The only thing that seems to have gotten a lot worse is the trend of ai articles- which isn't kagi's fault but it would be nice if they could figure out how to filter them. They all follow the same patter- "specific thing you want" with a table of contents with loads of repeated chapters and unrelated information, spattered with effectively random images.
They’re starting to with their stopslop. Sites that are mostly ai content get flagged and deranked. Still not perfect and I think they only just started working on the backlog of reports so hopefully it holds up helping.
I don't remember exactly what I wrote and how the logic works, but I generally remember the broad flow of how things tie together, which makes it easier to drop in on some aspect and understand where it is code-wise.
There's code structure but then there's also code philosophy.
The worst code bases I have to deal with have either no philosophy or a dozen competing and incompatible philosophies.
The best are (obviously) written in my battle tested and ultra refined philosophy developed over the last ~25 years.
But I'm perfectly happy to be working in code bases written even with philosophies that I violently disagree with. Just as long as the singular (or at least compatible) philosophy has a certain maturity and consistency to it.
I think this is well put. Cohesive philosophy, even if flawed, is a lot easier to work with than a patchwork of out-of-context “best practices” strewn together by an LLM
Almost anything I write in Python I start in jupyter just so I can roll it around and see how it feels- which determines how I build it out and to some degree, how easy it is to fix issues later on.
I recently accepted-ish a position at a very ai-forward company. Manual programming was somewhat discouraged entirely.
I've used AI tools in the past for maths I didn't understand or errors I couldn't make sense of, and wrote the bulk myself, but now we have as mentioned, opus/sonnet 4.5- which work great.
As part of this, I had to integrate two new apis- nornally, when I write an API wrapper I end up learning a lot about how the API feels, what leads to what and how it smells, etc. This time? I just asked Claude to read it's docs, then gave suggestions about how I wanted it to be laid out. As a result? I have no idea how these apis feel, their models, etc. If I want to interact with them, I ask Claude how I do a thing with the library it made.
Mind you, the library is good. I looked over everything, it's fairly thin and it's exactly how I would write it, as I suggested it do. But I have no deep understanding, much less an understanding of how it got integrated in.
Like, normally when I integrate something in I learn a bit about the codebase I'm integrating it into. Do that enough times, and I understand the codebase at depth, how things plug in. This time? Nada.
It's.... Deeply uncomfortable, to know so little but still be able to do so much. It doesn't matter if I get it to explain it, that's just information that washes off when I move onto the next thing. The reflexive memory isn't built.
I don't think that modern boards are really repairable at all beyond component replacement- 4+ layer stackups being the big reason. If there's a way to do anything to those boards besides total replacement I'd be super interested to know.
The techniques here are also way beyond basics I think- like, you look at most guides for repair and it's "idk just solder some bodge wires on there, here's what a good joint should look like"
Andrew Zonenberg posted a Twitter thread a year or two ago where he fixed a missing PCB trace some layers down a PCB, with a stereo microscope, precision mill and very steady hands.
Edit: here's the thread. It's a 6 layer PCB with a short on L5 that needs to be fixed from the L1 side.
If you enjoy that sort of thing, check out this guy's videos. Lots of trace repairs (including below the surface), pad replacements, etc. Quite impressive to see it done.
For boards with a bunch of layers and BGA/LGA packages, that have internal manufacturing errors or damage (e.g from overflexing), repairs can be untenable.
If the parts all have pads on their perimeter, then a jumper wire can replace internal traces. If the pads are underneath the part, and the trace is only internal, than a jumper may not be feasible, unless the damage happens from the surface in, in which case each layer can be jumpered at the damage.
nope, people still repair >8 layers boards like it's nothing. Some even do "chip repairing", literally remove the expoxy of the IC to fix bonding wire, or remove the security key/module on the chip.
I think that they actually do. I remember either some discussion (so a HN post) or a HN comment actually talking about it. Oh I should've favourited it but yes this (sort of) actually works (Maybe someone can test it?)
I don't really know that this is avoidable without buckets of work and probably legal issues on behalf of core's (or anyone's) engineers- it's really just something that plagues hardware in general.
Hell, lots of sensors/etc these days are running fairly complicated software that's totally opaque.
I don't think _anyone_ who's buying the new pebble watches is to some degree not interested in software, and probably pretty interested in open-source community work. It's a wildly niche userbase, and this sort of thing is going to put crazy pressure on Eric and co, I imagine.
Still keeping my preorder, but damn dude this kinda sucks.
Additionally, there are browser extensions that can do this- check on a timer, see if some page content is there, and then notify.
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