This is a very important point, especially when the output is from a non-deterministic random walk with some unknown probability distribution.

> There is an old adage (e.g., Zen) to the effect that we become what we perceive. In computer terms, our (human) outputs become identified with our inputs. Computer technology is exceedingly habit forming, and our civilization seems to be becoming more computer-like, in the name of "progress". Many people tend to identify with their computers, while others become more computer-dependent, willingly or unwillingly. In addition, the so-called "factory experience" has an antihuman element to it. Although it could indeed help to reduce repetitiveness, it must also allow a suitable role for creativity. (In the spirit of this paper we note that unbridled attempts at creativity can often be detrimental, resulting in obfuscational terminology that masks an absence of novelty, or the reinvention of suboptimal or intermediate steps that have previously been discarded by others for subtle reasons not perceived by the "reinventor".) Thus, it is incumbent on system designers and system development managers to understand the negative effects of the use of computers, and to attempt to minimize those negative effects. In this way, it should be possible to increase incentives, challenges, and satisfaction, to reduce boredom, burnout, and laziness, and generally to increase the effectiveness of computer developers and users.

I will think “Agentic Engineering” is the “time-sharing” of our time. Embrace it.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1005937.1005938

It is very inspiring.

One example of teamwork is how the programmers and researchers worked together to build the UNIX SYSTEM (https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf). It is not a product but an environment optimized for building tools and solving practical problems with tools written in C (while BBMs were busy with Lisp in Boston .;-)

C++ is a totally different story and you need an IDE for that.

On the other hand, there was lot of disruptive work did survive, or we can call them “hallucinations”.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I can see the potential of doing some implementation of APL/J/K at levels even lower than C, like how those guys did APL\360 using assembly language. It is going to be super fun in the era of everyone using LLM to pump out verbose Python/TS/Rust code with context windows bigger than the whole operating system.

I made a self documented (all the related links are in the file) single makefile (https://gist.github.com/ontouchstart/d3ad8e4d0adf63532303a90...) so that anyone can build ymawky from scratch and dig deeper by tinkering.

I would do that with 100% local models from scratch.

https://youtu.be/L3FZzGU3n14

UX is where the money is, it is in the wrapper, not the core.

Unfortunately, the core is the most valuable and labor intensive part of it.

With agentic coding, the gap between solid core and shitty wrapper is going to be wider and wider.

https://mariozechner.at/nothanks.html

I didn't see it on mobile. So it only happened to desktop browser.

I only found out via pi myself:

> pi --continue -p "Check the link and see if there is a banner to turn back users from HN community"

Goodmythical’s comment was *accurate at the time it was written* – the link did trigger the “no‑thanks” page when it was opened from Hacker News. The “banner” is not a visual element that lives on the main article page; it is the content of the separate *`/nothanks.html`* file that the site redirects to.

When the redirect was in place, the user experience was:

1. User clicks the link while still on `news.ycombinator.com`. 2. The script in `components.js` sees the referrer and redirects the browser to `/nothanks.html`. 3. The `/nothanks.html` page displays the single line “hi orange site user …” – this is what Goodmythical described as the banner.

If you now visit the same link directly (e.g., from a bookmark or a search engine) the redirect is bypassed and you see the normal article, so you won’t see that page at all.

Here is a session of pi analyzing coding-agent package itself.

https://ontouchstart.github.io/.pi/agent/sessions/--pi-mono-...

It was created via a non-interactive CLI command in a docker container connected to a local llama.cpp server with a very limited model. $0 token cost.

I should've given original links instead of noisy HN threads.

[1] https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/blob/main/packages/codin...

[2] https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/

pi-conding-agent itself is not a product yet and it won't have much value to end users other than those using the products built on top of it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46844822