Hacker News: damnever

New comment by damnever in "Tailscale Peer Relays"

damnever — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 10:54:05 +0000

Really nice move, just speed and simplicity.

New comment by damnever in "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work"

damnever — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 08:26:52 +0000

Those who’ve worked at scale know simplicity is brutally hard — but those who stop pushing for it altogether have failed their responsibility.

New comment by damnever in "Show HN: I recreated Windows XP as my portfolio"

damnever — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 03:50:06 +0000

I disagree with you, as it seems you tend to prioritize graphic design while overlooking other important aspects.

Personally, I find this idea alone to be very creative. Isn't a great designer someone who weaves together countless mediocre ideas to form a truly creative concept?

New comment by damnever in "TODOs aren't for doing"

damnever — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 09:06:37 +0000

I think we should better differentiate between HACK and NOTE from TODOs.

New comment by damnever in "Uv: Running a script with dependencies"

damnever — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 09:19:08 +0000

I like it, and I once thought about this as well:

> Python doesn't require a requirements.txt file, but if you don't maintain this file, or neglect to provide one, it could result in broken functionalities - an unfortunate circumstance for a scripting language.

https://twitter.com/_damnever/status/1697247813854503250

New comment by damnever in "MCP-B: A Protocol for AI Browser Automation"

damnever — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 03:04:08 +0000

As far as I can tell, "API" and the webpages often have different authentication methods.

New comment by damnever in "The new skill in AI is not prompting, it's context engineering"

damnever — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:09:08 +0000

It is still "prompting".

New comment by damnever in "A single line of code cost $8000"

damnever — Thu, 08 May 2025 04:11:50 +0000

Now that I know, I’ll never attempt using this fancy app.

New comment by damnever in "LLM-powered tools amplify developer capabilities rather than replacing them"

damnever — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 11:32:32 +0000

I can imagine that those who prefer a hands-on approach might spend more time understanding the problem, as they need to read through the code and debug to identify what is wrong.

New comment by damnever in "I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs"

damnever — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:30:35 +0000

It depends. For small tasks like summarization or self-contained code snippets, it’s really good—like figuring out how to inspect a binary executable on Linux, or designing a ranking algorithm for different search patterns. If you only want average performance or don’t care much about the details, it can produce reasonable results without much oversight.

But for larger tasks—say, around 2,000 lines of code—it often fails in a lot of small ways. It tends to generate a lot of dead code after multiple iterations, and might repeatedly fail on issues you thought were easy to fix. Mentally, it can get exhausting, and you might end up rewriting most of it yourself. I think people are just tired of how much we expect LLMs to deliver, only for them to fail us in unexpected ways. The LLM is good, but we really need to push to understand its limitations.

New comment by damnever in "Ask HN: Do your eyes bug you even though your prescription is "correct"?"

damnever — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 08:23:23 +0000

The long screen time is the main cause. The perfect glasses, light, or monitors might make you feel better in the short term, but the same environment and low activity might still lead to eye strain. I have been struggling with eye strain for a long time. The best practice I’ve found is to leave the desk and go out for a walk. I have even built an app[1] to help with that.

[1]: https://blog.damnever.com/en/2024/reminding-myself-to-take-a...

New comment by damnever in "Software development topics I've changed my mind on"

damnever — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:09:22 +0000

> Distributed locking is still really hard for some reason

I think distributed locking is hard because it only offers certain properties and requires that the application work together to achieve consistency, just like what you said about DynamoDB:

> DynamoDB is a good database (IFF your workload lines up with what it's offering)

I have written a blog post about distributed locks: https://blog.damnever.com/en/2020/the-consistency-problem-of...

New comment by damnever in "Go 1.24's go tool is one of the best additions to the ecosystem in years"

damnever — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 03:17:52 +0000

I’m sick of Go modules, and now they want to pile the mess even higher.

New comment by damnever in "How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain"

damnever — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 09:10:54 +0000

I don't wear any glasses, but I still suffer from eye strain, especially from when I started my software engineering work years ago. I have also tried a lot of devices and medicines, but working long hours is just not good, and taking breaks is very important. So, I have even developed a macOS app to remind myself to take breaks. It is available on the Mac App Store now https://apps.apple.com/us/app/totalpause/id6482185943?mt=12, I hope it helps.

New comment by damnever in "Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang (2022)"

damnever — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 04:04:27 +0000

Go's error handling is not explicit because error is an interface. So, a nil MyError is not the same as a nil error, and error comparison is inconvenient because the interface constraints are so loose that people often resort to checking errors with strings.Contains.

Show HN: TotalPause – an app to suggest breaks and promote mindfulness

damnever — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:36:28 +0000

Hello, I created this macOS app because I often spend long hours at my computer without taking breaks. Although I've tried many similar apps, few really meet my needs. For instance, Pomodoro timers feel draining and don’t suit my work environment. Other apps often trigger breaks at inconvenient times, becoming more annoying.

I decided to develop my own app to try to address my own issues. My day job is as a backend engineer, primarily working with distributed systems and DevOps. I have knowledge of web development but had never developed a desktop app before. I started learning and building TotalPause in my free time last year. There is also a blog post[1] about why and how I built it.

The goal with TotalPause is to make it as unobtrusive as possible, requiring minimal interaction, making it appear less frequently as work habits improve, and avoiding the drawbacks of full-screen break reminders through technical implementations like auto-focus mode (automatically detecting applications, meetings, and games), activity analysis, and maybe other advanced features.

Hope to see if it works for others with similar needs. Thanks.

[1] https://blog.damnever.com/en/2024/reminding-myself-to-take-a...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42017323

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The Consistency Problem of Distributed Locks

damnever — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 14:48:06 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.damnever.com/en/2020/the-consistency-problem-of-distributed-lock

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41697768

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by damnever in "Swift 6"

damnever — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 09:11:41 +0000

Swift still lacks some concurrency features, even with Swift 6, but it's nice to see that atomic operations have finally been added. Besides that, I often encounter an error without knowing why: 'Failed to produce diagnostic for expression; please submit a bug report.'

New comment by damnever in "Leaving Neovim for Zed"

damnever — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:54:17 +0000

I have to disagree; average is not a good way to measure. I have written approximately 6,000 lines of code (including empty lines but excluding some generated code) over the past few weeks. Yes, I write design documents before coding, and most of the code is completed within a few days. I definitely spend a lot of time debugging, but almost all of those activities have been constrained to code. Test cases are very helpful in making the process clean. I use Neovim inside iTerm2, so all those activities are done within terminal. By maximizing productivity through the use of the keyboard, I can eliminate many dependencies, such as the mouse and multiple displays. I believe dependencies are a source of distractions.

Most importantly, writing helps thinking. When I am stuck, I just write random comments (which I delete later) in the editor to help me think.

New comment by damnever in "Anthropic Claude 3.5 can create icalendar files, so I did this"

damnever — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 10:56:29 +0000

Verification comes with an additional cost. This makes me wonder: if we can verify, why use a LLM at all? An LLM might even cost more.