Hacker News: jwilliams

New comment by jwilliams in "IPv6 traffic crosses the 50% mark"

jwilliams — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:04:30 +0000

I'm surprised it's reporting is listed <5% - I thought it was pretty much ipv6 first?

New comment by jwilliams in "Do you even need a database?"

jwilliams — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 06:09:18 +0000

Is it just me or is this sorely lacking any consideration for inserts? Or durability?

New comment by jwilliams in "PGLite Evangelism"

jwilliams — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 07:10:51 +0000

I use pglite for unit/integration tests and it's been fantastic.

Note that it uses "single user mode." This means a single connection at a time, and thus no concurrent transactions. That takes you a little bit closer to SQLite's single-writer.

New comment by jwilliams in "Show HN: FluidCAD – Parametric CAD with JavaScript"

jwilliams — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:06:57 +0000

It’s got plenty of precedent - AutoCAD has a Lisp equivalent since 1986[1]. Arguably it is what made it the powerhouse CAD tool.

Irrespective - This project is pretty cool to see!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoLISP

People Systems Are the Next Codebase

jwilliams — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:02:40 +0000

Article URL: https://jonathannen.com/people-systems-are-the-next-codebase/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654371

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by jwilliams in "Show HN: Zerobox – Sandbox any command with file, network, credential controls"

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:23:35 +0000

It’s terrific to see this. I’m definitely going to give it a whirl. I’ve been working on a specific JavaScript isolate[^1]. This is great source of inspiration for it.

[^1]: https://github.com/jonathannen/hermit

New comment by jwilliams in "TruffleRuby"

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:42:14 +0000

GraalVM is genuinely great -- Native Image and the polyglot story are impressive.

I was put off by the earlier licensing - it was confusing, which wasn't great in a license. The GraalVM Free Terms and Conditions "GFTC" now seems better (curious if people agree?), but I wonder if it came too late.

The decoupling from Java SE was good in many ways, but it also made the future a little less clear too.

New comment by jwilliams in "Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide"

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 05:51:16 +0000

It's live! If you're on the latest cc you can use /buddy now.

New comment by jwilliams in "The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode"

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 04:25:28 +0000

I used to swear at Claude. To be honest, I thought it helped get results (maybe this is "oldschool" LLM thinking), but I realized it was just making me annoyed.

New comment by jwilliams in "Early Observations from Interviews with Engineering Teams Adopting AI"

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 02:59:52 +0000

I don't disagree that organizations are probably making that tradeoff in an uninformed way.

As a counterpoint -- it's rare I've seen a new UX issue fixed with a PR.

If you valued quality you could feature-flag some different improvements, get feedback and refine. AI is great at this. We have CS directly submitting Pull Requests now... and they're not junk, 95% of the the time they want things fixed/correct. And it's stuff that usually would sit on the backlog forever. The quality has gone up.

Your experience is representative I'm sure - but I do think there is a way to get this right and those that do will see a big upside.

> Were in for the golden age of cyberattacks, let me tell you.

Agree in full there.

Early Observations from Interviews with Engineering Teams Adopting AI

jwilliams — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:10:55 +0000

Article URL: https://jonathannen.com/observations-from-interviews/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595563

Points: 4

# Comments: 3

New comment by jwilliams in "CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font"

jwilliams — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:03:09 +0000

Good to know. I’ve been using ghostty and generally not a fan of the code ligatures (or just too stubborn to adapt!).

New comment by jwilliams in "Ask HN: Is it just me?"

jwilliams — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:53:24 +0000

Try this - For the same task, try the same prompt three times with totally different framing - do it fast, be comprehensive, find stuff I’ve missed, etc.

Then throw away the ones you don’t like.

It also prevents reinforcement of your incoming pov.

I’ve found this has made me way way better at steering.

New comment by jwilliams in "AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice"

jwilliams — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:31:57 +0000

For me the framing is critical - what is the model saying yes to? You can present the same prompt with very different interpretations (talk me into this versus talk me out of it). The problem is people enter with a single bias and the AI can only amplify that.

In coding I’ll do what I call a Battleship Prompt - simply just prompt 3 or more time with the same core prompt but strong framing (eg I need this done quickly versus come up with the most comprehensive solution). That’s really helped me learn and dial in how to get the right output.

New comment by jwilliams in "Anatomy of the .claude/ folder"

jwilliams — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:44:46 +0000

It's meant to, yes.

New comment by jwilliams in "Anatomy of the .claude/ folder"

jwilliams — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:13:52 +0000

> Simply put: whatever you write in CLAUDE.md, Claude will follow.

No.

CLAUDE.md is just prompt text. Compaction rewrites prompt text.

If it matters, enforce it in other ways.

Battleship Prompts

jwilliams — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:20:33 +0000

Article URL: https://jonathannen.com/battleship-prompts/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47531619

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jwilliams in "Data centers are transitioning from AC to DC"

jwilliams — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:24:59 +0000

There are niches where DC makes sense - low-voltage lighting, USB/LED ecosystems.

Once you get into higher power (laptops and up), switching and distribution get harder, so the advantages fade.

For bigger appliances (fridge, etc), AC is fine + practical.

New comment by jwilliams in "Is anybody else bored of talking about AI?"

jwilliams — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:09:10 +0000

It's the most transformative technology I've clocked in my lifetime (and that includes home computers and the Internet).

Large organizations are making major decisions on the basis of it. Startups new and old will live and die by the shift that it's creating (is SaaS dead? Well investors will make it so). Mass engineering layoffs could be inevitable.

Sure. I vibe coded a thing is getting pretty tired. The rest? If anything we're not talking about it enough.

We're Not Vibe Engineering

jwilliams — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:54:27 +0000

Article URL: https://jonathannen.com/not-vibe-engineering/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509110

Points: 2

# Comments: 0