Hacker News: gt0

New comment by gt0 in "“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers"

gt0 — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 03:28:24 +0000

I think "Code was never the hardest part" is more fair.

Code itself can absolutely be difficult, but it's seldom the most difficult part of a project. Generally the hard part is actually figuring out what you want, and how to achieve what you want, then the actual code is pretty straightforward in most cases.

I've been programming since the the 1980s and I'm not insulted by the idea that code isn't the hard part.

New comment by gt0 in "AI migrated legacy COBOL programs to Java, bugs included"

gt0 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:09:33 +0000

It seems to me that some companies are looking to move off COBOL and mainframes to say Linux and Java, because that is what someone was employed to do, not because it's necessarily a good idea.

I think COBOL systems would be plenty maintainable if the owners of the systems invested in maintaining them. If companies just let people retire, attempt to hire replacements with unremarkable salaries, then maintenance is a problem.

If they paid salaries that reflected how critical this work is, I don't think it would be that big a problem to find and keep good developers.

We have critical economic infrastructure being treated as annoyance and a cost centre.

New comment by gt0 in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

gt0 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:46:12 +0000

I think there has probably always been gaps between what marketing wants to sell, what management wants to prioritise, what programmers want to make, what customers say they want, and what customers actually want.

Those gaps are getting bigger all over the place, technical users generally just want all the bullshit to go away and just have a reliable and simple system, but no mainstream software companies want to sell it.

New comment by gt0 in "Steam Machine launches today"

gt0 — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:39:16 +0000

Realistically only macOS runs on Macs, Linux worked on the early M series but not later models, as far as I know.

New comment by gt0 in "Steam Machine launches today"

gt0 — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:51:02 +0000

In Australia, it wouldn't even need to be a used PC. The Steam Machine is $1600 AUD here, you can get a brand new gaming PC for that. Not a particularly amazing machine of course, but you can walk into a shop and buy it right now.

New comment by gt0 in "Show HN: GentleOS – A pair of hobby OSes for vintage 32-bit and 16-bit PCs"

gt0 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:34:21 +0000

Made me think of Breadbox Ensemble, which is GEOS, and was really lovely.

New comment by gt0 in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

gt0 — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:02:48 +0000

Free OS updates is the norm now though. If you'd bought a Windows PC 7 years ago, or used Linux, or just about any other desktop OS, you'd have had free updates.

New comment by gt0 in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

gt0 — Sat, 30 May 2026 02:50:21 +0000

The Framework 12 look lovely, I like the design a lot, but like other Framework computers, it's just far too expensive for what it is.

The processor inside it is approaching 4 years old and wasn't a good processor at launch.

I like how it looks, but I won't spend that much money on so little computer.

New comment by gt0 in "A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs"

gt0 — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:40:57 +0000

This seems as much like "sleep" as when a laptop "sleeps".

New comment by gt0 in "Ferrari Luce"

gt0 — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:59:28 +0000

I thought the same. If it had a Kia badge on it, it wouldn't shock me, and I think Kia make some quite nice cars now.

I don't like the interior. I think this style can work for some things, it reminds me of a NuPhy keyboard, blocky plastic that looks nice in some circumstances.

For me this is not a Ferrari-standard of car, Ferraris are strikingly beautiful, and this just isn't.

New comment by gt0 in "PipeDream on the Acorn Archimedes"

gt0 — Sun, 10 May 2026 11:23:43 +0000

I used RISC OS as my main platform in the nineties and still play with it now. With small screens, I agree with you on how saving works on RISC OS, but it really comes into its own on larger screens (say QHD or above) where you can easily have your application and filer on screen at the same time.

It has its annoyances, but I still like that style of saving.

New comment by gt0 in "Setting up a Sun Ray server on OpenIndiana Hipster 2025.10"

gt0 — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:57:48 +0000

Indeed it is subjective, I think the "Krups" was beautiful.

New comment by gt0 in "Setting up a Sun Ray server on OpenIndiana Hipster 2025.10"

gt0 — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:55:44 +0000

We had this at a job I had many years ago. We had a Sun Niagara system with some Sun Rays attached, and I had a Sun Ray laptop at home, on the other side of the world. Office in London, home in Melbourne. It wasn't even that slow.

New comment by gt0 in "Write some software, give it away for free"

gt0 — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:29:32 +0000

If I was going to write something for free, it would some weird itch-scratching thing for Plan 9 or something, it wouldn't be something most people would ever want.

Realistically though, I'm not going to build software for free any more than I'm going to tidy someone's garden for free.

FOSS has delivered some great software, it's also demonetised a lot of areas where software developers could be earning a living. I don't think software developers should feel any need to give away their efforts than any other professional should.

FOSS has created pricing race to the bottom in software, and taken away financial incentive for improvement, it's not a 100% net positive.

New comment by gt0 in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

gt0 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:45:21 +0000

That's what I mean, no actual processor model.

New comment by gt0 in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

gt0 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:17:44 +0000

Am I missing something or is the article avoiding saying what Intel processor they are using?

New comment by gt0 in "MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany"

gt0 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 23:37:03 +0000

They're 18650 cells, a bit bigger than AA.

New comment by gt0 in "Every GPU That Mattered"

gt0 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:02:45 +0000

GPUs existed in the 1960s, but apparently Sony invented the actual term "GPU" in 1994.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit#1990s

New comment by gt0 in "Every GPU That Mattered"

gt0 — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:00:37 +0000

Glad to see I'm not the only person that noticed the lack of SGI stuff.

New comment by gt0 in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

gt0 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:29:04 +0000

Agree, and this is my point. Apple absolutely has a very clear message on how developers should make software, but as you say, developers often do not care.

I am a desktop app "believer" I like desktop apps, I like native desktop apps, but I also have to make software that makes economic sense, and following Apple's guidelines just doesn't make any sense for me, and a lot of other companies too.