Hacker News: kaffekaka

New comment by kaffekaka in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

kaffekaka — Tue, 26 May 2026 08:25:27 +0000

Your book was my path to Go. Thank you! Having a physical book means much to me.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence"

kaffekaka — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:27:51 +0000

The kids are smarter than many of us think. We owe to them a world where they can feel hope and see a future. But much of the AI hype is built around declaring how dangerous and futile everything is.

The students cheering Woz is not about truth but about hope.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Why I don’t vibe code"

kaffekaka — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:30:55 +0000

But it also means we solve the same problems as before but faster, meaning less time is given to planning and thinking about what to actually build. This is a real problem where I work. Everyones grasp of what we are building and how it is connected is markedly worse nowadays.

We as a collective must learn the skill to put these new abilities to good use instead of just aiming to accelerate as much as possible.

New comment by kaffekaka in "560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits"

kaffekaka — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:19:35 +0000

People choose between staying physically fit or have kids? I find that hard to believe.

New comment by kaffekaka in "560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits"

kaffekaka — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:16:54 +0000

The knees need exercise to be well. Nutrients are passed into meniscus etc by pressure cycling.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML"

kaffekaka — Sun, 03 May 2026 18:09:48 +0000

> We don't necessarily need hard separation of planning and coding, but we need a deliberate separation of experimental/explorative coding and the code that is supposed to make it into prod. AI coding does all that in the same place ...

This is a very good point. The AI speedup some PMs fantasize about is skipping planning and instead generate code directly from end user discussions, POC-ing our way into shipping.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML"

kaffekaka — Sun, 03 May 2026 18:06:14 +0000

Pointless nit, but replace "essential" with "invaluable" for a play with words.

New comment by kaffekaka in "The Complete Claude Setup Checklist: 72 Steps from Default to Power User"

kaffekaka — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:53:06 +0000

What, no, maybe I am missing something but as these steps to get good results? I don't need them all, and some/many seem just like common sense or too specific. Like "72 steps to mow your lawn".

Like said so many times before, if setting up your AI agent is very complicated, A: you are misled and B: six months from now you won't need all the stuff anyway.

New comment by kaffekaka in "The economics of software teams: Why most engineering orgs are flying blind"

kaffekaka — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:21:59 +0000

Please tell more.

I have the same impression. But that is where it is going - roles merging and being able to do the full spectrum will be valuable.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Starfling: A one-tap endless orbital slingshot game in a single HTML file"

kaffekaka — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 06:29:40 +0000

I imagine it as slingshotting my way up a tree.

New comment by kaffekaka in "I'm OK being left behind, thanks"

kaffekaka — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:32:45 +0000

Is this seriously so? Have you never seen anything helpful from an LLM? That seems such a black and white statement that I get confused.

I am conservative regarding AI driven coding but I still see tremendous value.

It makes me want to ask you: do you ever see helpful things from your colleagues at all?

New comment by kaffekaka in "I'm OK being left behind, thanks"

kaffekaka — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:12:58 +0000

I think one side of the issues folks are having is that combined with the mandate to use these tools, there is also an expectation or assumption that the developers will instantly get X% more productive. Like, "you must use this tool and you will be twice as productive".

Where I work there as certainly been that kind of discussions, "we need to use AI for this, because no offense but you are simply not fast enough". And this from people who do not understand software development and has never worked with it. They have only read the online stuff about 20X speeds and FOMO. (And my workplace is generally quite laid back and reasonable. I am sure many other places are much more aggressively steered.)

New comment by kaffekaka in "The 100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"

kaffekaka — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:12:17 +0000

Ah of course, thank you. Defining the moves to get to the scramble makes sure it is solvable.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Every layer of review makes you 10x slower"

kaffekaka — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:46:41 +0000

I am stealing that quote.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Speed at the cost of quality: Study of use of Cursor AI in open source projects (2025)"

kaffekaka — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:40:28 +0000

Many say but I don't agree. It is clearly better now but I had basically the same view on code gen-AI a year ago as I have now. It was obvious even then that LLMs were a big deal. They were really cool then and are amazing now. But some issues are undeniably still there. Maybe they are not a question of some simple quality measure, meaning they might not be solved by simply crunching more tokens with larger context.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Speed at the cost of quality: Study of use of Cursor AI in open source projects (2025)"

kaffekaka — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:31:08 +0000

I used Claude Code before August 2025 and it was definitely usable, although clearly more capable now. The difference is noticeable but not a completely different world, all in all, in my eyes.

I notice on a daily basis even now that it can easily lead to bloat and unnecessary complexity. We will see if it can be fixed by using even stronger models or not.

New comment by kaffekaka in "Speed at the cost of quality: Study of use of Cursor AI in open source projects (2025)"

kaffekaka — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:43:13 +0000

Was it Bill Gates who likened LoC to measuring airplane construction progress by weight?

New comment by kaffekaka in "The 100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"

kaffekaka — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:07:59 +0000

Ok cool! I have not done any cubing related coding so I don't know how complicated it gets but making sure suggested scrambles are solvable etc seems like it could be non-trivial?

New comment by kaffekaka in "The 100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"

kaffekaka — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:29:00 +0000

Out of curiosity, did you also implement scramble support? Or just the timing stuff?

New comment by kaffekaka in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

kaffekaka — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:50:14 +0000

Good advice, thank you for the reminder.

Regarding the OP's dilemma. I am split. I enjoy both the process and the destination. With AI, the process is faster and less satisfying, but reaching the destination is satisfying in its own way, and enables certain professional ambitions.

I have always had other outlets for my "process" needs, and I believe I will spend more time on them in the future. Other hobbies. I love "artisanal coding" but that aspect was never really my job.