Hacker News: vinceguidry

New comment by vinceguidry in "The dead economy theory"

vinceguidry — Sat, 30 May 2026 16:43:26 +0000

> Piketty, no conservative, has argued that UBI fails to address root structural problems: “unequal access to education and health, low-paying and low-productivity jobs, malfunctioning markets, corruption, and regressive tax systems.” David Shor’s polling data bears this out from the other direction: UBI is unpopular with American voters; a federal jobs guarantee has legs. People don’t want a check. They want work. They want purpose.

I stopped reading here. The whole piece's argument rests on 'people need work for meaning'. Patent bullshit, this is 2026's 'let them eat cake'. The folks displaced from manufacturing didn't fall into poverty and drugs because they couldn't find meaning without work, claiming this is just what historically happens is bullshit of the highest order. You best believe if these folks had been offered an off-ramp they would have found the meaning and purpose to build a services economy. Instead society and policy intentionally left them to rot. A simple UBI for these folks would have worked wonders.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby"

vinceguidry — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:35:28 +0000

Ruby's YJIT compiler does compile ahead of time, the details are in the link provided. On the first run it will, if feasible, compile blocks of frequently executed code and stow it away for when it's needed next. So only on the first run is it interpreting everything.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby"

vinceguidry — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:32:40 +0000

Ruby is compiled, it JIT compiles the code, in theory it should be on par with go once the compiler works out all the code paths, in a long-running application, you should expect the whole codebase to be compiled eventually. More:

https://www.codemancers.com/blog/rubys-jit-journey

New comment by vinceguidry in "Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby"

vinceguidry — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:27:50 +0000

I choose it because I know and love it. If I gotta go figure out what the bot did, I'd much much rather try to figure out its ruby than anything else. On the browser plugin I'm making, I took one look at the js code it generated then dropped in a ruby-to-js lib.

I know the bot's not sophisticated enough to metaprogram anything, it writes straightforward code that's easy enough on the eyes, if not to my standards of style.

The idea is eventually I want to build the tooling to where I can actually start writing code again. That code will be ruby.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Leaving the Physical World"

vinceguidry — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:47:45 +0000

> I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions publicly.

I use the phrase "there's a boomer in every room," to describe the phenomenon. Always taking up space, never knowing when to shut up. Always working out a way to make it about him. I'd say it equally applies to post author and the person you responded to. There's no teaching them otherwise, complaining is pointless, hence my response.

New comment by vinceguidry in "The Emacsification of Software"

vinceguidry — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:32:53 +0000

The curse actually feels more relevant to me to ruby rather than lisp.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Leaving the Physical World"

vinceguidry — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:28:17 +0000

Gen Z needs to chill on this expectation of unrelenting positivity. Or I guess y'all can just keep vaping to deal with the stress.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Just Use Go"

vinceguidry — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:56:08 +0000

Yeah it's taking itself a bit more seriously than an actual human would.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus"

vinceguidry — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:04:21 +0000

We can't even meaningfully define the concept.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Programming Still Sucks"

vinceguidry — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:22:47 +0000

Please. Covid destroyed everything in my life that I loved.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense"

vinceguidry — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:18:44 +0000

brb, directing ai to build an app notifying me of oil futures volume spikes

New comment by vinceguidry in "Write some software, give it away for free"

vinceguidry — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:58:17 +0000

i tried re-kickstarting my coding hobby with ai, i started with chatgpt, worked my way to openclaw, put it down when i discovered i wasn't touching code anymore and that took something essential out of it. analog is the only truly rewarding lifestyle left. i nabbed 4lb of brussells sprouts at the city farmers market for a buck and spent several hours prepping, cooking, and freezing them, by the time i was done i was like, you know i know why people open restaurants now.

it's not that i don't have any interesting ideas, it's that it's just not fun enough to chase digital dreams anymore. why build my own text editor on top of my own vt100 abstractions if i'm never gonna use it? i may get around to building a kitchen inventory app or even just using the prototype i have now, but that's only going to be useful if i'm cooking for a crowd and not just me.

New comment by vinceguidry in "The fun has been optimized out of the Internet"

vinceguidry — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:14:45 +0000

all of these things are not internet.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish"

vinceguidry — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 14:22:07 +0000

I've found that adapting my thinking to how LLMs work best is a real friction point. If you're not doing that, it spits out junk. Your job just has low standards, get used to it.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay"

vinceguidry — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:19:36 +0000

TUIs can include these, see the kitty graphics protocol, implemented by most if not all modern terminals.

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/

New comment by vinceguidry in "Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay"

vinceguidry — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:16:04 +0000

Nah. Folks will be building their own shells, I'm already half the way there.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay"

vinceguidry — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:14:46 +0000

I used emacs for years, switched to neovim last month. It's just too old and crufty for modern use, and modernizing frameworks like Doom / Spacemacs only add to the complexity. Nice modal workflows just go against emacs' nature.

New comment by vinceguidry in "Spinel: Ruby AOT Native Compiler"

vinceguidry — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:18:58 +0000

Matz is behind both projects, unclear to me what this project is intended to accomplish over mruby.

New comment by vinceguidry in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

vinceguidry — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:07:38 +0000

I mean, yeah, we made music and staged protests.

Gen Z is conducting revolutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nepalese_Gen_Z_protests

New comment by vinceguidry in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

vinceguidry — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:05:22 +0000

It might get there. I could never use VSCode or similar, I want my own editor.