Hacker News: pacman128

New comment by pacman128 in "The worst job interview I ever had"

pacman128 — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:25:29 +0000

I've been on both sides of the interviewing process and I agree with you.

It's the questions like "what is you greatest weakness?" that tick me off where an honest answer at most places will probably kill you chance of getting the job. Instead you are told that the "right" answer is to pose a strength as a weakness. I don't see the point of asking questions like these. What are you learning about the candidate from getting the expected BS response?

Ironically, I think having the self awareness to recognize your own weaknesses is a great strength, but this question subverts this.

New comment by pacman128 in "The worst job interview I ever had"

pacman128 — Wed, 27 May 2026 00:21:18 +0000

Is it too much to ask for interviewers not to ask questions where the "right" answer is to give a BS answer?

New comment by pacman128 in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"

pacman128 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 17:52:44 +0000

In a chat bot coding world, how do we ever progress to new technologies? The AI has been trained on numerous people's previous work. If there is no prior art, for say a new language or framework, the AI models will struggle. How will the vast amounts of new training data they require ever be generated if there is not a critical mass of developers?

New comment by pacman128 in "A gentle introduction to CP/M"

pacman128 — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 19:51:57 +0000

Fun fact, George RR Martin still uses the MS-DOS version of Wordstar for his writing.

New comment by pacman128 in "Why making friends as an adult is harder"

pacman128 — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 21:38:44 +0000

Look into the Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. I'm a recently retired atheist and moved to a new city. My wife was brought up UU and they welcome all beliefs. We started attending services at a local fellowship a month ago and have been welcomed and are starting to make some friends there.

New comment by pacman128 in "A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916"

pacman128 — Sun, 25 Feb 2024 02:17:27 +0000

This Philby story (father of the infamous double agent Kim Philby) is a key plot point in Tim Powers' book _Declare_. It's a mash up of a John le Carre spy novel with Lovecraft. One of Powers' best novels.

New comment by pacman128 in "The Netwide Assembler (NASM)"

pacman128 — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 20:21:50 +0000

No, I'm not actively working on it. If I ever find the time, I might update it to 64-bit.

New comment by pacman128 in "The Netwide Assembler (NASM)"

pacman128 — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 19:32:57 +0000

https://pacman128.github.io/pcasm/

New comment by pacman128 in "The Netwide Assembler (NASM)"

pacman128 — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 15:50:13 +0000

Nice to see NASM is still going strong. I used this for a class I taught back in the 90's. The class supported both Windows and Linux (but most students used Windows) and NASM supported both and was free.

I ended up creating my own free online textbook for the course. It's sorta out of date now since it was for 32-bit processors.

New comment by pacman128 in "Learn x86-64 assembly by writing a GUI from scratch (2020)"

pacman128 — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 12:00:19 +0000

Paul Carter here. Yes, as someone already replied. It's online. I would have liked to update it to 64-bit, but I jumped to industry and don't have the time to do a decent job of it. I didn't realize that Randall had a 64-bit version out. I'm sure it's very good. We both used to hang out on comp.lang.asm.x86 back in the 90's.

New comment by pacman128 in "Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?"

pacman128 — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 19:51:10 +0000

_Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms_ by James O. Coplien

It showed me how to really use C++ effectively back in the 1990's. It was at the time in a class by itself. (Pun intended).

New comment by pacman128 in "Some thoughts on social networking and Usenet (2018)"

pacman128 — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 21:02:35 +0000

rec.arts.sf.written was the one I was referring to.

New comment by pacman128 in "Some thoughts on social networking and Usenet (2018)"

pacman128 — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 20:14:51 +0000

I just recently started looking back at one of the groups I frequently read years ago and found that there was a small community still using it. Even recognized a few of them. The trolls and spammers were gone.

Surviving the Bridge in Squid Game

pacman128 — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 18:44:23 +0000

Article URL: https://chalkdustmagazine.com/features/surviving-the-bridge-in-squid-game/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33375645

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Anima Puzzles

pacman128 — Thu, 19 May 2022 22:36:08 +0000

Article URL: https://davidkoloski.me/blog/anima-puzzles/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31441057

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by pacman128 in "John Roach has died"

pacman128 — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 12:05:19 +0000

Really sad to hear this. The TRS-80 Model I was the first computer I ever owned in high school. I spend many, many hours programming on it. Taught myself BASIC and Z-80 assembly language on it. Definitely was a major factor in my professional life.

New comment by pacman128 in "Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate"

pacman128 — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 18:15:27 +0000

I taught college CS for 10 years before moving to industry. Cheating wasn't a huge problem, but I did run have some issues.

Gave a makeup exam to one student with an altered programming problem than the original exam. The student answered the original problem, not the one on the exam they was given. That made it very clearcut.

I also had a written requirement that students must be able to explain their homework programs to me. Had a few that couldn't explain what parts of "their" own program was doing.

New comment by pacman128 in "Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)"

pacman128 — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:20:32 +0000

It was published 3 years before his death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!

New comment by pacman128 in "Long Now Years: Five-Digit Dates and Y10K-Compliance at Home (02013)"

pacman128 — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 19:54:26 +0000

It's actually the prequel, 'A Deepness in the Sky', that has this. Both very good books.

New comment by pacman128 in "A submarine's weakness: its software?"

pacman128 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:09:01 +0000

I thought the same at first. I worked on the Air Force AWACS E3 (https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...) program as a contractor in the 2000's. It had dual IBM-360 computers and wireframe-like graphics for their radar displays at the time. This was the Block 30/35 version. It looks like from the link that they may have completely transitioned to the Block 40/45 version which replaced the 360's. They were talking about this move when I worked there 16 years ago.