Hacker News: jmarchello

New comment by jmarchello in "So where are all the AI apps?"

jmarchello — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:10:23 +0000

Looking at Python packages, or any developer-facing form of software, is not a good indicator of AI-based production. The key benefit of AI development is that our focus moves up a few layers of abstraction, allowing us to focus on real-world solutions. Instead of measuring Github, you need to measure feature releases, internal tools created, single-user applications built for a single niche use case.

Measuring python packages to indicate AI-based production is like measuring saw production to measure the effectiveness of the steam engine. You need to look at houses and communities being built, not the tools.

New comment by jmarchello in "Ask HN: What operating systems, apps, etc. had your favorite UI designs?"

jmarchello — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:46:26 +0000

https://pinboard.in

Simple, usable, timeless.

New comment by jmarchello in "Postman which I thought worked locally on my computer, is down"

jmarchello — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:13:27 +0000

I fell in love with Insomnia pre-acquisition so I'm thrilled to see it has a spiritual successor. Good on you Greg.

A Brief History of Rubygems.org

jmarchello — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 17:22:07 +0000

Article URL: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1042131/319050141553ec37/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45619300

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by jmarchello in "Zoxide: A Better CD Command"

jmarchello — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:44:36 +0000

Fair point. I don't disagree. I personally just like to stay as close to default GNU/Linux tooling as is practical. It's a matter of personal taste.

For me, this makes it so my expectations and muscle memory transfer cleanly between my workstation and other servers, devices, etc. I find the default tools are much more powerful than is often understood, and you can replicate most third party functionality fairly easily. That's not always the case mind you, and I happily use those tools.

New comment by jmarchello in "Zoxide: A Better CD Command"

jmarchello — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:29:03 +0000

I love shell tools, and by no means disparage the use of zoxide, z, etc. But I find I get 90% of the usefulness of these tools using the native cd command and adding my most used directories to CDPATH.

This additionally is consistent and works without needing to “train” it first.

New comment by jmarchello in "Ultrasonic Chef's Knife"

jmarchello — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:56:25 +0000

We made it! We’ve finally invented vibroblades!

New comment by jmarchello in "Teachers Are Not OK"

jmarchello — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 16:19:13 +0000

I think AI is simply exposing problems with academia that have always been there. In my personal experience with both high school and a completed bachelor's degree, 20% of the process is actual learning while 80% is proving what one has learned for the sake of grading and measuring.

As soon as one graduates and enters the real world, the ability to learn is paramount, but the ability to grade said learning is never used again. We need to re-think the system from the ground up so that a student can leverage all available tools, AI included, and still develop a core ability to learn.

What's more, the current focus on grading has been shown to stunt the love of learning, because we're not stupid and we know when we're doing something that does not gain us anything beyond a grade.

If academia responds to this change properly we can eventually see a system that actually serves our students better than what we currently have.

New comment by jmarchello in "Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago (2024)"

jmarchello — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 15:44:18 +0000

Every time I see news about cities discovered in south america I look to see if the dates line up with the Nephite/Lamanite civilizations of the Book of Mormon (roughly 600 BC to 400 AD). This is the closest yet that I've seen. I'm eager to see what they discover in the coming years about their culture and government. Will we find traces of their Judge-based government? Signs that they worshiped Christ and practiced Jewish rituals? It will be interesting to watch this investigation unfold.

New comment by jmarchello in "A Vanilla Rails Stack Is Plenty"

jmarchello — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:29:52 +0000

They actually just released a new, rubust getting started guide that is an EXCELLENT place to start learning the framework: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html. I highly recommend starting there.

New comment by jmarchello in "A Vanilla Rails Stack Is Plenty"

jmarchello — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:52:48 +0000

Rails has so much to offer these days, going vanilla really is a viable (and enjoyable) option. Here at Swivel we use the ENTIRE rails stack from Hotwire to Kamal and it is so simple and easy to maintain and deploy. I do think there are use cases where adding a React frontend is good though. But you don't have to, Rails has everything you need so you can focus on creating value for customers instead of plumbing.

A Vanilla Rails Stack Is Plenty

jmarchello — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:49:51 +0000

Article URL: https://dev.37signals.com/a-vanilla-rails-stack-is-plenty/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42462604

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

New comment by jmarchello in "What's New in Ruby 3.4"

jmarchello — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:30:43 +0000

> Array#each, Array#map, and Array#select have been rewritten in Ruby.

> A microbenchmark made on Array#each, for instance, shows it is 7x faster.

This is awesome. I can’t wait to see further improvements as they continue to optimize for the JIT.

Ask HN: Rails Shops, how do you deal with Jobs with zero downtime deploys?

jmarchello — Fri, 10 May 2024 12:36:14 +0000

We’re deploying with Kamal and want to avoid killing jobs mid-run during deploys. Currently we pause our queues while deploying but with continuous deployment this leads to jobs being paused too often. I’m just curious how other Rails teams are handing this issue.

Or maybe we have the wrong approach entirely?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40318240

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The Last RailsConf

jmarchello — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:23:30 +0000

Article URL: https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-last-railsconf-c6188593

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40290371

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by jmarchello in "White House urges developers to dump C and C++"

jmarchello — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:06:39 +0000

Would Ruby, Java, Go, and other gc’ed languages really be considered memory safe? I’d think you have to re-write the Ruby interpreter and the JVM in rust in order to achieve their stated goal here. Someone with deeper system’s knowledge please correct me if I’m wrong.

New comment by jmarchello in "[dead]"

jmarchello — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:09:22 +0000

Seems like an affective way to keep bots/trolls out.

New comment by jmarchello in "Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?"

jmarchello — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 13:03:35 +0000

As unfair as this may seem, your problem may be UX, rather than content. There is no focal point and ironically the shear volume of experience makes it hard to get a quick picture of who you are. I’d recommend a punchy executive summary at the top.

In my experience the 1 page constraint is less important so long as it’s easy to get a good picture of you on the first page.

New comment by jmarchello in "How to get your first ten customers"

jmarchello — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 10:50:33 +0000

> One of the beautiful things about bootstrapping a business is that it's default-alive.

This is such an effective and concise way to explain the difference between bootstrapping and vc funding.

New comment by jmarchello in "Arc browser launches its Windows client in beta"

jmarchello — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:09:12 +0000

A fair question. For Me I use use of their spaces feature to divide my tabs/bookmarks into different areas of concern. So when I'm working on my day job, I can have a running "session" of bookmarks, such as the webapp I'm building, figma, and chatGPT open. It just _feels_ less cluttered and less distracting. Their 'developer mode' adds a nice little tool bar accross localhost and other sites for which you enable it. It's just the compound effect of many small improvements. This the first real innovation I've seen the chrome of a browser in a long time.