Hacker News: osigurdson

New comment by osigurdson in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

osigurdson — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:23:26 +0000

If you mean panic, it isn't really the same thing.

New comment by osigurdson in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

osigurdson — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:46:23 +0000

There is a reason why Rust, Go and Zig don't have exceptions and it isn't because the language designers didn't understand them. While you can achieve the same thing using both approaches, errors as return values is generally simpler to reason about. Even in C# for example, exceptions are going to start taking a back seat with tagged unions which will be much better for expected failures.

I agree that Go's approach is a little cumbersome however. Suggest checking out Zig's approach which I personally think really nails it.

New comment by osigurdson in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

osigurdson — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:18:03 +0000

If you reach a scenario that should crash your app, exceptions are fine. However, they are a pain (and brittle in the case of C#) when the intention is to handle them. This is the reason why many newer languages don't use exceptions.

New comment by osigurdson in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

osigurdson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:24:24 +0000

If you know any other language, you basically already know Go (with the exception of the channels stuff). The biggest pain is the if err != nil stuff, which I know some people like but it is suboptimal in my view. While far better than C# and Java's exceptions, far worse than Zig's model.

New comment by osigurdson in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

osigurdson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:21:06 +0000

Learn Go if you have to, or want to learn it. Otherwise, I don't think there is any reason to do so. I agree that it is easy to read, but less so than the language you already know.

New comment by osigurdson in "Mojo 1.0"

osigurdson — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:40:34 +0000

From experience, Zig compile times are at least as fast as Go for debug builds that don't need to do linking with C libraries, etc. It does have to use LLVM for release builds however which is a lot slower.

New comment by osigurdson in "Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI"

osigurdson — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:35:53 +0000

It seems that this could have been expanded or contracted to any Fibonacci number of myths.

New comment by osigurdson in "How I use HTMX with Go"

osigurdson — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:46:37 +0000

Back in the days of the LAMP stack, the use of Linux would have been much less obvious and thus warranted the inclusion of the "L" in the acronym. After all, leaving it out might arguably have sounded better - the AMP stack.

New comment by osigurdson in "The state of open source AI"

osigurdson — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:42:00 +0000

I don't love the appeal to romanticism portrayed in this article.

New comment by osigurdson in "How I use HTMX with Go"

osigurdson — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 05:50:44 +0000

I'm unfamiliar with these stacks but including "U" / Unix seems odd. I suspect these run completely fine on Linux, Windows or macOS. Its almost like including an "E" in your stack for electricity.

New comment by osigurdson in "GPT-5.6"

osigurdson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:49:16 +0000

I use both. Not because I am cool, but because it is cost effective for personal projects with two $20 / month plans. It is also nice to be able to see what the state of the art is like for both.

Personally, I find it very interchangeable. I open codex --yolo or claude with whatever there yolo flag is (have an alias).

New comment by osigurdson in "GPT-5.6"

osigurdson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:46:15 +0000

I don't know how intentional it is / was, but LLMs in general just love to hear themselves talk!

New comment by osigurdson in "PostHog FOSS"

osigurdson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:21:14 +0000

I don't think it is meant to be objectively the most efficient interface. It is more about being remarkable in a Seth Godin sense. For me I just want things to be blazing fast inside the dashboard.

New comment by osigurdson in "PostHog FOSS"

osigurdson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:15:54 +0000

I've notice that as well. If you don't know how to do something having an agent with tools is great (in general, not just PH). But, its also quite slow and imprecise. I think that having the agent act more as both a teacher and "doer" is best.

New comment by osigurdson in "PostHog Open Sourced"

osigurdson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:10:02 +0000

It seems like an odd thing to run locally with so many dependencies.

New comment by osigurdson in "Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament"

osigurdson — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:17:39 +0000

True!

New comment by osigurdson in "Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament"

osigurdson — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:50:10 +0000

What I don't understand is, what kind of legitimate criminal would not use such techniques? Are bank robbers planning things out on iMessage? If so, presumably they won't be criminals for very long. Therefore these types of initiatives only impact the innocent and inept but still active criminals.

New comment by osigurdson in "Qualcomm to Acquire Modular"

osigurdson — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 05:03:13 +0000

I don't think $4B is reasonable for an acquihire. They must see value in the technology.

New comment by osigurdson in "Pledging another $400k to the Zig software foundation"

osigurdson — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:06:00 +0000

Zig is really nice. I enjoy using it a lot. Glad to hear that it is getting a little more funding.

New comment by osigurdson in "When I reject AI code even if it works"

osigurdson — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:23:17 +0000

Its hard to find a middle ground between fully understanding everything in a PR vs a vibe coding type approach. Can you understand "just a little bit" of a PR and merge it into a code base you really care about? Is it maybe fine to "mostly understand it" on the other hand? Its definitely a tough call and its impossible to argue that no trade off is being made.

LLMs are perfect for quick prototypes, speed runs, learning, etc., but if the code really matters its still not clear cut. I think the definition of what "really matters" is very project dependent of course As an extreme example you would want to understand every line of the code for the control system runs an MRI machine or a jet engine since bugs might mean life or death. Depositing money into the wrong account might not kill anyone but could lead to severe economic losses. But, then again, even problems in far less consequential software may be drastically sub-economic (i.e. saving $1000 on the implementation might cost $10000 if customers aren't happy and fails to re new). Pick your scenario I guess.

The problem is, this isn't going to change regardless of how well a new model scores on a benchmark. It seems actually AGI is needed.