Hacker News: megalomanu

New comment by megalomanu in "Zed 1.0"

megalomanu — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:47:13 +0000

Congrats to the team! Fantastic editor, it really brought me joy after years of VSCode/Cursor. I love how it's crafted, you can feel the soul behind each decision.

What I love:

- the speed, of course

- the high consistency between features, tabs, and panes, while Cursor looks like a crumbly assemblage of plugins. At first I was worried about the lack of plugins, but Zed made me realize you don't need many

- the visual elegance: the padding, the proportions... It reminds me of the best of JetBrains (though I haven't used their products in years). It feels closer to the IDEs I used in the past (for Java or C#), in the sense that it seems to encompass everything you need, without the heaviness.

- the numerous keyboard shortcuts, often displayed visibly, which makes them easier to remember

- the transparency of their roadmap and their velocity: now that we finally have the vertical git diff as promised, my doubts are gone!

Truly one of my favorite pieces of dev software in 15 years.

New comment by megalomanu in "Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine)"

megalomanu — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:19:02 +0000

Looks fantastic! Growing up on RollerCoaster (+Transport) Tycoon and SimCity myself, this is exactly the kind of project I'd dream about building, if only I had your dedication!

Renault to team up with French defence group to make drones for Ukraine

megalomanu — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:26:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/01/20/french-carmaker-renault-to-produce-long-range-drones-for-french-forces/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46697953

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by megalomanu in "Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far"

megalomanu — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 14:32:03 +0000

Never tried coderabbit, just because this is already good enough with Claude Code. It helped us to catch dozens of important issues we wouldn't have caught. We gave some instructions in the CLAUDE.md doc in the repository - with including a nice personalized roast of the engineer that did the review in the intro and conclusion to make it fun! :) Basically, when you do a "create PR" from your Claude Code, it will help you getting your Linear ticket (or creating one if missing), ask you some important questions (like: what tests have you done?), create the PR on Github, request the reviewers, and post a "Auto Review" message with your credentials. It's not an actual review per se but this is enough for our small team.

New comment by megalomanu in "Magistral — the first reasoning model by Mistral AI"

megalomanu — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:43:41 +0000

It is for generating a big nested JSON, quite complex from a business standpoint (lots of different business concepts). We didn't have good results with simple models.

New comment by megalomanu in "Magistral — the first reasoning model by Mistral AI"

megalomanu — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 07:25:44 +0000

We just tested magistral-medium as a replacement for o4-mini in a user-facing feature that relies on JSON generation, where speed is critical. Depending on the complexity of the JSON, o4-mini runs ranged from 50 to 70 seconds. In our initial tests, Mistral returned results in 34–37 seconds. The output quality was slightly lower but still remain acceptable for us. We’ll continue testing, but the early results are promising. I'm glad to see Mistral prioritizing speed over raw power, there’s definitely a need for that.

The Coffee Machine Hiring Test

megalomanu — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:27:30 +0000

Article URL: https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/coffee-machine-test/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41216399

Points: 6

# Comments: 51

New comment by megalomanu in "Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams"

megalomanu — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 08:57:41 +0000

I highly recommend trying Qobuz! Artists are paid more, the catalog is rich and comprehensive (I recommend to early users who might have felt a lack of content to give it another try, as it's now much richer), most albums are available in Hi-Res Audio, the UI is nice, there is no fluff (just music, nothing more), and most importantly, content is curated, with many articles written by critics and journalists, artist interviews, and, for each album, a small review or a piece of text informing about the album's significance. Compared to the awesome but "industrial" recommendation system of Spotify, this is something more personal and curated which, in my opinion, better helps to understand some music genres.

Google Maps and other apps asked to restrict route options during Paris Games

megalomanu — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 10:09:36 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/sports/google-maps-other-apps-asked-restrict-route-options-during-paris-games-2024-01-18/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39053691

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by megalomanu in "Star observatories you can visit in the United States"

megalomanu — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 17:46:35 +0000

If any French people happen to come across this thread, I recommend visiting the Observatoire des Baronnies Provençales. I went there this summer and really loved the experience. We observed various astronomical elements (the sun, planets, galaxies, stars, etc.) from 2pm to 2am. We used different instruments, from a large dome telescope to smaller ones, as well as a connected telescope for taking pictures—the eVscope, an amazing piece of hardware and software—and infrared binoculars. We also did other activities, like identifying an exoplanet with the astrophysicist in residence. Highly recommended for amateur astronomers. Places like these are unfortunately quite uncommon in France.

Barbell Planning: Balancing Risk in Project Management

megalomanu — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:03:51 +0000

Article URL: https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/barbell-planning/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36794115

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by megalomanu in "Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?"

megalomanu — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 13:11:54 +0000

I live in Paris, the city with the most art house cinemas in the world. There are so much of them I have a hard time following what is showed every week. I made a simple crawler that looks at these cinemas and sends a digest of the week schedule by email, listing only the movies that went out one more than year ago (because these theaters also show recent films). Nothing fancy here but I use it every week.

New comment by megalomanu in "Nightdrive"

megalomanu — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 15:21:27 +0000

Beautiful, congrats! This reminds me the final shot of Playtime (not a spoiler! at 2:07: https://youtu.be/anvhVINSFnE?t=127 )

In praise of an old browser game (Kraland Interactif)

megalomanu — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 13:50:30 +0000

Article URL: https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/in-praise-of-an-old-browser-game-kraland/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32898267

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by megalomanu in "A Pico-8 story: How the fantasy console unlocked Frédéric Souchu’s dreams"

megalomanu — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 21:36:07 +0000

I've developed my first video game ever in 2020 thanks to Pico-8 (and thanks to the COVID and the lockdown, too) I was impressed by how it was easy to learn. Once you understood that everything revolves around a big gameplay loop, you can really just focus on what matters (gameplay, art). I like that it encourages trade-offs and workarounds. I've never felt blocked or stuck too long.

Also, as a software engineer, I wasn't afraid of the development part of the game, but I was very skeptical of my capacities to draw characters or levels. Pico-8 helped me to achieve something without feeling ashamed. Because I knew that I was, by nature, limited in my sprites, it helped me releasing my inhibitions and drawing as if I was a 5 years-old boy proud of his drawings. Same thing for the music and sounds.

Another cool thing is that even when writing code, I didn't feel like I was doing the same thing as during the day. Just writing code, in a closed and stable environment, with a very modest API, and finally the ability to release and convert your game into a JS file in just one command is infinitely satisfying. After a day spent struggling with CloudFormation on AWS, it was a blessing!

New comment by megalomanu in "Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job"

megalomanu — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 19:44:08 +0000

Hello HN! Author here. I wasn't expecting so much comments! I would have chosen a less provocative title if I had known :)

Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) just to build a portfolio instead of focusing on creating something really substantial, or something that at least you really like. It's a waste and an illusion to think that it could help to be hired. I know too many developers stuck into this pipe dream.

Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

megalomanu — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 18:55:12 +0000

Article URL: https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/focus-on-jour-job/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24758020

Points: 453

# Comments: 382

New comment by megalomanu in "DuckDuckGo is growing fast"

megalomanu — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:00:38 +0000

I must say I'm not as virtuous as you :)

New comment by megalomanu in "DuckDuckGo is growing fast"

megalomanu — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:22:19 +0000

I agree, but the main reason that I'm using Qwant myself is that non-English results on DuckDuckGo are not good at all. Qwant results are pretty convincing today, much better than a few years ago when it looked like an opportunist product.

The only thing I'm really missing from Google is the integration with Maps, Google Search is so convenient for finding a good restaurant, shop or bar around you. There were alternatives in the past (like Yelp) but Google killed them all, at least in France.

You don't need this fancy recommendations system

megalomanu — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:36:26 +0000

Article URL: https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/you-dont-need-this-fancy-recommendations-system/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24111822

Points: 1

# Comments: 0