Hacker News: kw3b

New comment by kw3b in "Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like"

kw3b — Wed, 06 May 2026 19:16:25 +0000

Strong agree. Most orgs will stay tangled in the mess they hand-coded over the years, a few greenfield teams will pull ahead, but until some LLM-fuelled startup displaces a strong incumbent I'm skeptical that we're on the cusp of anything other than a K-shaped transition. I see already low quality software and orgs getting flushed to make room for some new ideas now that the barrier to entry is slightly lower (but far from free). I just wish the transition was done with more humanity.

Mealy Machines, Moore Machines, and Why Event Sourcing Works

kw3b — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:53:40 +0000

Article URL: https://kevinwebber.ca/blog/mealy-machines-and-event-sourcing/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039274

Points: 24

# Comments: 2

New comment by kw3b in "Our Continuation of MkDocs"

kw3b — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:47:04 +0000

I agree here. I've actually never heard the term continuation used to describe a divergent fork. MkDocs might be unmaintained now but it's still licensed, which doesn't change or expire over maintenance issues or lack of activity. (I'm not arguing against the greater good of keeping MkDocs going, it's awesome and I've used it more than once, but a licensee doesn't have rights to "continue" MkDocs - that's up to the copyright holder, the remedy for a user is to fork under the terms of the license).

New comment by kw3b in "Write some software, give it away for free"

kw3b — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:41:18 +0000

Nice, I was in ACiD's orbit too, my BBS was a TOXiC Net affiliate before the scene wound down.

That's the thing I miss the most about the scene, the cross-pollination. You'd distro a pack and learn something about a whole other scene, or help somebody mod their board and they'd become co-sysop of yours. That whole era is definitely why I wound up becoming a programmer.

New comment by kw3b in "Write some software, give it away for free"

kw3b — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:23:16 +0000

This is awesome as hell, haven't seen that one yet. I love that cracktros/demos are still a thing. A cracktro a day keeps the slop away.

If you like that one, you'd probably dig this. I feel like this is one of the best demos of all time from both a technical point of view plus storytelling. Dropped back in 2019. Warms my heart.

The Black Lotus - Eon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD9xk3SDSYc

New comment by kw3b in "Write some software, give it away for free"

kw3b — Tue, 05 May 2026 23:15:40 +0000

The one thing I take away from those early days is that we didn't really care what most people were doing. We figured most people were lamers, so whatever most people were doing was probably lame by definition. I guess if you want to kind of approximate the good ol' days, I'd ignore what most people are doing, work on what you want to work on, and if you think it's cool try to join or build a community around that.

The AI grindslop today is infuriating but I mostly ignore it and do my own open source thing. I quit my job last year to work on open source full time because I felt like I had no choice, there was a project in my mind I'd go down with the ship with. If I wind up in the permanent underclass because it fails, 90s me would think not selling out was pretty l33t.

New comment by kw3b in "Outrage is letting someone else set the frame"

kw3b — Tue, 05 May 2026 22:02:30 +0000

This is why so many sites feel completely enshittified now. If a post doesn't tickle the ragebait or FUD algorithm instantly with grindslop it never winds up in a feed. e.g, LinkedIn is such a wasteland that I get 10x the visibility with one liner quips than anything that requires more than two brain cells to fire.

In a lot of ways the internet first democratized the information we had access to, but then the algorithms took over, and we're getting back to the cathode ray tube era. Long live the new flesh.

New comment by kw3b in "Write some software, give it away for free"

kw3b — Tue, 05 May 2026 21:53:19 +0000

I started out in the BBS and demoscene of the 90s. The glory days of computing in my opinion, because of the technical innovation (people were making magic with 7mhz processors) and how the community arranged itself. e.g, some ANSI artists in the artpack scene went on to become legit artists, but nobody was sitting around grinding ANSIs to make millions or raise capital. I think about that era in my own open source work today, I just work on what I enjoy and find interesting and whatever happens happens as long as I can pay the bills.