Hacker News: ExtremisAndy

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "My application programmer instincts failed when debugging assembler"

ExtremisAndy — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:28:32 +0000

For real! I occasionally write assembly because, for some reason, I kind of enjoy it, and also to keep my brain sharp. But yes, there is no way I could do it without pencil and paper (unless I’m on a site like CPUlator that visually shows everything that’s happening).

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "AI makes you boring"

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:28:24 +0000

This is exactly how I use them too! What I usually do is give the LLM bullet points or an outline of what I want to say, let it generate a first attempt at it, and then reshape and rewrite what I don’t like (which is often most of it). I think, more than anything, it just helps me to quickly get past that “staring at a blank page” stage.

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Elegance is Bullshit"

ExtremisAndy — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 04:14:35 +0000

>language is the refuge of educated idiots

I love the way you've expressed this! This was my experience doing the lit review for my PhD. I read more than a few "scholarly" texts that were perhaps impressive from a language/vocabulary standpoint but contained ideas that were either poorly supported or too simple to amount to any meaningful contribution to the field.

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "When would you ever want bubblesort? (2023)"

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:54:53 +0000

I felt this comment in my soul. I’ll never understand it: I’ve written thousands of lines of code (as a hobbyist) to solve all sorts of problems I’ve run into and yet always seem to struggle to wrap my mind around the core algorithms any real developer should be able to handle easily. This is why I’ve never pursued programming as a career.

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "When AI promises speed but delivers debugging hell"

ExtremisAndy — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 13:30:31 +0000

"AI isn't great at creating software, but it is great at writing functions."

This 100%. In my experience (ChatGPT - paid account), it often causes more problems than it solves when I ask it to do anything complex, but for writing functions that I describe in simple English, much like your example here, it has been overall pretty amazing. Also, I love asking it to generate tests for the function it writes (or that I write!). That has also been a huge timesaver for me. I find testing to be so boring and yet it's obviously essential, so it's nice to offload (some of) that to an LLM!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Command Line Tools I Like (2022)"

ExtremisAndy — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 22:23:18 +0000

I have never heard of “jq”. Oh my goodness. Your comment may have just changed my life. I cannot emphasize enough how many times I have needed a tool like this (and, yes, shame on me for not making a better effort to find one). Thank you!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "CriticGPT: Finding GPT-4's mistakes with GPT-4"

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 18:01:50 +0000

Wow, I’ve never thought about that, but you’re right! It really has trained me to be skeptical of what I’m being taught and confirm the veracity of it with multiple sources. A bit time-consuming, of course, but generally a good way to go about educating yourself!

Is ChatGPT a Dead End?

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:23:25 +0000

Article URL: https://mindmatters.ai/2023/11/is-chatgpt-a-dead-end/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38469985

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Nobody Understands C++: Intro (2007)"

ExtremisAndy — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 12:35:05 +0000

Yeah, I love C++ as a hobbyist programmer but will readily admit I basically use it like C but with the added convenience of strings & classes. Hardly how you're supposed to use it these days, but this is fine for my toy projects. But I can't imagine using the language professionally where you've got to be aware of best practices, modern enhancements, etc. Seems overwhelming!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "AI Crap"

ExtremisAndy — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 10:53:40 +0000

This is indeed a valid question, but I think it’s largely up to the user. For me, as a hobbyist programmer that sometimes writes code at work to automate certain tasks, I use ChatGPT to quickly create boilerplate/template type code AND to learn how to do new things. When I’m asking how to do something new, I try to actually learn what’s going on so that I won’t have to keep asking about that particular issue. But yeah, the temptation to just say “thanks, ChatGPT” and move on without learning anything is certainly there and could be quite harmful to one’s overall coding skills.

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Is the AI Boom Already Over?"

ExtremisAndy — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 20:48:51 +0000

I'm trying to remain impressed and open-minded, and there's no question these things are super cool, and something genuinely exciting. And who knows how much they'll improve over the next few years? But so far, if I'm brutally honest, they have largely been frustrating to work with. I am a teacher, and I use them (mainly via APIs) to generate questions for worksheets and study guides for my students. The idea of letting the computer help me save time on creating those kinds of exercises so that I can then focus on the more interesting/challenging activities initially sounded so good, but I've found I'm completely unable to trust these systems to generate correct information. Almost every question set or study guide I've generated had at least one, sometimes several, serious errors that would have led my students astray. It does still save time, and I'm sure it will get better. But like you said, the fact that I have to constantly correct its output basically eliminates the possibility, at least for now, of using it as a tutor to teach me material that is genuinely new to me (something I was looking forward to doing). I simply can't trust it for that at this point. We'll see how things evolve.

Is the AI Boom Already Over?

ExtremisAndy — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 18:58:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/8/19/23837705/openai-chatgpt-microsoft-bing-google-generating-less-interest

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37201965

Points: 6

# Comments: 7

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Ask HN: Do you still use a hand held/desktop calculator?"

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:28:35 +0000

I own one, but almost never use it. For quick, few-steps calculations I’ll use the iPhone’s calculator app. When I have more complex calculations, I almost always find myself needing to remember and label different values, so I’ll just type “python3” in the terminal and get to work ;)

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "React is 10 years old"

ExtremisAndy — Tue, 30 May 2023 21:04:52 +0000

I wanted to like React so bad. I tried. I loved JSX and really appreciated the way you could reuse components. That was all very cool, and I was initially quite enthusiastic about it. But for whatever reason, I just could not figure out state management/hooks. Drove me crazy. It just always felt so unnecessarily complicated compared to other languages and frameworks I've used (even vanilla JS). Now, don't get me wrong: I fully accept the blame here. I am mostly self-taught (and not even the best 'student' in that context, haha) so I'm sure I just lack the overall knowledge base/big-picture understanding to really appreciate what they've done here. I hope I'll give it another shot one day, and perhaps with fresh eyes (and maybe with the help of a patient tutor), it will all 'click'!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Don’t open the details in a modal window, have it be a separate page"

ExtremisAndy — Wed, 24 May 2023 11:45:50 +0000

I always use it while developing a new web app, but admit that I always switch it to something "fancier" in production, mainly because I find alerts rather ugly. But, goodness gracious, it would simplify so many things! I've just sort of assumed that default browser alerts were considered a big no-no these days, but that assumption comes from the fact that I simply don't see them being used much. I guess I should look into this more. Sure would shorten dev times!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Simply explained: How does GPT work?"

ExtremisAndy — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 18:49:41 +0000

No idea about Go, but I was curious how GPT-4 would handle a request to generate C code, so I asked it to help me write a header-only C string processing library with convenience functions like starts_with(), ends_with(), contains(), etc.) I told it every function must only work with String structs defined as:

struct String { char * text; long size; }

...or pointers to them. I then asked it to write tests for the functions it created. Everything... the functions and the tests... worked beautifully. I am not a professional programmer so I mainly use these LLMs for things other than code generation, but the little I've done has left me quite impressed! (Of course, not being a professional programmer no doubt makes me far easier to impress.)

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "How to do hard things"

ExtremisAndy — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 19:11:15 +0000

That's the key: they still trudge through it. I fully agree that those people are indeed amazing. In my experience, though, many complainers toss out every objection possible hoping to make the new project seem so difficult that it isn't worth doing (so everyone will just drop it). Those complainers are toxic and can kill progress. But yes, the ones who verbalize issues just to make sure everyone has a full understanding of a project and the challenges in completing it... but still have every intention to conquer those challenges and stick with it to the end... yes, give me those types of 'complainers' ANY day :)

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Prompt to bypass the restrictions of Bing Chat or to restore the old “Sydney”"

ExtremisAndy — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:41:40 +0000

Yeah, me too. I honestly rather enjoy and appreciate her answers, and it's nice to have links to where she got her info from (because she has made a few mistakes). But, yes, the 'eerie fun' of interacting with her is gone. And having to 'sweep' away our conversations after 8 replies is infuriating because I've been able to have some very normal and quite helpful conversations with her that I really wanted to continue. Oh well. Hopefully all these issues get sorted out over the coming weeks/months!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Linux Command Library"

ExtremisAndy — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 12:24:42 +0000

Oh, my! This is extremely helpful. And well organized, too.

The one-liners section alone is enough to earn this a place on my bookmarks bar. Many thanks to whoever put this together!

New comment by ExtremisAndy in "Jailbreak Chat: A collection of ChatGPT jailbreaks"

ExtremisAndy — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 20:25:42 +0000

Absolutely agree. I’m creating a chatbot for my website, and while it primarily uses old fashioned pattern matching, it does send unrecognized patterns to a stronger AI to get help forming a proper response, and I certainly don’t want it offending my visitors!