Hacker News: mirawelner

Being a Junior Scientist in the Current Administration

mirawelner — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:00:37 +0000

Article URL: https://mirawelner.com/posts/junior.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744421

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mirawelner in "You don't have to"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:17:40 +0000

Sure, but the specific critique that it is too verbose seems less valid if one of the primary purposes of the piece was to be prose.

New comment by mirawelner in "You don't have to"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:46:13 +0000

Because we went through so many years of school for it

New comment by mirawelner in "You don't have to"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:39:28 +0000

I actually disagreed with that particular point made in the article, because I don't really see myself as somebody who sees value in craft and artistry, I just want effective code that works (which imho LLMs cannot create).

But after reading this comment section... I mean if enjoying well written prose counts as enjoying craft and artistry I guess I do then? Damn.

New comment by mirawelner in "You don't have to"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:17:59 +0000

I somewhat disagree that this is not prose? This didn't seem like a purely expository piece. Like if it were just a straightforward technical piece than yeah its way to long, it could have been a few sentences.

But this seemed like it bridges the gap between prose and an expository essay -it was doing both.

New comment by mirawelner in "You don't have to"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:01:45 +0000

...because reading and writing well-written prose is meaningful and enjoyable?

It feels like half the people here do not read or write in their free time, which would be understandable if this were not primarily a site for software engineers who write (sorta) as a job

New comment by mirawelner in "AI is making junior devs useless"

mirawelner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:23:35 +0000

I mean just as a counterpoint:

I am a Junior dev (graduated in 2022) and I am gainfully employed at the McGowan institute, earning an okay salary, with colleagues who actively use LLMs, but there is zero talk of firing me or laying me off due of LLMs. I personally avoid LLMs for most things other than:

1) Google search which actually works 2) translating MATLAB, which I have never learned (and probably won't ever)

There is a whole team of Junior devs, and actually on Friday I got an email asking if I could refer another junior/entry level. Granted it was for a 1 year contract, but still.

I really do not get this hype.

New comment by mirawelner in "All Look Same?"

mirawelner — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:08:34 +0000

No it’s just sloooooowwwwww

All Look Same?

mirawelner — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:48:03 +0000

Article URL: https://alllooksame.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067498

Points: 116

# Comments: 86

New comment by mirawelner in "I’m joining OpenAI"

mirawelner — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:52:46 +0000

“ My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use”

There is literally no need to shit on ur mom like that. Sorry your mom sucks at tech but can we please stop using this as a euphemism?

Exploring D&D 5th Edition Monster Features Using Julia

mirawelner — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:26:04 +0000

Article URL: https://cmu-lib.github.io/2026LoveDataWeek_DnDnDMonsterManagement/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949745

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mirawelner in "We mourn our craft"

mirawelner — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 23:12:17 +0000

I’m a contract hire that you paid upfront! You can’t fire me!

Also let this be a lesson to internet folks to be careful what you post if your boss shitposts on the orange yelling site

New comment by mirawelner in "We mourn our craft"

mirawelner — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 22:47:22 +0000

That’s funny bc I linked my post to a server I’m on and I also was told to use an agent.

My worry about an agent is I’m trying to translate the math with full fidelity and an agent might take liberties with the math rather than full accuracy. I’m already having issues with 0 to 1 indexing screwing up some of the algorithm.

But I will try an agent - can’t hurt to try

New comment by mirawelner in "We mourn our craft"

mirawelner — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:23:16 +0000

These posts make me feel like I’m the worst llm prompter in existence.

I’m using a mix of Gemini, grok, and gpt to translate some matlab into c++. It is kinda okay at its job but not great? I am rapidly reading Accelerated C++ to get to the point where I can throw the llm out the window. If it was python or Julia I wouldn’t be using an LLM at all bc I know those languages. AI is barely better than me at C++ because I’m halfway through my first ever book on it. What LLMs are these people using?

The code I’m translating isn’t even that complex - it runs analysis on ecg/ppg data to implement this one dude’s new diagnosis algorithm. The hard part was coming up with the algorithm, the code is simple. And the shit the LLM pours out works kinda okay but not really? I have to do hours of fix work on its output. I’m doing all the hard design work myself.

I fucking WISH I could only work on biotech and research and send the code to an LLM. But I can’t because they suck so I gotta learn how computer memory works so my C++ doesn’t eat up all my pc’s memory. What magical LLMs are yall using??? Please send them my way! I want a free llm therapist and a programmer! What world do you live in?? Let me in!

New comment by mirawelner in "A History of Haggis (2019)"

mirawelner — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 01:35:17 +0000

The type of content I come to HackerNews for

New comment by mirawelner in "I'm addicted to being useful"

mirawelner — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:35:08 +0000

See I like this but also the majority of software jobs these days are a net negative to humanity

New comment by mirawelner in "Start your meetings at 5 minutes past"

mirawelner — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 15:10:08 +0000

Maybe I’m just a silly lab engineer who doesn’t know how big companies work (i did work at a startup for a time but that’s even more anti meeting than a lab) but I feel like maybe if you have so many back to back meetings that you need to plan around them you should have fewer meetings?

Also why is there a hard end time rather than a maximum time? What is even going on? How are you getting work done?

New comment by mirawelner in "I switched from VSCode to Zed"

mirawelner — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:41:09 +0000

I really love Zed bc it’s fast and doesn’t try to run the code for you. I really dislike the “play” feature of IDEs. I learned Java in eclipse and for the linear time don’t know how to run it from the terminal. It has all the editing and highlighting features of a full ide but makes you run it from the terminal. And if you have Zellij or another muxer set up, it runs it in the Zed terminal automatically.

New comment by mirawelner in "Gild Just One Lily"

mirawelner — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 07:36:58 +0000

I like metaphors. I respect a good “run with a metaphor” post. But I feel like if you have to explain the metaphor this much during the post it’s not worth it

What a CTO should know about tech

mirawelner — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 05:25:45 +0000

Article URL: https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/cto_tech_capabilities

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042613

Points: 2

# Comments: 0