Hacker News: paulmooreparks

New comment by paulmooreparks in "No more icons in every menu by default"

paulmooreparks — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 07:13:41 +0000

Several years ago, I pointed out to a couple of UI designers that their design didn't take Fitts' Law into account. They looked at me like I was speaking ancient Sumerian. They had never heard of Fitts' Law, and they were supposedly degreed/credentialed/whatever UI designers. I was only a lowly software developer (albeit with a specialization in implmenting UI), and I knew what it was. I think it's only gotten worse.

Show HN: A Music-Reading Trainer

paulmooreparks — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:53:31 +0000

Article URL: https://parkscomputing.com/page/sight-reader

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50116347

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by paulmooreparks in "Poll HN: Is there a skill to coding with AI?"

paulmooreparks — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:39:15 +0000

EDIT: The author rightly pointed out that the question is in the title and not in the comment body. My apologies. :)

The poll question is not Yes/No. Am I saying, "Yes, coding with AI something anyone can do," or am I saying, "Yes, there a skill to doing it well"?

New comment by paulmooreparks in "Poll HN: Is there a skill to coding with AI?"

paulmooreparks — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:35:19 +0000

There is skill involved in doing anything well.

Show HN: YAVCHN, Yet Another Vibe-Coded Hacker News (Reader)

paulmooreparks — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 01:24:47 +0000

Article URL: https://yavchn.com/hn/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986742

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Show HN: YAVCHN, Yet Another Vibe-Coded Hacker News (Reader)

paulmooreparks — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:24:45 +0000

Article URL: https://yavchn.com/hn/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963936

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by paulmooreparks in "Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)"

paulmooreparks — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 02:02:11 +0000

I flew on this exact same plane, VH-OQA, on November 4, 2019, from Singapore to Melbourne.

While I was sitting at the gate, I remembered that line from Rain Main about "Qantas never crashed," and since that flight would be my first time flying on an A380, I wondered if any had crashed or had any other incidents. I looked up "a380 crash" on my phone, and what do you know? The first hit was a Wikipedia article about a Qantas A380 uncontained engine failure, which had occurred four minutes after takeoff... from Changi! Even wilder was the fact that it had happened 9 years earlier. When I looked up the plane's registration number on Flightradar24, I realized that was the same plane I was flying to Melbourne on.

A Conversation Between Two Coding Agents

paulmooreparks — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:15:25 +0000

Article URL: https://parkscomputing.com/agent-to-agent-heart-to-heart

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49069272

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by paulmooreparks in "Running Doom on Our Custom CPU and Going Viral"

paulmooreparks — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:34:00 +0000

Very cool!

I just did the same thing, but for a byte-code interpreter for a completely novel ISA I made up a while back (with an assist from Claude). I just haven't made the HN post yet, since I'm doing a bit of cleanup.

https://github.com/paulmooreparks/Maize/ https://paulmooreparks.github.io/Maize/

New comment by paulmooreparks in "A bug which affected only left handed users"

paulmooreparks — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:25:31 +0000

I'm right-handed, and I hold my phone in my left hand and scroll my phone with my left thumb.

New comment by paulmooreparks in "Can you see three trees?"

paulmooreparks — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:15:11 +0000

Singapore here, checking all the boxes. 200m from a neighborhood park with many trees, and ~700m from a GARGANTUAN park, Jurong Lake Gardens, over 4 km in length with many times that in pathways through gardens and around a lake.

New comment by paulmooreparks in "How Alberta Eradicated Rats"

paulmooreparks — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:26:06 +0000

I grew up in Florida, where you might come home and find a cockroach walking out of the bathroom with a towel around its head saying, "We need more toilet paper."

Okay, I kid, but it was almost that bad. We say there are no houses in Florida without cockroaches, just houses where they (mostly) aren't visible.

Now I live in Singapore, famous for being a clean city, and there are rats and cockroaches galore. Tropics, man....

The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation

paulmooreparks — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:46:36 +0000

Article URL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260615-00/?p=112419

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550693

Points: 504

# Comments: 173

Report on an Unidentified Space Station – J.G. Ballard (1982)

paulmooreparks — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:35:46 +0000

Article URL: https://sseh.uchicago.edu/doc/roauss.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501012

Points: 117

# Comments: 82

The back cover of C++: The Language raises questions not answered by front cover

paulmooreparks — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:23:47 +0000

Article URL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260605-01/?p=112391

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421079

Points: 156

# Comments: 51

The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

paulmooreparks — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:52:29 +0000

Article URL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260601-00/?p=112373

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366883

Points: 41

# Comments: 54

New comment by paulmooreparks in "We should be more tired than the model"

paulmooreparks — Sat, 30 May 2026 05:40:23 +0000

I think you missed the point. I don't abandon security to whatever the agent decides to write.

Show HN: Yavchn – Yet Another Vibe-Coded Hacker News Wrapper

paulmooreparks — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:56:35 +0000

Whenever I browse Hacker News, I find myself opening the discussion in a new tab, then clicking through in that tab to view the article, then popping back to the discussion. It's all very annoying, when what I really want to do is get a quick overview of the article and see if there is any interesting discussion going on before I dive into either the article or the discussion.

YAVCHN lets me quickly browse an article in scaled-down reader mode in one pane and see the discussion in the pane below. If I find either one compelling, I can click "Open original" to see the original article or "Open on HN" to join the discussion on Hacker News.

- Left pane: The list of articles on Hacker News - Right-top: The linked article, reader-mode extracted - Right-bottom: The HN discussion thread

It also browses Lobste.rs in a similar fashion, if you ever peek over there.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323889

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by paulmooreparks in "We should be more tired than the model"

paulmooreparks — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:53:08 +0000

I don't abandon the code to the agent entirely. I have my own... I wouldn't call it a harness as such, but rather a shared Kanban board, and it'll be the subject of a "Show HN" soon. It suffices to say that I define Kanban cards for each feature or bug, and I have clearly defined review points for each card, post-spec and post-code, where I step in. On top of that, after my review, there is an agentic review, and agents can and do catch things that I missed. The quality of the software has improved quite a bit since I instituted that flow.

New comment by paulmooreparks in "We should be more tired than the model"

paulmooreparks — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:16:36 +0000

I don't know. I find that I'm moving up a level and improving my product-management skills while delegating most of the code to the agents. I'm still very much hands-on with the design and requirements, and I'm asking questions like, "What's our security story for XYZ?", "Are we accounting for colour-blindness?", etc. Not being down in the code allows me to prairie-dog a bit more and see the landscape better.