Hacker News: phil_kahrl

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:13:00 +0000

Just bought a La Micra last year. Big factor was knowing I can get parts and service for life. I had a lesser known brand machine for almost 15 years, but at some point I couldn't get parts or anyone to work on it, so it died when the pump gasket failed.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "React 19 lets you write impossible components"

phil_kahrl — Sat, 18 May 2024 17:21:08 +0000

Great article! I am currently working on a team where we help product teams adopt new technologies, and we are currently seriously looking at server components with Next.js. Server components offer a lot of advantages in terms of both composition patterns and performance. Server actions are a great way to encapsulate fetching behavior and offer a better pattern than using custom React hooks. Custom hooks, while useful violate basic software design principles because all consumers must depend on the implementation, not the interface of a hook, meaning you can't pass them in as properties and such.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2024)"

phil_kahrl — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 17:03:55 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA or remote.

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Scala, AWS, GCP, Rust, NodeJS, React, WASM

Résumé/CV: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/something.weblum.photos/P...

I am a highly experienced polyglot developer with 8 years at AMZN and multiple startups. I work across the stack from data pipelines, to APIs and frontend. I am very experienced in recruiting and team building, with experience across a broad range of industries. Contact me if you need a solid, seasoned professional to grow your teams and your business.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 21:09:06 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA or remote.

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Scala, AWS, GCP, Rust, NodeJS, React, WASM

Résumé/CV: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/something.weblum.photos/P...

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 23:27:10 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA or remote.

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Scala, AWS, GCP, Rust, NodeJS, React, WASM

Résumé/CV: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/something.weblum.photos/P...

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 18:23:45 +0000

I've been using Rust and WASM for my latest front-end project, and I think this setup is a viable alternative to commonly used JS frameworks for those willing to put in some effort to ramp up on new technology. Addressing the concerns from the article:

"No universal import system" - Rust has it's own module system and Cargo is used for managing dependencies, no need to worry about different module systems.

"Layers of minification, uglification, and transpilation." Just compile Rust to WASM file for the browser, same as using any other compile target.

"Wildly different environments." Something that you'll still need to deal with. Some runtime dependencies are system-specific (code running on the browser usually needs access to Web APIs, and JavaScript, code running on the server can't access WebAPIs but can access the system clock and filesystem. Sometimes separate libraries or separate runtime configs are needed (e.g. configurable time source)

"Overemphasis on file structure." Not a problem for imports, but you may still have file structure dependencies things like CSS, image resources etc.

"Configuration hell." Pretty much non-existent once you have your Rust compiler setup locally.

"Development parity." Just use trunk: https://trunkrs.dev/, to watch, build and serve, config is minimal.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:58:57 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA or remote.

Remote: Optional

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Scala, AWS, Rust, NodeJS, React, WASM

Résumé/CV: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/afdasfdaff.weblum.photos/...

Highly-experienced polyglot engineer with a history of making a large financial impact on cross domain, business critical applications seeking the opportunity to do more of the same. My experience includes Amazon (8 +years), and more recently series A-C startups in various industries.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "WASM: Big deal or little deal?"

phil_kahrl — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:58:39 +0000

It's not what you need, it's what you want but just don't know it yet. Use Rust/WASM and you get a superior package manager in Cargo. Rust gets you a solid type system that's built in instead of an add-on like TypeScript or Flow, and there is no need for a complicated build pipeline with Babel and WebPack, just a single compile target. Overall, I find working with Rust/WASM to be a better developer experience the working with the NPM/Js ecosystem.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "WASM: Big deal or little deal?"

phil_kahrl — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:45:59 +0000

I think WASM will win. I've been using JavaScript for 25+ years, and I just wrote a SPA using Rust/WASM using the Leptos framework: https://github.com/leptos-rs/leptos, and now I don't want to go back to JavaScript. Cargo is a superior package manager, with Cargo I might actually be able to let me my project sit for a year or two and go back and build to a working runtime without having to do a lot of dependency updates (good luck doing that with NPM). Rust has a solid type system, and with the borrow checker along with pattern exhaustive matching I can write something that I know is solid and will be difficult to break. There is no need to have multiple stages build pipeline running through Babel and Webpack which need to be properly configured; simply compile Rust to the WASM target and that is it. The WASM bundle is also likely to be smaller than a corresponding JavaScript bundle. Additionally, with Rust it is easier to do low-level stuff in the client efficiently such as feature extraction from image binaries. Also, the application I wrote with WASM is faster than a similar app I wrote in React, although I attribute that mostly to the fact that Leptos does not use a virtual DOM as React does.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 16:56:51 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA or Remote

Remote: Yes

Willing to Relocate: No

Technologies: JavaScript/TypeScript, Node.js, React, Java, Scala, Python, AWS, Rust, WASM.

Resume: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/13j-rvxrmbeta.weblum.phot...

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkahrl/ GitHub: https://github.com/phil-kahrl

Email: phil.kahrl@gmail.com

I am a highly experienced polyglot developer, 8+ years at AMZN and multiple startups. I work across the stack from data pipelines, to APIs and frontend. I am very experienced in recruiting and team building

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: People who worked through the Dotcom Bubble – what are you doing now?"

phil_kahrl — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 23:27:28 +0000

I was working as a contractor, work dried up so I learned Java and eventually got paid to use it, still working as a software engineer today.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 17:41:28 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA

Remote: Remote or onsite near Seattle, WA

Technologies: Java, Scala, Javascript, Typescript, Node.js, Python, React, Rust, AWS and other cloud services, SQL and noSQL databases.

Resume: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1aujv0ar4beta.weblum.phot...

Email: (see resume)

I am a highly-experienced polyglot engineer looking for a good company with good engineering culture.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2023)"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:58:09 +0000

Location: Seattle, WA Remote: Open to remote work Technologies: Java, Scala, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Rust, AWS, GCP, Docker, Node, Rust, WASM. Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkahrl/ Email: phil.kahrl@gmail.com

Highly-experienced generalist who can work on anything from data pipelines, APIs and front-end in multiple languages. I also have experience as a team lead and manager but am seeking a primarily IC role.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 22:53:40 +0000

https://weblum.photos/

Sells a photo sharing app in the form of individual SPAs hosted on S3. People don't like to enter their credit card to buy, but at least the pay wall keeps the bots away.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 22:51:17 +0000

https://weblum.photos/

Sells a photo sharing app. People don't like to enter their credit card to buy, but at least the pay wall keeps the bots away.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Are there senior devs who liked switching from static to dynamic typing?"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 21:21:57 +0000

Programming to interfaces not implentation is at least encouraged if not outright enforced.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Are there senior devs who liked switching from static to dynamic typing?"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 01:22:06 +0000

I spent a couple of decades with static typing (mostly Java) before spending another 5 years doing nothing but JavaScript. I definitely, I initially like the freedom of dynamic typing and one could argue that as long as you have sufficient tests in place, one is not better than the other. In practice, when working on a team, dynamic typing tends to fall short because it's difficult to enforce the patterns that are needed to actually have a maintainable code base. With dynamic typing different opinions about what patterns should be used in dynamic typing has lead to chaos where each team has to invent their own versions of accepted patterns meaning that each development team becomes an island of their own invention. Human progress relies on organizing many individuals with the same purpose and same way of doing things, which is very difficult to do with dynamic typing.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: 30s and “senior” software engineer, but I suck at programming"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 01:11:24 +0000

A "few years" might be considered a long time in software development terms but in the rest of the world, not so much. To be proficient you need to put in your 10,000 hours which translates into 10 - 20 years depending on how much time you actually spend coding in your current job. In many jobs, the work required of you is mundane and may not provide the practice or challenge you need to progress to the next level, so it may be helpful to take on a side project or other means of building your skills. 30 is still pretty young, and "senior" software engineer is in fact a mid-level position, most senior software engineers have not achieved true expertise. So keep plugging ahead, if you want to get better, otherwise you can always switch roles and go into management if you don't want to put in the time.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Ask HN: Why the web lately is all about JavaScript?"

phil_kahrl — Mon, 30 May 2022 00:53:17 +0000

Been doing web development for 25 years, I am currently learning Rust in hope that I can compile to Web Assembly and build SPAs that way. The JavaScript ecosystem is a mess of module systems, type systems, layers upon layers of libraries and build tools and building a web app that is actually maintainable, consistent and extensible is difficult to impossible. We need better tooling than what is currently considered standard.

New comment by phil_kahrl in "Stay in backend or build some frontend competency?"

phil_kahrl — Fri, 27 May 2022 20:26:50 +0000

Having done both for 20 years, I would recommend staying on the back end. The whole front-end ecosystem is a mess in so many ways, save yourself frustration and consider learning something new that you think you might like instead.