MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by weiliddat | 2025-08-30 16:06:14+00:00
While I support the goal of article, reducing extraneous cognitive load, I think some of the comments, and the article are missing a key point about cognitive load — it depends on the existing mental model the reader/author/developer has about the whole thing. There is no universal truth to reducing cognitive load like reducing abstractions / not relying on frameworks.

Reducing cognitive load doesn't happen in a vacuum where simple language constructs trump abstraction/smart language constructs. Writing code, documents, comments, choosing the right design all depend upon who you think is going to interact with those artifacts, and being able to understand what their likely state of mind is when they interact with those artifacts i.e. theory of mind.

What is high cognitive load is very different, for e.g. a mixed junior-senior-principal high-churn engineering team versus a homogenous team who have worked in the same codebase and team for 10+ years.

I'd argue the examples from the article are not high cognitive load abstractions, but the wrong abstractions that resulted in high cognitive load because they didn't make things simpler to reason about. There's a reason why all modern standard libraries ship with standard list/array/set/hashmap/string/date constructs, so we don't have manually reimplement them. They also give a team who is using the language (a framework in its own way) common vocabulary to talk about nouns and verbs related to those constructs. In essense, it is reducing the cognitive load once the initial learning phase of the language is done.

Reading through the examples in the article, what is likely wrong is that the decision to abstract/layer/framework is not chosen because of observation/emergent behavior, but rather because "it sounds cool" aka cargo cult programming or resume-driven programming.

If you notice a group of people fumble over the same things over and over again, and then try to introduce a new concept (abstraction/framework/function), and notice that it doesn't improve or makes it harder to understand after the initial learning period, then stop doing it! I know, sunk cost fallacy makes it difficult after you've spent 3 months convincing your PM/EM/CTO that a new framework might help, but then you have bigger problems than high cognitive load / wrong abstractions ;)
by quickthrowman | 2025-08-30 16:06:49+00:00
We are rapidly approaching the point where we have retrofitted all lighting to be LED and all motors to be driven by VFDs, eventually we will reach a point where we’ve maxed out efficiency and new power generation will need to be built, which will push energy costs up.

Propane is cheap but it has a couple drawback. Flammability, and the refrigerant must be pure so no mercaptan can be added which means if there’s a propane leak, nobody will smell it. This is more of a problem for commercial and industrial units than residential.
by Kaethar | 2025-08-30 16:06:52+00:00
Because there's no other choice for entry/mid-level positions (and some lower end senior ones). Thankfully they are not 5 hours long, that's something I would also avoid.

For instance, in my recent job search for a new grad role, I had to do an OA for every company but Jane Street and Databricks (props to them).
by zkry | 2025-08-30 16:07:29+00:00
I don't think this line of reasoning holds. The only thing people should look at are peer reviewed studies, lots of them ideally, and with no conflict of interest. Who's getting productivity gains? What kinds of work are they doing? What doesn't work so well? All of these questions should be investigated by studies. People feeling productivity gains doesn't imply the gains exist.

Otherwise it sounds like "many people have had their lives changed by {insert philosophical/religious movement}, so if you're not finding it true you should look into what's wrong with you."
by jlarocco | 2025-08-30 16:07:50+00:00
I don't buy this line of pro-AI reasoning. It sounds like more work with less reliable results than just writing the code myself.

First of all, nobody is writing and open sourcing their own XML parser in 2025, so that's hyperbole.

Second, the boilerplate to use most XML libraries can be copy/pasted out of their docs. So where is AI saving you time here? The prompting and other BS is a waste of time and just looks silly, and you still have to read and understand the code. At best it seems like breaking even.
Show HN: VR Cardboard Profile Generator
by altbdoor | 2025-08-30 16:07:55+00:00
Late to the whole Google Cardboard party, but just got a cheap knockoff Cardboard myself. The seller didn't know the specific configurations, so I just went to check around.

I found the Viewer Profile Generator[1], but it was completely non-functional, generating blanks instead of valid QRs. A StackOverflow post[2] explains how the website generates them, but I found it tedious to replicate.

Hence, I built a site in Vue to both practice, and iterate the profile generation faster.

[1]: https://wwgc.firebaseapp.com/

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/77317690
by thunky | 2025-08-30 16:07:56+00:00
> For instance, plain-language "apply the user's promo code" doesn't capture the nasty if/else tree you might hit when you're deep in the codebase and see that there's already a bunch of restrictions on other types of promo codes and the product manager didn't think about which of those restrictions should apply to this new promo code

Sure, but you've already lost at this point. Your code is so jacked up that you can't even describe what it does in words.

Now imagine what happens when a customer calls customer service and asks why their promo code isn't working.

> And at this point you're gonna need to use plain language to describe and refine the problem with the product manager - but if you instead were relying on an LLM to turn your short sentence into the right code, it might pick the wrong thing when it comes to modifying that existing code.

I think you're agreeing with me here...

But TBH this all feels like the establishment trying to protect it's turf, which is understandable. But using the argument of "my code is so overcomplicated and confusing that nobody but me can understand it but me" probably isn't the best position to take.
by dahart | 2025-08-30 16:07:58+00:00
> It doesn’t matter how good of a developer you are, what complicated projects you’re working on or have shipped

You’re bringing the topic of industry experience into a thread about how to get your first game dev job. If you have industry experience, you have a different problem, and there are different recommendations. The question at hand in this article, and from the comment you replied to is how to start getting industry experience, when you haven’t shipped anything before.
by shagie | 2025-08-30 16:08:13+00:00
Do not make perfect the enemy of the good. There are failings of vetting.

That said, for sensitive apps they tend to go through more strict scrutiny of their functionality. Publishing a "Wəlls Fargo" application will likely not get approval.

The question isn't "does it need to be 100%" but rather "if was not done at all, would Apple or Google be liable for flaws in their software (e.g. VM breakouts) that allows malware to do banking transactions, location tracking, or place calls (e.g. 1-900 number dialing) without user consent?"

I'm fairly certain that Apple and Google take measures to limit their liability. With how courts and countries are finding technology companies liable for such (consumer and data privacy protections), I would expect to see more restrictions on the device to try to further limit the company's exposure.
by marcosdumay | 2025-08-30 16:08:25+00:00
> So piles of if’s and SQL.

One would imagine by now we would have some incredibly readable logical language to use with the SQL on that context...

But instead we have people complaining that SQL is too foreign and insisting we beat it down until it becomes OOP.

To be fair, creating that language is really hard. But then, everybody seems to be focusing on destroying things more, not on constructing a good ecosystem.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-08-30 16:08:50+00:00
Fair, my strong impression has been that average people in most countries in Europe put relatively less into private pension schemes than equivalent Americans. I know that is the case in the UK, for example.

My state pension alone in the US is notionally ~$4k per month when I reach retirement age (plus all the other subsidies and free stuff). Despite this, Americans are pretty much indoctrinated from birth to assume that won’t exist and to have alternative plans. This leads to the interesting phenomenon where many people that weren’t particularly well off during their working years find themselves relatively flush with money during retirement because they were operating from a pessimistic model.
by alephnerd | 2025-08-30 16:09:09+00:00
Absolutely! And that's my point! Broading access to education is a net benefit to society, because fortune prepares an able mind.

> The difference could be connections

In Ilya's case, not really. He was an immigrant twice (first USSR to Israel, then Israel to Canada), and wouldn't have been able to do an MS/PhD at UT without actually being capable - it's not difficult to enter UToronto, but it's difficult to leave with a CS bachelors degree.

I've always felt a broad access system like the Warren-era UCs along with LBJ's "Great Deal" is of better benefit for a country than investing in building isolated ivory towers for education, because we have the ability to better ourselves, and that door should always remain open.
by sokoloff | 2025-08-30 16:09:13+00:00
Be the change you want to see in the world?

As you find reasons to object to that, many of those reasons are likely the same shared by others and make this a vastly less common arrangement, because someone has to take on the massive initial risk to start and fund the business through the unavoidable period of initial losses and probably wants to see a way to having a compensating upside in the event of success.
by jmtame | 2025-08-30 16:10:02+00:00
Cloudflare is a gatekeeper because they’re trying to insert themselves between the owner and the end-user. Despite all the altruistic signaling, they really just want to capitalize on AI. And they’re happy to do that even if it results in a subpar experience for the end-user. They started this with a focus on news organizations, so I’m not particularly excited about trying to block AI access and lock down the web through one private company just so we can preserve 90s era clickbait businesses.
by hopelite | 2025-08-30 16:10:47+00:00
Can I just remind everyone that GPT was released not even 3 years ago yet. It's been only 2 full years since GPT was released.

I get that people are anxious, worried, and are going through the "cycles of grief", but do you really think that in another 2 years, let alone 5 it won't be able to code a good XML library? We are just going to have to see how things go, because they are clearly going to go, whether we want or not.

And what does open source and the quality of projects have to do with it? There were bad open source projects before GPT's release.
by aDyslecticCrow | 2025-08-30 16:11:29+00:00
Complex languages can give the programmer powerful tools to abstract things badly. But those powerful tools can also help make the code clearer if used right. (I'm a real sucker for a map().filter().map().sort().unwrap(), and feel the same logic becomes so unruly to understand if converted to a large loop)

I think the sentiment that we should use simpler languages comes abuse of powerful features. Once we've meta-programmed the entire program logic with a 12 layer deep type tree or inheritance chain... we may realize we abused the tool in a way a simple language would have stopped.

But at the same time...checking a errno() after a function call just because the language lack result type or exception handling, is clearly too simple. A minor increase in language complexity would have made the code much clearer.
by mattmanser | 2025-08-30 16:11:30+00:00
If they were, where are their products and open source projects? Let's circle back.

One thing I've noticed about the super-AI enthusiasts on HN is that not a single one ever have a single comment linking to a repo of work they've made with it.

I check. I actually always do because I'm really keen to learn how to use these magical super-AI workflows. I've watched streams, replicated clause MD files, tried all the context tricks.

I'm not even saying AI doesn't help, it's great for getting me over the blank page writer's block. It's just not great at much else.

So I've just checked your comments and not only do you not have any examples of your super-duper AI skills, but it looks like you've been in the industry less than a year, graduating from a PhD last year?

You also admit it took you a week trying to debug a problem before an AI fixed it for you. Because you'd missed some parentheses in an algo.

I'm not trying to shame you, but that does signal your inexperience. If you'd have made the code well and easy to test, you should have spotted your bad algo quickly.

So is it that we're all bad at using AI? Or is it that AI benefits inexperienced programmers more?
by mdaniel | 2025-08-30 16:13:24+00:00
For my frame of reference, do you think the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator are psycho-bullshit, too? Because I had characterized personas as a very similar "of course it's a generalization" and OP even said themselves "every engineer is a mix" but if you're coming from stance that bucketing people is disrespectful, then your perspective on MBTI would help me digest your stance
by vkaku | 2025-08-30 16:14:56+00:00
I realize that given the current adoption, the language might turn out to be completely different in the next few years.

And right now, transformers literally can transform any source to any target, so languages are not as valuable as they once used to be and any idioms in one language will eventually become outmoded thanks to the rapidly evolving way we work today.

Python will still be a favorite language for me, just not as much as it used to be.

If someone makes a new modern, tiny, self contained runtime (Bun like) for Python deployments, hit me up. I'll be happy to try it. That's something I've been wanting for a while.
Show HN: I made a mini site to see timezone shifts
by pure-orange | 2025-08-30 16:15:08+00:00
Hey HN. I made a micro site one recent evening to see upcoming (and recent past) timezone transitions. At my job, we have some timezone specific code where we often see spikes in metrics due to random timezone shifts around the world. Just for fun, I wanted a way to easily see where and what this timezone shift might have been, so built this mini site to do so.

Its fully clientside and works by making use of the Internationalization API, so if you need an API for this you're coming to the wrong place, but feel free to yoink the code.

Its just one fat index.html file. Served off my VPS via caddy file server. No dependencies or build steps. See the code in the github link below.

All the CSS is "vibe coded", I think it looks pretty cool.

As an aside, I love that AI has made it so easy to spit out sites like this. My personal site is filled with subdomains like this one with little random tools which I occasionally use.

https://github.com/rupert648/timezone-fuckery/blob/main/inde...
by tptacek | 2025-08-30 16:15:10+00:00
I briefly flagged the preceding comment for "psycho-bullshit" before concluding that it was just a really forceful way to say the developer personas were pseudoscientific (of course they are, nobody is claiming otherwise) but I think it's worth calling out that MBTI is also pseudoscientific; it has no real validity, or even test-test reliability.
by Findecanor | 2025-08-30 16:15:11+00:00
M68K also had single-bit instructions. Way back when I wrote M68K assembly, I used them a lot.

I'd think there are quite a few data structures and algorithms where there can be benefits of using powers of two, or to count bits in a word.

RISC-V without the B(itmanip) extension is otherwise quite spartan. B also contains many instructions that other ISAs have in their base set, such as address calculation, and/or/xor not, rol/ror, and even some zero/sign-extension ops.
by avianlyric | 2025-08-30 16:16:11+00:00
> But should they? Should we also accept Google's browser signing and ban all browsers the bank doesn't like?

If you want to hold the banks liable for fraud committed against you (which is exactly what happens in many countries), then it’s hardly reasonable to say that they’re not allowed to use what ever technical options they can to prevent that fraud.

You can put forward the argument that banks simply shouldn’t be responsible for fraud committed against their customers. But we only need to look at world of cryptocurrencies to see how well that works in reality.
by jmtame | 2025-08-30 16:16:16+00:00
You’re referencing an old and outdated technology that has no capability to handle things like revenue and attribution. New protocols will need to evolve to the current use. Owners want money, so make the protocol focused on that use case.

I’m not here to propose a solution. I’m here as an end-user saying I won’t go back to the old experience which is outdated and broken.
by gchadwick | 2025-08-30 16:16:30+00:00
Andes (Condor is owned by Andes) seems to get relatively little press Vs other RISCV outfits. My sense is they've been quietly building a very solid RISCV CPU business with a great IP portfolio.

This latest core looks very interesting, can't wait to see it hit silicon and see what it can really do!
by sitkack | 2025-08-30 16:16:35+00:00
This is fundamentally the problem. Just like being able to send OTA updates has enshittified all software, having this magic shim layer that fixes hardware problems has enabled shit hardware, and then foisted all this complexity into the OS. Many abstractions are like bondo, they just cover rot.

I am addressing your comment and eru's question about drivers.

The hardware that would normally need drivers should present itself over a fixed, well documented protocol. Think virtio, or usb device classes but more comprehensive. This would also allow for said hardware to rigorously tested before it ever sees an OS. As it is now, because the hardware is shit and requires a driver, you can't really test the hardware in a way that an OS would expect because it requires the OS driver to even start to function. The job of the OS is now to repair broken hardware.

https://docs.oasis-open.org/virtio/virtio/v1.3/virtio-v1.3.h...

https://wiki.osdev.org/Virtio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_clas... (the only good thing to come out of usb)
by delichon | 2025-08-30 16:16:42+00:00
As such, the second law appears to hold a chilling prophecy for humanity in the very long term.

The idea that our species is so uniquely capable of transcending extinction and surviving long enough for the fate of the universe to be relevant to it is optimistic to the point of absurdity. It fits the evidence better to suppose that we're particularly capable of self destruction.
by mrandish | 2025-08-30 16:17:00+00:00
Trivia Trivia: Dana based the Wayne's World character Garth on his engineer brother Brad. When he's playing Garth he's impersonating his brother in a way that's as spot on yet over-the-top exaggerated as when Dana does his impersonation of US President George Bush - except the Brad impersonation is only hilarious to those who know Brad.
by eqvinox | 2025-08-30 16:17:32+00:00
> In this space Kernel Bypass is still very much the norm if you want to get an efficient system.

Unless you can get an ASIC to do it, then the ASIC is massively preferrable; just the power savings generally¹ end the discussion. (= remove most routers from the list; also some security appliances and load balancers.)

¹ exceptions confirm the rule, i.e. small/boutique setups
by pjmlp | 2025-08-30 16:19:51+00:00
Yes, before MBAs took over, project management was more related to actually what happens in the project, GANT charts, stuff like Microsoft Project, resourcing team, setting the overall plan what goes where, who's available, when are vacations allowed,...

Product management was interfacing with the client, understanding what is actually supposed to be built as vision, understanding UI/UX before that became a field of its own, coordinating usability sessions, and so forth.

Naturally they have common touch points like what is possible from the vision, given the actual budget and available resources, expectation management and what not.
by bryanrasmussen | 2025-08-30 16:20:11+00:00
I don't think flexbox really started being used until 2013 at the earliest, the comment I replied to was complaining about 2022 and a flexbox bug in IE. This 2012 thing doesn't seem to relate at all to the subject.

on edit: I know it was in WD in 2009 but I'm pretty sure it was around 2013 that people started playing with it. I think it started being popular in 2014-2015.
by perlgeek | 2025-08-30 16:21:28+00:00
I'm familiar with some civil nuclear power plants, my father worked for decades in the industry, and I did some internships too. (No contact with nuclear power on submarines / carriers)

All the designs I know of have a pumped (active) cooling loop for the reactor, then a secondary loop where the coolant (typically water) evaporates and drives a turbine, and that secondary loop is then coupled to either river water cooling or evaporation towers. (There might even be another intermediary cooling loop, not entirely sure).

(You don't want potentially radioactive water to interact with your turbine directly, makes it a nightmare to maintain).

> Also, I guess you could have the hot end very hot too..?

There are some limiting factors:

* melting point of your fuel (you really want that to remain solid, so you can control where it is)

* The reactor core is usually contained in a pressure vessel, which is made out of steel. Steel becomes weaker with higher temperatures. Switching to other materials is super expensive (harder to machine, fewer people are good at machining it etc.)

* You really want to be able to reliably move fuel rods and control rods in and out of the reactor; thermal expansion must be taken into account. At the same time, you want as little leakage as possible out of the reactor core.
by joshcsimmons | 2025-08-30 16:21:49+00:00
I mean - it's fine to not have analytics if you like to write but be honest about it at least. You don't care about what writing your audience engages with. If you were giving presentations you'd get questions and comments at the end. Since a blog is typically read/delivered in async fashion distributed across regions the only feedback you get is via analytics.

Seems to just be one more link in the kooky "everyone is out to get me" chain of thought.
by dahart | 2025-08-30 16:22:32+00:00
IMO doing both code and art at the same time is the best place to be, and it has served my career well, in both CG films and in games. The point of learning art isn’t necessarily to get a job making assets, it’s to be a better developer, and learning art seriously will make you a better developer. (Also artists who learn to code seriously are better artists, this goes both ways.)

It’s a mistake to think that software engineers making assets is a waste of time. Engineering and games in general would be better if every dev took a rotation in the art department. The reason companies silo and specialize their teams isn’t for your benefit, it’s for the short-term efficiency of a specific production.

It’s a bonus that you could make assets if you want, as opposed to the vast majority of programmers who can’t. Being able to code+art will also give someone a major leg up in small shops and/or for solo devleopment.