Hacker News: astroalex

New comment by astroalex in "Show HN: FluidCAD – Parametric CAD with JavaScript"

astroalex — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:41:11 +0000

One obvious difference I can see at a glance is that Maker.js doesn't support 3D models, while FluidCAD does. I assume Maker.js is a lower level library aimed at interfacing directly with CNC machines, while FluidCAD is focused on 3D design.

New comment by astroalex in "A Decade of Slug"

astroalex — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:13:25 +0000

I used Slug at a previous job. It is an excellent, artfully crafted library; really the pinnacle of software engineering in my opinion. Thanks to the author for donating the algorithm to the public domain!

New comment by astroalex in "Self-taught engineers often outperform (2024)"

astroalex — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:05:02 +0000

This is exactly right.

I taught myself coding, but struggled through some of my CS computer science classes because I hadn't learned some (important) boring details. My peers who hadn't coded before, but were otherwise bright, excelled in these classes and have had impressive career trajectories after school.

Based on my personal experience, I don't believe prior experience with programming before college is that predictive of engineering talent.

New comment by astroalex in "Possible new dwarf planet found in our solar system"

astroalex — Wed, 21 May 2025 20:51:21 +0000

I found the preamble at the beginning of the announcement charmingly dated:

> The Minor Planet Electronic Circulars contain information on unusual minor planets, routine data on comets and natural satellites, and occasional editorial announcements. They are published on behalf of Division F of the International Astronomical Union by the Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. > > Prepared using the Tamkin Foundation Computer Network

Looking up the Tamkin Foundation Computer Network: https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/Ack/TamkinFoundation.h...

> The OpenVMS cluster consists of nine single-CPU workstations and one four-CPU server. All the machines are running the extremely robust and secure OpenVMS operating system. The twelve Alpha-based machines are arranged as an OpenVMS Cluster, allowing all machines to share disk storage, execution and batch queues and other resources, as well as simplifying system management.

Assuming "Alpha-based machines" is referring to the DEC Alpha, these computers are ~30 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Alpha

New comment by astroalex in "Zed: High-performance AI Code Editor"

astroalex — Wed, 07 May 2025 22:06:32 +0000

In my personal experience I couldn't use Zed for editing python.

Firstly, when navigating in a large python repository, looking up references was extremely slow (sometimes on the order of minutes).

Secondly, searching for a string in the repo would sometimes be incorrect (e.g. I know the string exists but Zed says there aren't any results, as if a search index hasn't been updated). These two issues made it unusable.

I've been using PyCharm recently and found it to be far superior to anything else for Python. JetBrains builds really solid software.

New comment by astroalex in "How many supernova explode every year?"

astroalex — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:36:50 +0000

This is tragic. It's one of favorite games of all time--heck, one of my favorite media experiences, period. It's worth pushing through until you get hooked.

New comment by astroalex in "Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI"

astroalex — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:39:32 +0000

If you are trying to advance your career, I feel prepping for interviews is probably the number one most important thing you can do, unless you are freakishly gifted at acing interviews with no prep.

New comment by astroalex in "The Burnout Machine"

astroalex — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 23:00:34 +0000

I took 2 years off where I made 0 income. Insurance was covered by the government and my healthcare was quite good. I didn't pay taxes because I didn't make any income. Getting back into the workforce happened literally within a single day (this was ~4 years ago when the market was different, not sure the same thing would happen now). I had no trouble switching jobs multiple times afterwards, either—recruiters and interviewers have never seemed to care that I took a break.

I was able to take some much needed time off to focus on personal projects and I'm extremely grateful I was able to do it.

My friends who didn't take time off were able to advance more in their careers, but I think it is a fair trade.

New comment by astroalex in "Nobody cares"

astroalex — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 05:44:02 +0000

> Have been to the DMV? It sucked? There is a human being whose job it is to be in charge of the DMV. They do not care that it sucks.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've actually never had a bad experience at the DMV here in Seattle. The staff have been efficient, fast, and friendly every time.

Shape Mapper: Projection mapping library for generative art

astroalex — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 22:20:04 +0000

Article URL: https://shapemapper.dev/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42616656

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by astroalex in "Show HN: Demo of my web game about social persuasion"

astroalex — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:27:25 +0000

Fascinating game that is unlike anything I've played. Nice work!

New comment by astroalex in "Century Scale Storage"

astroalex — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 18:33:53 +0000

What prevented you from reading the page?

New comment by astroalex in "Floral formula"

astroalex — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 22:31:19 +0000

DNA is how you serialize flowers!

New comment by astroalex in "Launch HN: Outerport (YC S24) – Instant hot-swapping for AI model weights"

astroalex — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 01:46:49 +0000

Cool! Will this work for multi-GPU inference?

New comment by astroalex in "Faster Docker builds using a remote BuildKit instance"

astroalex — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 02:51:15 +0000

Love what you're doing at Depot, keep up the good work!

New comment by astroalex in "KnitScape"

astroalex — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 12:07:51 +0000

The creator of this tool also recently collaborated on making an experimental weaving version: https://weavescape.net/

New comment by astroalex in "We need visual programming. No, not like that"

astroalex — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:17:06 +0000

One major difference I’ve seen in shader graph type tools is that they are stateless, or almost stateless. The output of the shader graph is a function of time and some fixed parameters, and there are rarely feedback loops. When there are feedback loops in shader graphs, they are represented explicitly via nodes like TouchDesigner’s feedback TOP.

This way of expressing computations lends itself well for shader programming where the concurrency of the GPU discourages manipulation of arbitrary state.

In contrast, business logic programmed for the CPU is generally more stateful and full of implicit feedback loops. IMO these types of computations are not expressed well using node based visual programming tools because the state manipulation is more complex.

New comment by astroalex in "The Illustrated AlphaFold"

astroalex — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 23:38:06 +0000

Some[1] think that things are trending in the opposite direction: away from clever manipulations and hard coded domain knowledge, and towards large scale general models.

[1]: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

New comment by astroalex in "Gen-3 Alpha: A New Frontier for Video Generation"

astroalex — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 18:31:12 +0000

I've used it. It's been blowing my mind.

New comment by astroalex in "Show HN: Talk to Me Human – my game about social persuasion"

astroalex — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 05:30:20 +0000

This was very enjoyable. A glimpse of the future of gaming IMO, and just plain fun! Some of the situations had me cracking up hard. Well done.