Hacker News: tfandango

New comment by tfandango in "Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless"

tfandango — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:11:49 +0000

Yes me too! I used to have back problems all the time, sometimes it would give out for no reason and I'm stuck in bed for a week. I started lifting from nothing, just the 45lb barbell, using a simple program called Stronglifts. That was probably 10 years ago, I have had some ups and downs of course, but overall my back has been solid since.

New comment by tfandango in "People who tell you 'AI is changing everything' are lying"

tfandango — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:47:13 +0000

I work for a company with every AI tool imaginable. It's quite dystopian. Emails are flying back and forth with detailed AI analysis which is responded to with a copy and pasted response from another AI. And it's 95% noise. It begs the question of why people are even sending the emails anymore.

From the programming standpoint, it seems like the devs who honed their skills without AI being available to them are the most capable and productive at using it. But we are downsizing to increase spend on tokens, sales people are building apps that are nothing more than untested PoCs and asking how to deploy it into production, our executives believe the technology is some kind of magic...

I hope someday to hire some young developers again, when that day comes: thanks for your efforts getting them ready.

New comment by tfandango in "Vibe coding has turned senior devs into 'AI babysitters'"

tfandango — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:30:28 +0000

Absolutely, much harder to describe what I want the software to do in English than logical programming language, and then add to that the time taken to understand the code and make sure it does what was intended. Perhaps the worst part, takes the joy out of it all.

It is nice as a tool to help solve some hairy stuff sometimes.

New comment by tfandango in "The Last Programmers?"

tfandango — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 15:07:11 +0000

Yep, I am surprised by this whole vibe coding phenomenon. I find it imprecise, and I have to very carefully translate what I want into English, a very imprecise language with a lot of nuance. Either I spend a lot of time coming up with a good prompt, or I iterate with the AI (both of which I find take away from the joy of programming). I joke that we need some sort of logical language which we can write for the computer to understand...

I do like AI as a tool, it's great at a lot of things, but it not the panacea that so many believe, especially CEOs unfortunately.

New comment by tfandango in "The Tabs vs. Spaces war is over, and spaces have emerged victorious"

tfandango — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:21:00 +0000

My favorite things about the Tabs vs. Space war is that you can't even reference it without igniting it.

New comment by tfandango in "The Tabs vs. Spaces war is over, and spaces have emerged victorious"

tfandango — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:19:58 +0000

he only drinks Tab.

New comment by tfandango in "Steve Jobs' cabinet"

tfandango — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:16:18 +0000

and plywood is probably the material of choice for cabinet boxes, straight, strong, not prone to warping, etc. Actually, seems crazy to use nice wood where it won't be seen.

New comment by tfandango in "The IRS Is Building a System to Share Taxpayers' Data with ICE"

tfandango — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 17:54:49 +0000

Elimination of the incentives is the correct solution, yet solving the problem correctly is often harder and more time consuming than just saying you solved it. These raids are public and chaotic and easy, and then you can just claim to have solved the problem, which works just fine for them. You see, politically, the incentives are not to solve the problem because we believe the lies they tell.

New comment by tfandango in "Bunker Busters probably failed to penetrate Iranian concrete"

tfandango — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 21:42:25 +0000

I agree with you, while it is complicated, news organizations should and are reporting the facts (we are discussing them here). I think some people in "media" are probably using hot-button adjectives to get at Trump, and to his discredit it seems to be working.

New comment by tfandango in "Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches"

tfandango — Fri, 30 May 2025 21:30:36 +0000

Dang hello, me too. I recently became tech lead at our fintech co, and the few days a month I get to code is like vacation for my mind. I still remember the good ol' days where nobody talked to me and I solved problems all day long.

New comment by tfandango in "Tariffs Killed Arduboy"

tfandango — Wed, 07 May 2025 19:13:59 +0000

Yea, it's really the opposite of the stated desired effect, small businesses will go under or not even start, while Target and Walmart afforded to pre-stock their warehouses to ride the wave as best they can. Amazon already informed suppliers they "won't be accepting price increases". So we will all just be working for the big box stores and nobody will be living the American Dream of starting their own company.

And, since this is all really just chaos without a plan, what happens when replacement suppliers don't spring up all over the USA?

New comment by tfandango in "I Fought the IRS for Over $12K and won"

tfandango — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:32:22 +0000

2 years ago my eFile was rejected because one of my dependents was already claimed. I have 3 dependents, and they offered no way for me to figure out what happened. The internet told me to file a fraud claim with the government and send that to the IRS, which I did and received no response. I had to print and send my taxes that year. They cashed my check immediately, and about 9 months later I was able to log in and see that I owed 0. That was it. I suspect they did nothing, but future returns were eFiled just fine.

New comment by tfandango in "AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink"

tfandango — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:38:32 +0000

prediction: Prompt engineering will get so complicated. There will be a movement towards somehow telling the computer exactly what to do using a logical language of some sort.

New comment by tfandango in "AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink"

tfandango — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:35:51 +0000

I think that's a good analogy. We use on-prem co-pilot and it works pretty good. I find it more useful exploring problems or debugging than I do at using it to make code.

New comment by tfandango in "AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink"

tfandango — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:30:01 +0000

This is a great point. This mocked test, easy to literally click a button, look like you did something good, but potentially add massive negative value when the code fails but the tests all pass. It can be a very helpful tool, but you need to understand the code it produces, and it seems like people are missing that point.

New comment by tfandango in "AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink"

tfandango — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 16:14:42 +0000

We get to check a box on what AI we use when we close a ticket. I used to select "none" because most of the time that was the case, sometimes I would pick one if I used it to build some scaffolding or explore some performance issue.

But then we started having AI demos with the CTO where the presenters would say things like "I don't know how to code in python but now I don't need to! yay!" and the C level people would be very excited about this. That's when I realized that these poor developers who just want to brown nose and show off to big cheese are instead making an argument for their own demise.

Meanwhile I asked AI to make me a test and it mocked out everything I wanted to test, testing nothing, but passing. I wonder how much of these kinds of tests we have now...

New comment by tfandango in "Trade, Tariffs, and Tech"

tfandango — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:36:54 +0000

It is saying something that Biden did not roll back some of Trump 45's tariffs (maybe related to chips?) on China when he took over in 2020. I agree with you; some thoughtful strategic tariffs could have produced good things.

New comment by tfandango in "Trade, Tariffs, and Tech"

tfandango — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 14:27:47 +0000

Also, if fixing trade imbalances is the purpose of these tariffs, that brings into question the constitutionality of this. I know nothing matters anymore, but how quickly he forgets to say "fentanyl" when justifying these. Presumably, even if people supported this tariff strategy, they might still disagree that the president should be the one doing it.

New comment by tfandango in "Jack Daniel's says Canada pulling US alcohol off shelves 'worse than tariff'"

tfandango — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 15:19:45 +0000

Yes, this is what I was saying.

New comment by tfandango in "Jack Daniel's says Canada pulling US alcohol off shelves 'worse than tariff'"

tfandango — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 14:42:24 +0000

Remember we are imposing the tariffs on an emergency basis because of fentanyl crossing the border. Even though everyone, even our mastermind president can't even play along with his own rouse; saying things like he wants manufacturing to move to the US or Canada becoming state 51 to avoid tariffs. There are no more rules anymore.