Hacker News: waynecochran

New comment by waynecochran in "AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)"

waynecochran — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:31:07 +0000

Fight fire w fire. Have AI read it and decide what to do w it.

New comment by waynecochran in "Am I better because of AI?"

waynecochran — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:12:43 +0000

Yes

New comment by waynecochran in "The Dark Night of Mathematics"

waynecochran — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:21:46 +0000

LLM's may have provided a bit of comeuppance. Many mathematicians have cared little if anyone understands their obscure nomenclature and build mote around their work. Now they have encountered something that is becoming far more capable than they are and they may soon be left in the dark.

New comment by waynecochran in "Stolen Buttons"

waynecochran — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:59:01 +0000

Apple and Jony Ive killed skeuomorph design a long time ago.

New comment by waynecochran in "REO Trucks I4 4WD Pickup Truck Starts at $21,500"

waynecochran — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 14:46:03 +0000

You do realize EV’s pollute as well? Batteries are nasty.

New comment by waynecochran in "First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star"

waynecochran — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:12:26 +0000

| The gas detected in the atmosphere is helium

The planet must have an enormous escape velocity to contain helium in its atmosphere. If there is life there they are stuck.

New comment by waynecochran in "Control the Ideas, Not the Code"

waynecochran — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:41:28 +0000

I am shipping sophisticated computer vision code that is more reliable and better tested than ever before. This isn't some vibe coded bullsh*t. This is me writing detailed mathematical specs and it do all the heavy lifting.

New comment by waynecochran in "Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?"

waynecochran — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:16:49 +0000

There has been a steady decline for decades. Release early, release often. One example: Apple used to have a thing called Gold Master release when updating software was not as immediate. The GM programs met a high bar for quality. Not so much anymore… the attitude is we can just release a new version later this week. There also used to be a thing called backwards compatibility… now no one thinks twice about breaking code on older platforms.

New comment by waynecochran in "Show HN: Beautiful Type Erasure with C++26 Reflection"

waynecochran — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:12:30 +0000

It will be easier than trying to learn to the new features of C++34.

New comment by waynecochran in "Show HN: Beautiful Type Erasure with C++26 Reflection"

waynecochran — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:31:17 +0000

I think you misunderstand -- I am still reading the article.

New comment by waynecochran in "Show HN: Beautiful Type Erasure with C++26 Reflection"

waynecochran — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:22:43 +0000

That is exactly what I was thinking. I was a seasoned C++ programmer and always loved reading articles like this. I can't imagine I will every write my own C++ code again -- or in any language. I now program with English specifications now and I am 10000% times more productive.

New comment by waynecochran in "Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without ever opening Xcode"

waynecochran — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 22:39:58 +0000

The main iPhone app I maintain for work is 100% claude edited now ... I don't touch the code anymore ... I do occasionally look at it. It does a way better job than I could. I do have Xcode open as claude does its thing ... and I occasionally sign and deploy with Xcode. No coding though.

New comment by waynecochran in "Control the Ideas, Not the Code"

waynecochran — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 21:02:14 +0000

That is the part Claude can handle and actually does. In fact, recently claude automaticaly converted some spline generating code to double precision and did some other refactoring as well after it realized poor results thru tests it generated on its own! I was gobsmacked!

New comment by waynecochran in "Control the Ideas, Not the Code"

waynecochran — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:05:26 +0000

    ... I believe many programmers at this point have less impact they could have because they look at the code.

I think my strength is now more in my ability as a mathematician and a writer than as a programmer. Being able to write detailed specs and doing QA by testing is far more productive than looking at code.

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 02:26:02 +0000

I am sure it probably was - a bit heavier option. There other mobile / VR / XR apps that I had to port to a variety of platforms using languages like Swift and Kotlin -- each platform has its own vector library. These don't necessarily provide SVD routines. Apple has their Accelerate framework, but is very unnatural to use IMO -- and Swift and C++ don't play that well together regardless of what folks say (that is why I tend to still use Obj-C++ when I have a choice).

There was another app where I had a 3x3 shear transformation that I needed to decompose into a rotation * scale * rotation which is exactly what SVD does (see https://tinyurl.com/384mkdvh). No need to bring in a full linear algebra package just for that.

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:43:31 +0000

Here is an example. I wrote a MacOS app in Objective-C++/C++ that used Eigen's JacobiSVD solver at one point. A colleague of mine use Claude to port it into a web tool that used JavaScript. I scrolled thru the JS code and saw that is wrote is own Jacobi SVD solver. So I assume it did this match the exact behavior of the MacOS app -- using a 3rd party solver may not accomplish this. SVD solvers can behave differently in different use cases. What are the options for JS?

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:31:10 +0000

Have you used Claude lately? It definitely will outperform a human at this task now.

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 23:03:58 +0000

There are cases where you don't want the footprint of bringing in another framework / library or that is not even an option.

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 22:01:51 +0000

No problem for claude. In fact I would have claude do the PR and go have lunch.

New comment by waynecochran in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

waynecochran — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 19:32:16 +0000

Go ahead and have claude add and run units tests for you as part of the PR review process.