drinfinity's comments

drinfinity | 3 years ago | on: GPTs Are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs

Confining an LLM to the very narrow domain of "calculators" is a mistake, I think.

You wouldn't say "a programmer that is 99% correct is worthless, I need 100%". I'm pushing it, but for a more fair comparison I'd say measure it against a programmer. How often are we wrong? 75% of the time? :) being generous here. It's the tools that make us productive.

I don't know about you specifically, but I don't think you'll be very productive with a bare terminal lacking any modern IDE-like or even REPL facilities. I'll ask you to come up with instantly working code every time, all the time. It doesn't work like that. You need iteration and I believe these kinds of AI have the same issues as us. There are wrong sometimes (often) and need feedback.

drinfinity | 3 years ago | on: Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists?

You think music theory is more demanding than CS? I've dedicated decades and probably 75% of my youth to mastering this instrument called a computing device. It has numerous layers, each completely different and each significant enough to build a standalone career out of (OS, networking, etc). I feel insulted if you think playing and mastering a piano is the same thing.

Extreme specialists are found everywhere. Mastering skateboarding at world level will eat your life too, but it's not "harder" than programming. At least, for any commonsensical interpretation of "harder".

All the rest, we do too. Except I don't record videos and I'm sure it is not childishly easy, but it will not eat my life.

drinfinity | 3 years ago | on: Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists?

Making art is not "vastly more difficult" or at least it is (IMO) highly debatable. Some parts of it require decades of experience to do with any kind of excellence, yes. That's also the case with powerlifting, figure skating and raising children and indeed programming. It's just that your boss made a money printer that takes in bullshit and outputs bullshit which gives you your cosy job.

But that is not "programming". That is glueing together bullshit until it works and the results of that "work" are "blessing" us everyday. The gift that keeps on giving. You FAANG people are indeed astronomically, immorally, overpaid and actively harm the world.

But, luckily, the world has more layers than that. Programming for Facebook is not the same as programming for a small chemical startup or programming in any resource-restricted environment where you can't just spin up 1000 AWS instances at your leisure and you actually have to know what you're doing with the metal.

drinfinity | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism?

Why do you want to change? Regret anything?

I don't know the first thing about you, so it's hard to say what is going to help. If you truly are a narcissist all bets are off, but perhaps you are just a bit self-centered which might mean there is still hope after all.

I'd look for books on being a "building lasting relations", "how to deal with emotions", "how to be a good mother/father". That kind of stuff. Bring out the wounded inner child and see if some CPR is still an option.

drinfinity | 6 years ago | on: Snowpack: Build a web application without a bundler

It does not suck. The compile times are OK and are getting better. Angular (and other) SPAs have capabilities no RoR, ASP.NET or Django setup can even begin to touch. Separating the back-end from the front-end with an independent API is also a god-send.

Death to remaining in the dark ages for nostalgia's sake.

drinfinity | 6 years ago | on: Why do holes horrify me?

Snakes don't phase me _at all_, no pulse change whatever. I don't care, never have. I'll happily enter a bath filled with them and stay there for hours. My baby boy doesn't care about spiders, snakes, etc. He is now learning it because my wife is (over)reacting to them.

There is a major environmental/learned aspect to this, I don't buy the 100% inborn argument at all. Young children (0-12mo) don't give a damn about anything. I do believe we are born with the innate potential to focus on these creatures faster/earlier than other animals, but fear, that's learned.

drinfinity | 6 years ago | on: Matestack: Rapidly create interactive UIs in Ruby

An API backend + UI front-end consuming it is the perfect solution, it is the only sane thing I ever came across. Stop trying so hard to shoehorn old bullshit over it. It took us decades to settle on this, please leave it be and focus on more pressing issues. World hunger or something.
page 1