Hacker News: beej71

New comment by beej71 in "Solar surpasses nuclear power globally for first time"

beej71 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:21:07 +0000

Yet. Wouldn't be against it.

New comment by beej71 in "X purges 13,000 accounts linked to suspected meddling ahead of US midterms"

beej71 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 03:43:14 +0000

Also: censoring your own site is perfectly constitutional.

New comment by beej71 in "AI was great until it was not"

beej71 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:46:21 +0000

I speculate that painstakingly trying all the hard stuff that doesn't work is extremely valuable. In many fields this is how the greats became so.

New comment by beej71 in "Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote"

beej71 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:17:33 +0000

And then fail to sell it.

New comment by beej71 in "Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote"

beej71 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:15:58 +0000

But it seems according to TFA they are trying and failing to do this.

New comment by beej71 in "How the Military Will Hack the Election"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:16:53 +0000

It'll be interesting to see where Zuck's loyalty lies if the Pentagon asks him to do so...

New comment by beej71 in "Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:19:20 +0000

I think there are two different kinds of "winning" here. One is to be the biggest there is, and we see a lot of examples of that. More, more, more. Gigantic headcounts. Think Google now.

And we have countless examples of that working. Small company invents a neat thing, big company sees that, allocates 10x the resources on it, and small company is lost.

But we also see that that titanic companies are difficult to maneuver, and a little speedboat team can end-around and run for the goal line. Think Google back then.

I think all these things coexist.

New comment by beej71 in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:07:44 +0000

Nothing, but the Grace Hopper Celebration wasn't primarily about memorializing Grace Hopper.

New comment by beej71 in "Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:15:03 +0000

Quality was already poor before AI. And now we can do it faster!

New comment by beej71 in "Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:14:18 +0000

I don't disagree with your points, but there are several advantages to modularity that result in lower token use. I think there's $ in good architecture.

New comment by beej71 in "Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:06:37 +0000

Related: how do you build a company that can outpace a competitor when the competitor has 5 engineers running a team of agents...

New comment by beej71 in "Recreational Programming"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:48:26 +0000

I don't mean to suggest ham radio and hackers followed the same historical trajectory; rather that hacking will become as ham radio has always been.

New comment by beej71 in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:55:06 +0000

We faculty learned about it this evening. :(

New comment by beej71 in "Recreational Programming"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:54:30 +0000

I kinda wonder if the hacker community is going to eventually be like the ham radio community in that there are no more jobs in it, and we just have the dedicated enthusiast tinkerers working on the side.

New comment by beej71 in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

beej71 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:06:22 +0000

Ugh. A bunch of our students already booked travel and rooms. What a horrible situation all around.

New comment by beej71 in "Were Software Engineers blue-collar workers all along?"

beej71 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:15:16 +0000

> But for the majority of us, the job always was more involved than just code. And that's white-collar work, through and through.

Isn't that sentiment pretty much true for almost everything, though? If I hire someone to relocate my water heater, there's a lot more that goes into that besides laying pipes. The pipes are the easy part.

New comment by beej71 in "AI is a tool and using it well takes skill"

beej71 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:29:20 +0000

I need to retire so I can really tear into my massive project backlog. :) I'm really enjoying teaching, but it's unclear if this position will exist 3 years from now.

New comment by beej71 in "AI is a tool and using it well takes skill"

beej71 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:31:28 +0000

Well, I'm only a few years from retirement, so maybe the demographics are different now, I grant. Used to be everyone learned assembly in college.

New comment by beej71 in "Leaving Tech"

beej71 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:26:39 +0000

I was just having a discussion with my friend about AI art.

Personally, I find it soulless. Same with AI writing. And it's because I know there's no person behind it. I need to know that there was someone real trying to convey something in the art.

But that's me. Some people don't care how it was made.

I wonder what percentage of the population falls into each camp.

New comment by beej71 in "Leaving Tech"

beej71 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:23:07 +0000

As someone else put it:

Rigorous thinking required:

    Machine code
    Assembly 
    C
    Python

Rigorous thinking optional:

    English

And if thinking is not required, then the work won't pay.

Time to flood the market with electricians and plumbers!