Hacker News: kcoddington

New comment by kcoddington in "Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns"

kcoddington — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:30:18 +0000

I almost posted this exact comment. You're not alone in thinking HN has changed for the worse in recent years.

I get that it's just a reflection of cultural change and (over)reactions to anything adding friction. But for a forum dedicated to the "hacker" lifestyle, it's disappointing to see so much gatekeeping and FUD. I really wish this audience could start swinging back towards a response style that contains nuance and recognizes nuance.

I find myself opening this site less and less each week.

New comment by kcoddington in "We put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon"

kcoddington — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 17:59:44 +0000

Either have Claude /compact or have it output things to a file it can read in on the next session. That file would be a summary of progress for work on a spec or something similar. Also good to prime it again with the Readme or any other higher level context

New comment by kcoddington in "VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot"

kcoddington — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:42:46 +0000

Learning an entirely new editor is a barrier. Documentation or not, that's brand new muscle memory you have to develop alongside the actual task of coding.

I get that using vim typically includes obsessive forms of efficiency, but some people just want to focus on coding in a way that's comfortable to them. Sometimes that means having a side panel.

New comment by kcoddington in "How I block all online ads"

kcoddington — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 14:53:34 +0000

Agreed. I think I'm getting more fatigue from the AI slop callouts than the actual AI slop.

New comment by kcoddington in "Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults"

kcoddington — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 13:28:55 +0000

I'm not seeing where they are coming up with RNT as a cause, other than a lot of theory. Wouldn't it be a symptom of cognitive decline instead? Dementia patients, particularly those with Alzheimers, tend to become depressed because of confusion and memory loss. Wouldn't it be more likely that these depression symptoms are being caused by deteriotating brain function rather than the other way around?

New comment by kcoddington in "GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation"

kcoddington — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 12:35:19 +0000

CSV is data only. Excel handles way more than that. XLSX is the preferred file format because it's compressed XML that can hold all kinds of things.

Also, CSVs seem to open just fine on my Excel. If it's not formatted with a standard delimiter or isn't handing quoted strings the proper way, sure maybe the data wizard is needed.

Excel is terrible in a lot of aspects, but CSVs seem to be something it handles as well as anything else in my experience.

New comment by kcoddington in "How to Build Conscious Machines"

kcoddington — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 16:31:34 +0000

Not everything needs to be a novel idea. 99% of blogs and books wouldn't be written if that were the case. Sometimes repeating information means somebody learns something they weren't aware of or is presented in a way that finally clicks for them. Meta-analysis is also useful. So is repeating experiments. Our entire world is driven by summaries and abstractions.

New comment by kcoddington in "Containerization is a Swift package for running Linux containers on macOS"

kcoddington — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:36:56 +0000

I wouldn't think there are many use cases for Windows, but I imagine supporting legacy .NET Framework apps would be a major one.

New comment by kcoddington in "Getting Past Procrastination"

kcoddington — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 14:26:31 +0000

While I don't disagree with this approach, it only works for some digital tasks. AI won't clean my house or exercise my body or engage in obligatory social interactions. In these cases, just getting it done by shutting off your brain is often the best way to get it going.

Also, it's not all or nothing. You can decide to engage more in the task as it's ongoing, which could contribute to higher quality output. The hard part is usually starting.

New comment by kcoddington in "Bored of It"

kcoddington — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 11:46:14 +0000

Humans crave novelty. That's all. I'm sure people were bored of hearing about the internet too.

I'm with you on the optimistic outlook, for the most part. But I think there will also be quite a bit of pain felt by a lot of people (job loss, bad code, bad info, etc.) until we can find ways to correct.

New comment by kcoddington in "Nobody should be a "content creator""

kcoddington — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 12:49:57 +0000

There has always been filler entertainment that caters to the lowest denominator. The new medium types just allow for more of it. Maybe I'm in a very small minority, but I only consume HN and a heavily curated YouTube account.

I don't even see most of the viral content unless somebody else shows me. Anf since I don't have an account with most social media sites, they have to show me directly on their own devices. I also filter on all email with the word 'unsubscribe' and route it appropriately.

The short of it is: do better at filtering with allow listing or aggressive block lists. Consume content you search for. Or accept the fact that an algorithm will spoon feed you 99% filler.

New comment by kcoddington in "The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)"

kcoddington — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 15:01:07 +0000

Why is it unacceptable? And wouldn't the time/productivity loss from on-boarding an entirely new team completely outweigh the time/productivity loss of the 100% pairing with a Tim?

New comment by kcoddington in "How to know when it's time to go"

kcoddington — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 15:52:38 +0000

This level of 'us vs. them' doesn't really help anybody. If your employer is actually this cutthroat (I imagine the majority are not) then perhaps this tactic is warranted. But as a general recommendation, TFA has a valid point regarding a potential source for a strong reference or even future collaboration. Burning bridges should always be a last resort. Also, I don't think the author is recommending 'mouthing off' but rather sitting down and having a civil discussion.

New comment by kcoddington in "US Forest Service firings decimate: entire generation of talent and passion lost"

kcoddington — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 12:38:32 +0000

That's actually a classic definition of the word. Hence the deci- prefix.

New comment by kcoddington in "Money lessons without money: The financial literacy fallacy"

kcoddington — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 14:02:38 +0000

I wonder if it's because art and literature are better at teaching one how to think in and derive abstractions from more complex ideas. Math should most definitely do this as well, but I don't think is taught that way. Most of the time is spent in math classes are on procedural practice and connecting that work to think about it in an abstract way happens infrequently.

New comment by kcoddington in "Money lessons without money: The financial literacy fallacy"

kcoddington — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:52:51 +0000

I think the point isn't that teaching financial literacy is pointless, just that its impact is severely reduced due to external factors. And wringing our hands over the details of the curriculum is bike shedding, as alluded to in the article. John Doe can ace his financial literacy course and still go on to max out multiple credit cards after high school because of pressures that couldn't be understood from declarative knowledge alone.

New comment by kcoddington in ""Uber for Armed Guards" Surges After UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassination"

kcoddington — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:47:15 +0000

Couldn't the same be said for something like medical professions or cyber security? The point isn't to produce something, it's to protect something from being negatively impacted. Or to respond in some way to assess the impact and remediate.

Defending against and responding to harm almost never produces anything but is almost always necessary to have.

However, if your comment was more aimed at the consultant being an inherently misaligned figure with a larger capacity to do harm than good, I don't completely disagree.

New comment by kcoddington in "Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it"

kcoddington — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:36:06 +0000

While most meetings tend to be rather useless, I can't help but feel like the character in this story was likely a pain to work with. Of course, we're only getting one side of the story, so maybe I'm reading too much into it and my personal experiences with people like that probably change my perception quite a bit.

But that one-sidedness also makes stories like this as useless as the meetings it's complaining about. Without the full details, there's not much to even learn here except that a lot of meetings are a waste of time, which isn't exactly profound.