Hacker News: madelgi

New comment by madelgi in "AI is a tool and using it well takes skill"

madelgi — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:06:41 +0000

as a power user of these products, this is what i don't understand. i work on a large web app with many many users, and it's hard for me to believe that the "it takes no skill" crowd are working on anything with any stakes. and again, i use these models all the time, and they've pretty radically changed how i do work day-to-day! but my job does not consist of telling opus to complete my sprint and then sitting around for 14 days, and i don't think it will at any point in the near future. as the models get better, expectations surrounding output increase -- i'm not saying i like this, but i'm also not fretting about job security.

that said, i'd probably view all of this through a much more helpless lens if i were earlier in my career.

New comment by madelgi in "The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs"

madelgi — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 03:18:21 +0000

i think the whole argument is kind of confused because it groups a bunch of separate nerd characteristics into one "weird nerd" archetype. feeling like your career shouldn't be stymied because you're bad at playing politics and socially awkward is totally understandable. specifically in the university context, i sympathize with the critique of how much begging for funding is required by the job, especially at more senior levels. but i feel like these reasonable sentiments basically cloak what the essay is really trying to defend: the asshole nerd. i've never worked with kariko, i do not know if she falls under this category, but that seems to be the archetype that is implicitly being discussed in the hn comment section, presumably because a lot of us work in tech and have worked with or under an asshole nerd.

New comment by madelgi in "Show HN: Open-Source Video Editor Web App"

madelgi — Sun, 12 May 2024 17:09:21 +0000

if i built this and an employer asked me why my project wasn't competitive with leading open source video editing software, i would probably cut the interview short. the vast majority of developers build stuff like this to learn and challenge themselves (which op basically says in the description), only a small fraction are attempting to build a viable product. i'd expect the interviewer to understand this dynamic and not grill me on the target audience for my toy project