Hacker News: dnoberon

New comment by dnoberon in "Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates"

dnoberon — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:02:06 +0000

So just because you couldn't get into it means everyone who's enjoying it is a poser? That's some pretty self-centered thinking right there.

No one should be judging you if it's not your thing. Those of us that enjoy it readily admit its faults and own the fact it's not a game for everyone.

New comment by dnoberon in "Mesh LLM: distributed AI computing on iroh"

dnoberon — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 23:23:23 +0000

Cool, always good to have more in the ecosystem. I love Iroh and hope this continues to succeed.

New comment by dnoberon in "You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand"

dnoberon — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:21:07 +0000

Heard a quote I liked today.

“In order to be effective working at any layer of abstraction you must have in-depth knowledge of the layer below where you’re at”.

To be the most effective at AI assisted engineering (if treated as an abstraction layer) you need to understand how code works, behaves, architectures etc. and what well performing, well built things look like. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know everything like you would pre-AI, but enough to be effective.

New comment by dnoberon in "My thoughts on the Bun Rust rewrite"

dnoberon — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:38:43 +0000

Not sure a personal attack against Jarred really helps the case for using Zig. He could have and should have focused on the language and not “a stinky manager”. Honestly, this makes me want to steer clear of Andrew as much as Jarred.

Screaming into the AI Void

dnoberon — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:58:52 +0000

Disclaimer that this post is about AI and its use in engineering.

I’m a senior engineer and have been in the professional business for 12 years and I have no idea how much, or if I should even use AI for anything. I feel much like I did when I left my former religion: in a new world where I’m struggling to find identity and what my values actually are.

I value craftsmanship - but I also value getting things done. I’ve always advocated for using the strongest tools, pushing for debuggers over print debugging, using modern editor features like LSPs etc. I value uniqueness over uniformity and creativity over rote recital. Some of these values support AI use and some of them seem to strongly suggest avoiding it. Like some of the inventions during and after WWII which were discovered through terrible means; I feel like AI has incredible potential while at the same time ripping away copyright and poisoning the ecosystem and communities.

I have to keep my job so I can provide for my family, but I don’t want to keep any job that requires that I give up any of my values. Yet at work I see the output of engineers relying heavily on AI and it trends very heavily towards garbage - but of course not all the time. I read the “AI use is like a slot machine” post and can feel part of that, but isn’t still a powerful tool to save us time?

Am I falling behind and will be unable to work in the field which I’ve loved for my whole life if I don’t use AI enough?

I know this is like screaming into the void; but some of you have to be listening though, right?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459048

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

New comment by dnoberon in "OCaml maintainers reject massive AI-generated pull request"

dnoberon — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 20:03:36 +0000

Sorry, not a real wall of shame. They just tend to occasionally compile some of the PRs they've rejected because of AI.

https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/

See the "Exhibits A,B,C" links.

New comment by dnoberon in "OCaml maintainers reject massive AI-generated pull request"

dnoberon — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 19:39:01 +0000

Reymont is quickly becoming infamous. He's got open PRs all over the place. Previously hit the frontpage here after showing up, _again_, on Zigs wall of shame for AI pull requests.

New comment by dnoberon in "Claude Code is all you need"

dnoberon — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 19:06:09 +0000

I think the point is how can you squeeze anything out of the AI without knowing the stuff at a deep enough level?

New comment by dnoberon in "My AI skeptic friends are all nuts"

dnoberon — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 22:06:06 +0000

This reads even more like an angry teenager than my angsty high school diary. I'm not sure how many more strawmans and dismissive remarks I can handle in one article.

New comment by dnoberon in "Some Personal Anecdotes About Developing with GenAI"

dnoberon — Fri, 23 May 2025 21:18:57 +0000

I can see that. Whether or not it's worth the time spent in setting it up is something I can't answer myself yet.

I think my biggest point further down is that you have to _already know_ that it's a bad idea - if you don't you can't instruct the agent to avoid it. What I see is so many more developers who just never get to that point now.

> For many people in this industry this became the default when Google and StackOverflow appeared. Is AI really so much different there if you look at the root cause? I feel AI is just another tool for quick answers without investing time in understanding the problem. That mentality is not new and has not changed in decades with previous knowledge bases. Sadly.

Excellent point :)

New comment by dnoberon in "Some Personal Anecdotes About Developing with GenAI"

dnoberon — Fri, 23 May 2025 21:11:09 +0000

I'm aware it reads a bit like an angry old man yelling at the kids on his lawn, but I'm starting to get extremely frustrated with what I see and thought I'd write down some of the experiences.

Some Personal Anecdotes About Developing with GenAI

dnoberon — Fri, 23 May 2025 21:11:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.notyourlanguage.com/post/genai_anecdotes/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44076632

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

New comment by dnoberon in "Why I ever wrote Clojure"

dnoberon — Sat, 03 May 2025 19:45:58 +0000

Yeah, feel like this should be the grounds enough for a lot of conversation.

New comment by dnoberon in "AI GPU Clusters, from Your Laptop, with Livebook"

dnoberon — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 11:45:37 +0000

Livebook is absolutely amazing. I only wish Elixir got more love and greater use.

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 20:05:45 +0000

I hope that the change goes well!

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:51:53 +0000

Thank you. I think it is unfounded, but it's still a visceral belief and those can be hard to overcome. I'm hoping with time I can change my feelings on it.

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:47:44 +0000

You're absolutely right. I guess those artifacts don't resonate with me - and I did mention there's nothing wrong with enjoying this in the article. Good catch, I'll see if I can't reword it a bit :)

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:43:42 +0000

I hear that - these moments are hard to forget.

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:43:08 +0000

It went well yeah, it's a little bit at the end that I should have spent more time on :). We're stopping the climb up the management ladder and are identifying other resources to handle those responsibilities.

New comment by dnoberon in "The Most Dangerous Email (to my career) I've Sent"

dnoberon — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 18:42:20 +0000

We talked frequently but I always kept my reservations about continually moving up the ladder pretty hidden. It wasn't until this realization and acceptance that I finally was extremely open and frank about things.