Hacker News: jcadam

New comment by jcadam in "Don't Wait for Claude"

jcadam — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:34:40 +0000

True. Sometimes I'll run front-end and backend work in two different claude instances, but always on the same project/product. I'll have "reviewer" instances in opencode using a different (non-Claude) model doing reviews, that's about as much as I can handle. You've got to supervise it while it works. I do have to stop claude from time to time when I catch it doing something naive or unnecessarily complex.

Show HN: Growl Owl 2 RL Reasoner

jcadam — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:11:01 +0000

GROWL is an OWL 2 RL reasoner I've made using a programming language I've been working on that emphasizes contracts (called SLOP).

Blog post on GROWL: https://jamesadam.me/blog/introducing-growl/

The Repo: https://github.com/Trivyn/growl

The custom language transpiles to C, so the generated C source and Makefile are included in the repo.

I built this to integrate into a Knowledge Graph product I'm working on (hence the Rust bindings), but thought I'd open source the reasoner.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064126

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by jcadam in "Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far"

jcadam — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:23:55 +0000

Yea, my issue with Opus 4.5 is it's the first model that's good enough that I'm starting to feel myself slip into laziness. I catch myself reviewing its output less rigorously than I had with previous AI coding assistants.

As a side project / experiment, I designed a language spec and am using (mostly) Opus 4.5 to write a transpiler (language transpiles to C) for it. Parser was no problem (I used s-expressions for a reason). The type checker and transpiler itself have been a slog - I think I'm finding the limits of Opus :D. It particularly struggles with multi-module support. Though, some of this is probably mistakes made by me while playing architect and iterating with Claude - I haven't written a compiler since my senior year compiler design course 20+ years ago. Someone who does this for a living would probably have an easier time of it.

But for the CRUD stuff my day job has me doing? Pffttt... it's great.

New comment by jcadam in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)"

jcadam — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 01:29:14 +0000

https://trivyn.io

Trivyn: Ontology-first knowledge platform. Runs on a single machine, via a single executable. I wanted a simpler alternative to the large complicated enterprise products that tend to dominate this space.

I'm really trying to get a private beta out the door by Christmas. I do plan to have a free version for academic/personal use.

Backend is written in Rust, uses oxigraph for its triple store.

New comment by jcadam in "100k TPS over a billion rows: the unreasonable effectiveness of SQLite"

jcadam — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 21:02:06 +0000

I've been getting some good results from sqlite-vec on my current project. I need to look at geospatial extensions next.

New comment by jcadam in "Advent of Code 2025"

jcadam — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 21:41:58 +0000

I tried to do it in emacs lisp one year. Made it about halfway :)

New comment by jcadam in "Typed languages are better suited for vibecoding"

jcadam — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:09:34 +0000

I've found most LLMs I've tried generate better code in typed, procedural languages than they do in something like Clojure.

From the perspective of a primarily backend dev who knows just enough React/ts to be dangerous, Claude is generating pretty decent frontend code, letting me spend more time on the Rust backend of my current side project.

New comment by jcadam in "Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage"

jcadam — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 20:09:59 +0000

Yea, my house is on Starlink... so at the moment I'm working in the back room of my wife's restaurant (she has cable internet). At least I get free coffee here.

New comment by jcadam in "Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?"

jcadam — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 16:11:20 +0000

Most US citizens applying for software engineering jobs can't even get a response to their resume, and then I read stories like this.

New comment by jcadam in "I got a remote job for a EU company, I'd find it hard to go back to a US-based"

jcadam — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 18:42:57 +0000

I worked in defense contracting for most of my ~20 year career up until a few months ago. So I'm experiencing this culture shock the other way around. Being the oldest person on a team is... strange.

Still have my clearance for a couple years I suppose - perhaps all this anti-remote madness will be over before then.

New comment by jcadam in "Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling"

jcadam — Fri, 16 May 2025 21:13:25 +0000

Been coding on the JVM for a good chunk of my career. Though the last several years has been in languages other than Java - Scala, Clojure (my personal favorite), and Kotlin.

Finally managed to get a job offer (after being unemployed for a bit) doing Python. It's starting to look like demand for JVM experience is beginning to wane. Might be time to move on anyway :shrug:

I'm old... as long as there's a steady paycheck involved, I'll code in whatever language you say.

Though, currently working on a little personal project in Scala. :)

New comment by jcadam in "The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority"

jcadam — Tue, 13 May 2025 20:37:24 +0000

It's not just software -- My wife owns a restaurant. Operating a restaurant you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success.

We're still trying to figure out the marketing. I'm convinced the high failure rate of restaurants is due largely to founders who know how to make good food and think their culinary skills plus word-of-mouth will get them sales.

New comment by jcadam in "Ask HN: Do You Prepare for Job Interviews? If So, How?"

jcadam — Mon, 12 May 2025 18:54:27 +0000

I actually had Grok throw a bunch of practice interview questions at me.

New comment by jcadam in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)"

jcadam — Thu, 08 May 2025 20:28:48 +0000

I simply can't get interviews now (I've had two so far over the last 6 weeks). A few years ago I would be getting absolutely slammed with interview requests to the point I'd have to be selective. Now, I'll talk to anyone with a job.

I've never seen the job market for engineers this bad. I was unemployed in 2008; this is worse.

New comment by jcadam in "Microsoft researchers developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs"

jcadam — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 03:26:43 +0000

So Microsoft is about to do to Nvidia what Nvidia did to SGI.

New comment by jcadam in "Why I Program in Lisp"

jcadam — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 03:46:09 +0000

Never used monads with Clojure (the only Lisp I've done "serious" work in). Haskell introduced them to me, but I've never done anything large with Haskell (no jobs!). Scala, however, has monads via the cats or (more recently) the ZIO library and they work just fine there.

The main problem with Monads is you're almost always the only programmer on a team who even knows what a Monad is.

New comment by jcadam in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025)"

jcadam — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 02:25:31 +0000

    Location: Soldotna, AK
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: Clojure, Scala, Java, Python, Ada, RabbitMQ, Postgresql, Docker
    Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bz7ucVofUvXsWLtY3tZ7cbELxxYQLWnm/view?usp=sharing
    Email: jcadam.sm@use.startmail.com

I'm a senior engineer with 19 years experience across a broad spectrum of domains and technologies. My most recent role was leading development of a knowledge graph platform using a polyglot microservices architecture.

Open to FTE or 1099 work.

New comment by jcadam in "Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP (2015)"

jcadam — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 19:05:33 +0000

Never experienced the dive-and-save myself. Usually a wince and a sigh, followed by "oh... when's your last day?" Your first line supervisor is upset, but resigned that he's powerless to do anything substantive that might retain you. The MBAs at corporate HQ couldn't care less, and it'll take them weeks/months to get around to approving a new job req.

New comment by jcadam in "‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Officially Erased From Canon"

jcadam — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 19:54:54 +0000

Jason Isaacs was doing the best he could to hold the show together, but once he left it was all downhill.

New comment by jcadam in "How good are American roads?"

jcadam — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 23:26:38 +0000

Studs added about $150 (for the set) vs the price for the studless version of the same tire. Truck tires are definitely more expensive than those for passenger cars, though.