamically, etc.) and line them up with well-defined input/output boundaries of programmes. Kinda "better fuzzing".

I mean, can we run a program in a well-defined "debugging operating system" in a VM, with simulated "debugging devices" and so on?

I dont know much about that idea, and the degree to which that vision is viable. However it's increasingly how the most robust software is tested -- by "massive-scale simulation". My guess is it isnt a major part of, say, academic study because its building tools over years rather than writing one-off papers over months.

However, if we had this "debuggable device environment", i'd say it'd be vastly more powerful than Rust's static guarantees and allow for a kind of "fearless systems programming" without each loop becoming a sudoku puzzle.
by zimpenfish | 2025-05-06 14:00:43+00:00
> I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to video tape.

Happens more than you'd think (in the past, at least - it's obviously much easier now with digital storage.) Couple of examples I remember off the top of my head:

re: Adrian Maben making a Director's Cut DVD of "Live In Pompeii"[0]

"While searching in the French and English film laboratories for the unused negative we learnt of a disaster. On the initiative of the French Production Company, MHF Productions, the 548 cans of 35mm negative and prints of the rushes had been stored at the Archives du Film du Bois d’Arcy outside Paris. One of the employees, a certain Monsieur Schmidt, "le Conservateur," unfortunately decided that he wanted to make extra storage space on his shelves for more recent films and that the Floyd footage was without interest or value. The 548 cans of negative and the prints of the Pink Floyd unused rushes and outtakes were incinerated."

re: Dr Who missing episodes[1]

"Further erasing of Doctor Who master videotapes by the Engineering Department continued into the 1970s. Eventually, every master videotape of the programme's first 253 episodes (1963–69) was destroyed or wiped. The final 1960s master tapes to be erased were those for the 1968 serial Fury from the Deep, in August 1974."

[0] https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/other-related-interviews/adri...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
by CyberDildonics | 2025-05-06 14:00:51+00:00
Bypassing the clickbait we have this:

In two new studies led by bacteriologist Brandon L. Jutras, Northwestern scientists have identified an antibiotic that cures Lyme disease at a fraction of the dosage of the current “gold standard” treatment and discovered what may cause a treated infection to mimic chronic illness in patients. The studies were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
by SR2Z | 2025-05-06 14:01:04+00:00
I don't understand what you're complaining about. You dislike this guy wearing his actual uniform to indicate his actual credentials, on a site where people make videos using visual aids?

Does it make a difference to you if this guy was in jeans or swim trunks or whatever? Should his YT username just be his real name or "flyboy992" or whatever?
by ch_123 | 2025-05-06 14:01:07+00:00
> Some problems come from the huge amount of features(ldap, easter eggs, ...). sudo-rs reduces the problems by not implementing those features.

This makes me wonder:

1) Would a hypothetical "sudo-lite" with these features removed lead to better security without a rewrite?

2) If these features are useful in the real world, will a Rust rewrite of sudo inevitably gain these features over time and end up with similar problems?
by coryfklein | 2025-05-06 14:01:17+00:00
Sounds a little too much like, "It's not AGI today ergo it will never become AGI"

Does the current AI give productivity benefits to writing code? Probably. Do OpenAI engineers have exclusive access to more capable models that give them a greater productivity boost than others? Also probably.

If one exclusive group gets the benefit of developing AI with a 20% productivity boost compared to others, and they develop a 2.0 that grants them a 25% boost, then a 3.0 with a 30% boost, etc...

The question eventually becomes, "is AGI technically possible"; is there anything special about meat that cannot be reproduced on silicon? We will find AGI someday, and more than likely that discovery will be aided by the current technologies. It's the path here that matters, not the specific iteration of generative LLM tech we happen to be sitting on in May 2025.
by riggsdk | 2025-05-06 14:01:21+00:00
To me the BIGGEST annoyance is the iOS “End call” button.

Just as I’m about to tap it, the other person ends the call and what I’m actually tapping is some other person on my call list that it then immediately calls. Even if I end the call quickly they often call back confused “You called, what did you want?”

Apple: PLEASE add a delay to touch input after the call screen closes.
How to get up to speed on software development from the top down
by dave2299 | 2025-05-06 14:01:51+00:00
Hi everyone, I am a non-technical founder. I’ve bootstrapped a tech-enabled services company over the past year that’s growing, profitable, and close to 15K a month in revenue. I, by nature, prefer to be involved in the weeds of what’s happening in each domain of my business at first, even if that results in slower business growth. I built my company with a white label portal software (Copilot.app), Airtable, Squarespace, AppSheet,and some ChatGPT scripts.

Now, I need to start building out custom tools. I want to take a deep dive into software development, starting with front and back end web development from the top down, rather than starting from the bottom up as a coder.

If I keep growing eventually I will end up bringing on technical employees, but I want to understand the lay of the land before I start down that road, and I found that I’m able to do a lot once I understand the domain using low code and no code tools. So for example, things like Retool, etc. will accomplish most of the next phase of building I need. But I want to have a reading list of 10 or 20 books or blogs or courses or podcast, etc.. That will help me start getting the way of the land on how to architect software.

I know basic python, basics of the building blocks of programming at the intro level. I just read Designing Data-Intensive Applications (2nd ed on O’Reilly). Does someone have a list of 10 modern books that would help me understand big picture topics like this?