Hacker News: irishloop

New comment by irishloop in "Returning to Rails in 2026"

irishloop — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:59:09 +0000

Ruby has "undoubtedly" been dead for at least a decade now, or so I've heard. Glad to hear Python is undoubtedly joining the party.

New comment by irishloop in "The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory"

irishloop — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:39:21 +0000

Surely nothing has ever done wrong with this limitless source of clean energy to give people pause? There's no uninhabitable areas of the Earth due to this?

New comment by irishloop in "Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming"

irishloop — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 02:43:20 +0000

Looking through this list makes me feel as if I am not a terribly good programmer, as these all feel well beyond my capabilities.

New comment by irishloop in "Populism Fast and Slow"

irishloop — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 01:53:08 +0000

Or maybe their actual problems are caused by automation, tax cuts on the rich, and a lack of social safety net that lets people live in dignity, but the media they consume mostly blames immigration and crime.

Political "reality" is rarely objective.

New comment by irishloop in "How Palantir is mapping the nation’s data"

irishloop — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 22:54:55 +0000

Yes. But also, all technologies will eventually be used as weapons. And so its important for us to understand how they can be weaponized and to consider the social cost of that weaponization.

New comment by irishloop in "The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign"

irishloop — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 16:19:11 +0000

> If you don't own your infra, you are dependent.

You're dependent regardless. You are dependent on your service provider, your hardware, your UPS battery backup, your RAID drives being easily replaced, your backups.

It reminds me of people who raise their own chickens and think they're living off the grid. But they need the materials to build the coop, the chicken feed, fencing, etc.

New comment by irishloop in "The best programmers I know"

irishloop — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:44:36 +0000

Do you think there's a way to train focus?

New comment by irishloop in "The best programmers I know"

irishloop — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:51:59 +0000

I think I'm at a stage in my life where I can accept that I am not, nor will I ever be, one of the best programmers

New comment by irishloop in "The blissful Zen of a good side project"

irishloop — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 17:38:22 +0000

> I think we exist to bring new things into existence. If you ask me, to the extent there is a meaning of life, that’s it. We exist to create. It lights us up in a way nothing else does, putting something new into our world—and in doing so, fundamentally changing it, in whatever way, however big or small.

I find this a rather strange, limited way of looking at our existence.

I believe there is joy in creating. I believe there is joy in just spending time with the people you love. I believe there is joy in exploring new places, people, ideas. I believe there is joy in being still and present.

We are always looking for some singular, defining thing in our lives. What does it all mean. It has to be for something.

But I disagree. It doesn't have to be for anything. It's enough to just do what brings you joy, to evolve and change, to treat others in kindness. The rest is just personal preferences.

New comment by irishloop in "The game designer playing through his own psyche"

irishloop — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 02:34:58 +0000

"Wherever you go, there you are"

No amount of fame or success will alter who you truly are inside. If anything, laying your happiness at the foot of external validation from others in the form of critical success or fame is a poisoned apple.

There are plenty of examples of wildly successful people unable to manage their own demons -- see Kurt Cobain or Anthony Bourdain.

New comment by irishloop in "The game designer playing through his own psyche"

irishloop — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 02:31:52 +0000

Nihilism can take many forms and is not necessarily indicative of a optimistic or pessimistic worldview

New comment by irishloop in "“Normal” engineers are the key to great teams"

irishloop — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 04:02:21 +0000

Join my startup, where we harness the power of HackerNews arguing about 10x engineers into a new form of renewable energy

New comment by irishloop in "Does Visual Studio rot the mind? (2005)"

irishloop — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:29:35 +0000

Yeah I never really learn something until I actually hack away at it, and even then I need to really understand things on a granular level.

New comment by irishloop in "GPT-4.5: "Not a frontier model"?"

irishloop — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 17:19:26 +0000

They're paying for Pro

New comment by irishloop in "Quiet Quitting: Why Employees Are Demanding Fairness and Boundaries"

irishloop — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 22:28:11 +0000

Being compensated fairly is important. But so is empathy from management. So is being flexible when I have stuff going in my life or need a mental health day.

It all adds up.

New comment by irishloop in "Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment"

irishloop — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 05:28:13 +0000

Meat and dairy specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

If people collectively just ate a bit less meat and dairy, it would go a long way. Don't even have to be perfect. Just show a little bit of restraint.

New comment by irishloop in "Software engineer titles have almost lost all their meaning"

irishloop — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 03:44:43 +0000

It seems the author has given their own meaning to Senior Engineer as a sort of weird gatekeeping, "you aren't a REAL senior engineer unless you're done X, Y, and Z"

My counterargument is that the very few job titles in Software Engineering was a bug, not a feature, and forced good engineers into management, as it was the only way to climb the career ladder.

By now creating more defined rungs on the latter, software engineers are able to climb a more reasonable career ladder with more than "junior engineer" and "forged in the crucible."

New comment by irishloop in "ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes"

irishloop — Mon, 20 May 2024 21:50:19 +0000

From the NYT:

> For now, the announcement is largely symbolic. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, meaning that Israeli leaders would face no risk of arrest at home.

The US is also not a member

New comment by irishloop in "Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison"

irishloop — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:16:53 +0000

No, you "shouldn't" feel vindictive. Vengeance doesn't really help anybody. We are all wronged, and we all wrong others. None of us is perfect.

Some are worse than others, and we have laws, and punishments, etc.

But I believe there is no morality to seeking pain in others; even if you believe they deserve it. It will not raise you up, so to speak.

New comment by irishloop in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

irishloop — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 03:29:26 +0000

Netflix tried to do this, but then studios wanted a piece of the pie, so they all spun up their own streaming services and then stopped licensing to their competitors.

Also, artists make virtually no money with Spotify, so it "works" for the consumer, but does it work for the artists?