Hacker News: lateforwork

New comment by lateforwork in "If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you"

lateforwork — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:38:25 +0000

Because there is no intellectual property in the toilet?

New comment by lateforwork in "If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you"

lateforwork — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:36:00 +0000

It gets worse. I've seen some managers hold back strong developers because they want everyone to be a replaceable cog. They push for average work across the team so no one becomes irreplaceable--even if it means the product ends up weaker than it could be.

New comment by lateforwork in "Agentic AI systems violate the implicit assumptions of database design"

lateforwork — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:45:50 +0000

There are two broad types of databases: operational and analytical.

Operational databases store transactions and support day-to-day application workflows.

For analysis, data is often copied into separate analytical databases (data warehouses), which are structured for efficient querying and large-scale data processing. These systems are designed to handle complex, random queries and heavy workloads.

LLM agents are the best way to analyze data stored in these databases. This is the future.

New comment by lateforwork in "Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees"

lateforwork — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:11:33 +0000

If you quit at age 55 or later and you have been with Microsoft for 15 years your stock continues to vest. That has always been the case.

This "buyout" appears to extend that benefit to employees who are >= 50 and have been with the company for 20 years. (Or any other combination that adds up to 70, for example you are 46 and have been with the company for 24 years).

New comment by lateforwork in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

lateforwork — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:05:34 +0000

Neither... it is illegal when used against citizens

New comment by lateforwork in "The Onion to Take over InfoWars"

lateforwork — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:25:37 +0000

The word "prosecution" implies criminal case brought by the government. This was a civil case brought by the victims.

If you mean higher bar for litigation, then maybe this lawsuit and its outcome shows that the bar isn't as high as you think when it comes to defamation?

New comment by lateforwork in "Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing"

lateforwork — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:43:49 +0000

But is Medicare as good as the insurance you had before?

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:04:36 +0000

Why would Craig have been great? macOS usability and quality has suffered greatly under Craig.

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:03:21 +0000

To what extent do you think Apple software has done well under Craig's leadership?

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:01:22 +0000

Tim Cook stepped down when he hit 65. Sundar has 12 years to go to hit that milestone.

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:59:50 +0000

> iPhone (and smartphones in general) are a mature product, so of course it'll be iterative.

That's the kind of thing people say when they are out of ideas. The reality is that the mobile phone market was already a mature market, with Nokia as the leader, even before the iPhone was released. Then Steve Jobs showed the world how to innovate.

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:53:13 +0000

Plus his degree is in mechanical engineering. I wonder how he climbed up the ranks of hardware engineering with a degree in mechanical engineering. Quite amazing.

New comment by lateforwork in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"

lateforwork — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:40:06 +0000

> Apple’s software is the best in the non-free software world compared to Google's or Microsoft's

You are comparing against the wrong thing.

Compare it to NeXTSTEP from 35 years ago:

https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0

NeXTSTEP was both more usable and better looking.

New comment by lateforwork in "Tesla tells HW3 owner to 'be patient' after 7 years of waiting for FSD"

lateforwork — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:53:49 +0000

Think about a junior coworker you offloaded some of your tasks to. It turns out the coworker frequently makes mistakes. At some point you are going to say it is easier to just do this myself. Especially if a single mistake can cost you your life!

New comment by lateforwork in "ChatGPT for Excel"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:29:48 +0000

This looks bad for Microsoft. They added a Copilot button to all their products but it doesn't do much more than open a chat side panel.

I recently tried Claude Cowork for PowerPoint and I was stunned by the content as well as design quality of the deck it produced. That's a threat for Microsoft because now you don't need the editing tools of PowerPoint, AI replaces it, so all you need is the presentation mode of PowerPoint.

Copilot for Excel is useless. Ask it what is in cell A1 and it can't answer. I am looking forward to trying ChatGPT for Excel.

New comment by lateforwork in "Want to write a compiler? Just read these two papers (2008)"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:00:05 +0000

You claimed bugs, and when asked for evidence of said bugs, you said it is rude to ask for evidence, and I should simply "assume" you are right. Okay. I think people can make up their own minds as to what that means.

New comment by lateforwork in "Want to write a compiler? Just read these two papers (2008)"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:17:03 +0000

Sorry I disagree. I have written compilers by hand and this compiler generated by Claude is pretty good for learning.

I am only asking you to backup your own assertions. If you can't then I would have to assume that you are denigrating AI because you are threatened by it.

New comment by lateforwork in "Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:28:12 +0000

You have not provided any evidence that can be refuted, only vague assertions.

The compiler is indeed useless for any purpose other than learning how compilers work. It has all the key pieces such as a lexer, abstract syntax tree, parser, code generator, and it is easy to understand.

If the general approach taken by the compiler is wrong then I would agree it is useless even for learning. But you are not making that claim, only claiming to have found some bugs.

New comment by lateforwork in "Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:38:45 +0000

Are you concerned that the compiler might generate code that takes over your computer? If so the provided Dockerfile runs the generated code in a container.

Regarding test coverage, this is a toy compiler. Don't use it to compile production code! Regarding while loops and such, again, this is a simple compiler intended only to compile sort and search functions written in C.

New comment by lateforwork in "Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)"

lateforwork — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:03:37 +0000

Exactly! Writing a compiler is not rocket science if you know assembly language. You can pick up the gist in an hour or two by looking at a simple toy compiler.