Hacker News: doug_durham

New comment by doug_durham in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

doug_durham — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:03:15 +0000

There's no way you can cut your wrists on the edge of a MacBook. To do that, you would have to be leaning straight-armed with all of your weight on the edge of the keyboard, which is a typing style that I've never seen. Mac keyboards are some of the best that I've ever used. There's nothing special about the Mac screen one way or the other.

New comment by doug_durham in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

doug_durham — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:00:48 +0000

A more concrete way of putting it is if you are putting so much weight on your wrists that the edge of the MacBook is making you uncomfortable, you're probably doing it wrong.

New comment by doug_durham in "Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era"

doug_durham — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:42:28 +0000

I'm not even talking about poorly architected software. They are finding vulnerabilities in incredibly well-engineered software. The Linux kernel is complex not because it's poorly written. It's complex because of all the things it needs to do. Rhat makes it beyond the ability of a human to comprehend and reliably work with it.

New comment by doug_durham in "The Last Quiet Thing"

doug_durham — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 22:11:05 +0000

I do.

New comment by doug_durham in "Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era"

doug_durham — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:53:39 +0000

I think society is going to start paying the price for humans being human. As the paper points out there is a lot of good faith, serious software that has vulnerabilities. These aren't projects you would characterize as people being cavalier. It is simply beyond the limits of humans to create vulnerability-free software of high complexity. That's why high reliability software depends on extreme simplicity and strict tools.

New comment by doug_durham in "The Last Quiet Thing"

doug_durham — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:53:37 +0000

I personally don't want my possessions to be "done". I want new capabilities. the issue the author points are not issues to me. It sounds like they have thought through what technology means for them, and have found an approach that works for them. That is great. There is a reason that the Apple Watch outsells all other analog watches.

New comment by doug_durham in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

doug_durham — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:22:04 +0000

I am a "silverback" and have read all of the classics of the SciFi genre and I loved this novel. An unconventional topic like this isn't going to fit all of the norms of writing. I thought it was well written and I love his dialog. I'm looking forward to future work.

New comment by doug_durham in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

doug_durham — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:17:59 +0000

I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.

New comment by doug_durham in "Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division"

doug_durham — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:15:58 +0000

I have never read a review and got a true notion of whether the prose is good or not. Is that really why you read reviews? I thought this was a great review because it very concisely described what is an unorthodox book. If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book. It is a good book by the way.

New comment by doug_durham in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

doug_durham — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:28:29 +0000

I'm a huge supporter of the open web. However this issue was decided 16 year ago. If you recall the first push on smartphones were "web apps". Those sucked. The bottom line is that native apps provide a better user experience and that is why they became prevalent 16 years ago.

New comment by doug_durham in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

doug_durham — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:33:41 +0000

That's an odd opinion to hold. That's not what real world usage shows is happening.

New comment by doug_durham in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

doug_durham — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:31:14 +0000

The article is a thought experiment. The author hypothesizes that Bob isn't getting the same benefit that Alice is getting. That hypothesis could be wrong. I don't know and the author doesn't know. It could be that Bob is going to have a very successful career and will deeply know the field because he is able to traverse a wider set of problems more quickly. At this point, it's just hypothesis. I don't think that we can say we need more Alices any more than we can say we need more Bobs. Unfortunately we will have to wait and see. It will be upon the academic community to do the work to enforce quality controls. That is probably the weakness to worry about.

New comment by doug_durham in "What Category Theory Teaches Us About DataFrames"

doug_durham — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:35:50 +0000

SQL only works on well defined data sets that obey relational calculus rules. Pandas is a power tool for dealing with data as you find it. Without Pandas you are stuck with tools like Excel.

New comment by doug_durham in "What category theory teaches us about dataframes"

doug_durham — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:33:53 +0000

Duplicates are a sign of reality. Only where you have the resources to have dedicated people clean and organize data do you have well modeled data. Pandas is a power tool for making sense of real data.

New comment by doug_durham in "Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why"

doug_durham — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:39:43 +0000

1969: Every bit of every line of assembly manually woven into core rope memory by highly skilled technicians.

2026: We filled up our 2 TB flash. How do we get another?

New comment by doug_durham in "Slop is not necessarily the future"

doug_durham — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:04:48 +0000

Let's take two code bases. A 40 year old legacy Cobol monstrosity being maintained by a staff of well trained engineers that are engaged. The second an idiomatic Haskell application written simply and to the highest standards, but with a staff of junior engineers that specialize in imperative programming. The Cobol code base is much more evolvable. The staff can effectively make changes because they deeply know the product.

Evolvability is not an intrinsic feature of the software. It is a synthesis of culture, talent, passion, and code style.

New comment by doug_durham in "Slop is not necessarily the future"

doug_durham — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 22:16:27 +0000

Code quality is a side-effect of caring. The most important part of product design is caring at all levels. However it's caring about the external details that is the most important. Coding language is largely a function of the population of good coders in your areas. Code evolvability is almost entirely subjective.

New comment by doug_durham in "Slop is not necessarily the future"

doug_durham — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 21:28:08 +0000

I agree with OP's distinction. However just because you see software as a means to an ends, doesn't mean that you don't feel that quality and craft are unimportant. You can see the "craft" oriented folks as being obsessed with the form of their software. A "craft" oriented engineer might rewrite a perfectly functioning piece of software to make it what they perceive to be "easier to reason about". I consider most software rewrites to be borderline malpractice.

New comment by doug_durham in "The "Vibe Coding" Wall of Shame"

doug_durham — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:10:38 +0000

“Vibe coded”? I doubt that there is the documentary evidence that the code in these systems was never touched by a human. At best this is a list of code where AI tools were used in development. To be honest if you just created a list of all outages in all companies and systems you’d probably have a better list since AI tools are ubiquitous.

New comment by doug_durham in "A Message from the Ruby Central Board"

doug_durham — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:04:36 +0000

I don’t think there are “millions” of Ruby developers. It’s a large community but hyperbole doesn’t serve anyone.