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I get the solution for this and I know what all the terms mean. But I don't understand the problem. Whether it's facetious or hyperbole or whatever, I just don't get who or what circumstances this is addressing.

This is written like a Jeopardy answer. I just don't know what the question is.

Can anyone enlighten me?


I've come very close to be the "sir" mentioned in the article (for hobby stuff only though), luckily always I did catch myself and was able to stop before it was too late. I decided at some point that I do not want to build a compiler/transpiler, and if I do some day, I want for it to be a conscious decision and not an accident like in the article.

It starts innocently, e.g. doing some template files and replacing some simple values, then you start to have to do more replacements and more "smart" parsing.

TBF, I did put together a transpiler from PHP to JS, but I didn't build it, just found the different pieces that luckily fit together and hacked around it enough that it could run in the browser.



That makes total sense. I have been tempted to do this in the past. Fortunately time and resources constraints have kept it to costly sane and maintainable, performant configurations until I learned that I would never create the system I wanted and that it was probably better that I didn't anyways. I guess I've been lucky and didn't even know it.

When writing programs that take other programs as inputs, and/or produce other programs as outputs, it's tempting to treat the program as only slightly more structured than its textual representation.

The problem is that unless your use case is very limited and is guaranteed to stay that way, supporting more and more language constructs will quickly turn your code into a mess.

Compiler design as we learn it (lex/parse, syntax tree, semantic checks, transforms, lowering to codegen) is _the_ solution to the problem of dealing with computer programs as inputs and outputs. Trying to do something less is like solving a dynamic programming problem without knowing dynamic programming: it will only work for a restricted set of inputs.


Every old telco technician had a story about dropping a wrench on a busbar or other bare piece of high powered transmission equipment and having to shut that center down, get out the heavy equipment, and cut it off because the wrench had been welded to the bus bars.

Note that the rack doesn't accept DC input, like lots of (e.g., NEBS certified) telco equipment. There's a bus bar, but it's enclosed within the rack itself. The rack takes single- or three-phase AC inputs to power the rectifiers, which are then attached to the internal bus bar.

I agree. I've had this happen often enough on the job that it's not a totally made up example. And usually you'll be one of two or three people in the whole company who is able and willing.

Debugging old DSL vendor specific languages or code so old using, frameworks and standards long out of fashion and support, that they are half way to being a different language.

Adding support for some back ported features or patching security holes in an old client or legacy stacks.

Or at a big company we had some escrow code from a much smaller partner that we ended up becoming responsible for.

Often getting the environment setup for proper debugging is more work than anything.

But yes, it's a good test for a senior+.


If you can afford it, please try kagi[0]. It's not a panacea. It IS a lot better than Google and has been for some time.

[0] https://kagi.com/welcome


Speaking of which, they're just no better.

https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

There's a postmortem update at the end of this post.

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011314


I read this in a previous discussion of kagi.

Not going to read it again but if I recall it was more than half complaining about things not at all related to kagi search. Stuff like how they manage their finances and administration.

Sure that effects how well they can deliver search at some level but ultimately if their search is better than alternatives then I'm gonna keep paying them.


The search is better. That is what I pay for. And the summarization is actually quite useful.


My gut feeling is that you didn't even read the piece. Read first then get back at me.


Wrong gut feeling then. It complains about Kagi not focusing on what their unique proposition is, and then about the t-shirts. That can all be true, at the same time as their core product is still also great.


I do not use this term to refer to myself. I respect those who do and respect the meaning behind it but am just old enough that it feels alien to me 99% of the time.

But I am SO triggered by this piece. I had that intrusive feeling you sometimes get when driving where you think, "I could just close my eyes and see what happens", "Or that clif is so close and the guardrail doesn't really extend far enough"

Only for my career. Like I should just not show up on Monday. I should get in the car and drive far away and change my name and work at a nice retail joint in a mid-sized town.

I'm going to need to sit and stare into the distance for an hour and 3.


It's an almost exact copy of my last few months, right down to the 10am start.

Except that all our other senior engineers got laid off and there's nobody to pair with, I don't give two fucks about bullying because at this point the entire company knows I'll quit on the spot if they try, and our problems are mostly that the remaining team cannot understand the terrifying eldritch decision making process that led to fun little patterns like "wrap every API call in a try/catch and then ignore the errors".

I am seriously considering doing a TAFE course and becoming an electrician.


They took inspiration from the error steamroller: https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy


Perhaps if one coupled this with a multimodal LLM we could achieve a singularity


> wrap every API call in a try/catch and then ignore the errors

This describes the project I'm working on at $job with eerie accuracy :sob:

Dare I ask, was that project written in Java?


Unfortunately my personal hell is written in Node.js.

I am so very sorry, both that you are suffering through this too and that the infection has spread.


Will you feel better looking at a wiring job that seems guaranteed to burn down the building if you don't fix it? And will Management agree?


I wish the abominations software engineers create were as regulated and fixable as a bad wiring job. I would feel absolutely chuffed to work in an industry with licensed inspectors and standards bodies.

I am currently dealing with a system involving four separate serverless functions that call each other. There's no reason whatsoever why any of them need to be network calls. The fourth function just calls the first function again. One is in a different region for no discernible reason.


Would be nice if there was a serverless library that lets you do in-process orchestration so you don't need abominations like Step Functions ;)

e.g., https://github.com/dbos-inc/durable-swarm


> There has been a point in my life where I ended every day in the dark, staring at a wall for an hour or two straight, trying to figure out why everything felt awful.

From his post about burnout and mental health. Also worth a read.

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/on-burnout-mental-health-and...


If on Monday morning you’re wishing it was Friday evening, it’s time to quit.


The frightening thing about serious work-related burnout is that three years after quitting, on Monday mornings you still wish it was Friday evening.

Any day now I'll be ready for the grind again. Any day now.


It took me about six months off to start feeling normal, and I think I got out much earlier than most people do. And if you read that post, I still clearly let it get pretty bad before I left.


Many of us have kids to feed! The economy is not bursting with jobs anymore since rates rose post-COVID.


No need to quit immediately, just apply for jobs on the side.


And do the same thing elsewhere for less money and with less social capital?


I went from an important cog with low pay but high responsibility to a much higher paying job with no responsibility. You can too with a bit of luck.


No, I mean, I’m there, but it’s anything but fulfilling xD it’s just that anything else would feel like a downgrade.


What about if on Friday morning you're wishing it was Monday? Like, two Mondays ago? So you weren't quite as late on everything?


As someone who managed to stay productive during a burnout despite constant bullying by a yelling CTO: it doesn't really help if you deliver on time.


Yep, in theory yes, but shame that the bills won't pay themselves


i don't buy that any situation is so hopeless, you're powerless to improve it. at least in the context of this field and its line(s) of work.

sounds a lot more like learned hopelessness making it harder to respond to stress with radical change because of (normal and human) fears of the unknown.

at some point though responsibility for the circumstances, the feelings, the stress -- the good, bad, and ugly or easy, hard, and nearly impossible -- has to be taken.

there's only one life to live. we owe it to ourselves and others to do more than -- to try not to -- just "roll over and play dead", so to speak.

humans have survived a lot and have adapted to just as much if not more.

if i ever allowed myself to even stay at any of my former jobs coming up in my life when i was paycheck to paycheck because of not making rent or just being flatout broke and homeless, i would have not progressed my career, or life, in any meaningful way, and just fed the negative feedback loop influencing what feels like a miserable existence (even privileged as it were).

can't hold myself hostage. and also, i can't hold those around me hostage as consequence of my non-action, either.


Finding work that makes you look forward to more than just the weekend can be transformational yet really hard


> I had that intrusive feeling you sometimes get when driving where you think, "I could just close my eyes and see what happens", "Or that clif is so close and the guardrail doesn't really extend far enough"

L’appel du vide


Does the mention of such concepts or acknowledging it is real ... put some lisetners (if they are work certain professions) under an obligation to refer the person to a mental health assessment?

Example: a blog post like this one, with the author's real name, that acknowleges it front and center: https://ebb-and-flow.blog/2023/07/23/another-scan-lappel-du-...


Seriously, quit then. It’s not worth it. You get one life. How many hours on this earth do you want to spend suicidally depressed? If you have a really high pain tolerance, maybe you can do that for years. How lucky would that be?

There’s a polish restaurant near where I live that makes amazing food. The owner is always out and about, chatting with customers and making sly jokes. Turns out he used to be an oracle sql consultant of some sort, and he turned it all in to run his restaurant. You can tell he’s thriving. I think he’s got the right idea.


Survivorship bias. In an ideal world yes but in reality there's bills to be paid and tech (generally) pays really well.

Not saying you shouldn't quit, just that it's not so simple.


I hear you. But also, ... if you're literally feeling suicidal because of work, in a sense it really is that simple. You aren't doing anyone any favours - not your coworkers, your family or yourself - by living like that.


This is the answer.

Money is money, but money comes and goes.

The work you put into finding a healthy source of income is worth every minute.


There’s literally a 90% chance your restaurant won’t survive its first year.


Then do something else! Literally billions of people are employed every day doing things that aren't software engineering. Pick anything.


Change something for the better. You are the one who cares the most, you are the one best suited to take control over your life.

You deserve to feel good. Life is too short to be a cog in a broken machine.


I've had a really good scrum master. (Plenty of bad ones too). The really good one I could say something like

"I started work on this item and realized that I'm actually missing a lot of context and information in the requirements. I need your help clarifying them"

The scrum Master knew who to contact to get that information would set up a meeting, have the meeting without me if they thought they could do it or schedule it and include me so I could ask the questions I needed, Mark the ticket for me as blocked, fill out the info after the meeting and communicate the risk and reason for delay to stakeholders.

Basically I could say "There's a problem!" and the scrum Master would get it taken care of or find someone who could. Probably the most valuable person on that team.


Sounds like a good TPM, I must admit I haven't worked at a company that had a "scrum master" title and didn't realize the role had grown in scope.


I'm not sure it is a larger scope, I've always understood this to be their role - they lead scrum meetings, but outside meetings they were the one that helped get the team unblocked. Managing the board was just a side-effect of keeping an eye out for any team members who were stuck.

On top of that the one I worked with who was good at this also took on small cases because otherwise he'd regularly have nothing to do.


So basically encipher was never used in the context of the web. And the web is what made encrypt popular separate from encipher. It does look like maybe encipher was possibly going to take off but encrypt stepped on its head.


Interestingly, the basis of web encryption does use the term "encipherment" -- the `KeyUsage` field of X.509 certificates has `keyEncipherment` and `dataEncipherment` flags.


What a weird article. Feels like two or three little articles under a trenchcoat.

Just this evening I finally got my old gaming PC out of the closet and back up and running. My 15 year old son helped me troubleshoot driver issues and bios errors and we got it functioning. Loaded up the old steam library and I spent about 20 minutes creating a playlist for him. Braid, Subnautica, half life 1 & 2, portal, vvvvvv, rimworld, myst, and a few more not in steam, dungeon crawl stone soup, Spelunky. These were just what I already had. All chosen for their gaminess and not their realism. Maybe half life 2 is one that was trying for realism (at the time).

Just like I require some actual book reading and not just graphic novels. I wonder if the games you played will be a sign of 'culture' at some point.

"Their a good family but they only play halo and battlefield"


Subaru still makes them. I would buy something else since I hate the anti privacy of the company and cars but it's all I can easily get


Volvo, MB, Audi and BMW continue to make them too.


Not very well, though (and I don't think BMW sells wagons in the US anymore). They are positioned as "cool & snobby", rather than "useful".

Peak wagon was the P3 Volvo V70/XC70, built on the Ford EUCD platform [1], which had amazing utility via tie-down rails, 40/20/40 fold-flat middle seats, and a front passenger seat that folded flat to create a uniform load floor for carrying 10 foot long boards. They were better at being useful than the Subaru Outback and yet had higher quality leather and carpets. And don't forget the vertical rear hatch, giving more interior space with a larger window (and larger rear wiper!) that gave them excellent rearward visibility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_EUCD_platform


BMW does not sell a wagon in the US since 2019. My dad got the last generation they sold and its a joy to drive honestly.


They don’t make any 3 row wagons right? Only lux like BMW and Mercedes do I think.


VW has a new wagon, but it's only available in Europe, not the US.


Even worse if someone else signs up somehow using your contact info. I got signed up (via email thankfully) for a political party in another country and no amount of "mark as spam", unsubscribe or replying would get me off the list. Eventually I just had to create a filter that dumps those messages in the trash.

It must be something with non-U.S. English speaking countries because I get numerous semi-spam messages in email and text for services in Australia and the U.K. casinos with account numbers or PINs, two step notifications for national car registries, banking, contractors asking about work or sending invoices. Maybe it's just English speaking countries have a lot of people named "iamthepieman"


My wife had someone do sign up for a bank account with my wife's gmail address. She told the bank they got it wrong, and they went away for a bit and then they re-signed up AGAIN. So she told the bank to close the account. It didn't re-occur after that.

A number of elderly folks have had this issue as well. I'm really at a loss on how to fix it, some times there are bad actors but generally it seems folks are clueless and the signup flow doesn't adequately account for this.


I have a common-ish first initial, last name Gmail account. The number of people who think they have my address is staggering. Hundreds over the years.

In one case, the manager of a large factory was forwarding me an email with remote access credentials and VPN software every month.


I had that happen, but I couldn’t fix it because I couldn’t prove I was a customer, since I wasn’t.


Is the email in question something along the lines of firstnamelastname at gmail? I'm guessing your email address is a really common name that someone else keeps forgetting how their email actually deviates, or someone typos writing theirs.


Another possible scenario is that Gmail is getting wires crossed. I have had the account firstname.lastname@gmail.com for 20 years now. About 5 years ago, some dude in Australia (who coincidentally has the same rare last name as me) started using firstnamelastname@gmail.com. Based on the emails I've seen I believe that Gmail let him do this for a while, but eventually started delivering his emails into my inbox. I don't know if there was a technical change in Gmail for how they handled these addresses or what, but it's very odd.


firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com are the same address, according to gmail documentation. If this is what is actually happening (and there isn't a subtle typo, etc.), then something is more wrong than "wires crossed" & you should report it as a security vulnerability.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text...

https://www.google.com/appserve/security-bugs/m2/new


Some times I get genuine ones (like a hotel reservation) for someone somewhere that’s also confused about their name.

I’d be happy to help but half the time it’s from a No-Reply email address and that shuts the door on as much effort as I’m willing to supply.


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