Hacker News: zabzonk

New comment by zabzonk in "The Lone Lisp Heap"

zabzonk — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:54:21 +0000

> The second attempt is always better.

Um, see The Second System Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

New comment by zabzonk in "Can we have the day off?"

zabzonk — Thu, 28 May 2026 01:06:53 +0000

I was very happy working extra (I won't call them long) hours when I first learned about computing. A bit later on when I started working for financial entities I felt a bit different - the work was interesting, but I just wasn't prepared to sacrifice my time. And if we can have the day off, I think that can only be to the good.

New comment by zabzonk in "All of human cooking compressed into 2 megabytes"

zabzonk — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:42:07 +0000

WTF? I found this a parody. Perhaps because I've just been re-reading C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", where language becomes meaningless, I can't stand the design of the site or the text it presents.

Making a nice lentil soup doesn't require any thought or description. I know that I, and millions of cooks in Asia will do it with just their hands.

New comment by zabzonk in "What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard"

zabzonk — Tue, 26 May 2026 15:08:19 +0000

> the mall was also a good time.

Oh well, not for me. I am/was a UK project manager who spent far too much time in the malls around Princeton NJ, where we were working. I had no choice because I don't drive, so I depended on bossing my lead developer about to get me places (sometimes worked) - and god how she could shop. I just prayed that the malls would have a bar - mostly not. But I would still hate malls for their horrible atmosphere.

New comment by zabzonk in "What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard"

zabzonk — Tue, 26 May 2026 10:58:53 +0000

Far better to be out on your bike, exploring a wood, climbing trees, and possibly disturbing a very grumpy badger.

The mall - breathing plastic fumes, looking at overpriced plastic toys, summoning your parents for your every whim.

I know which I'd want for my kids, should I have any (too old & ill now).

New comment by zabzonk in "C constructs that still don't work in C++"

zabzonk — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:29:07 +0000

> This was bad advice back then and is even worse advice today.

The languages have diverged a lot, it's true. Still, it is worth noting that all the code in TCPL 2nd Ed was compiled with Stroustrups C++ compiler, as there wasn't a C compiler available. Source: Preface/Acknowledgments.

New comment by zabzonk in "C constructs that still don't work in C++"

zabzonk — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:07:44 +0000

Actually, if you were mad enough to use the feature, the Dec10 had 6-bit "bytes" - 6 to a word.

New comment by zabzonk in "C constructs that still don't work in C++"

zabzonk — Mon, 25 May 2026 09:50:00 +0000

> a full-fledged parser

perhaps more accurately a fully fledged compiler (that emitted C)

New comment by zabzonk in "Ask HN: Why didn't the C64 come with Simons' BASIC in the box from 1983 onward?"

zabzonk — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:34:50 +0000

> Commodore was already engaged in a cutthroat price war with Texas Instruments that almost sank the company.

Really? Selling what? The TI99 was never a serious competitor for anything.

New comment by zabzonk in "Usborne 1980s Computer Books"

zabzonk — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:56:55 +0000

Is there some relationship between Usborne and Osborne books? And of course the Osborne portable computer?

New comment by zabzonk in "Solving the “Zork” Mystery"

zabzonk — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:12:41 +0000

I too wrote my own platform, in the early 80s, in C++. I didn't use C++ for the user-written code, instead I used a Forth like, implemented in C++. This probably doomed the program, along with my inability to get string literals and vehicles such as boats right. But it was a great intro to C++, and I spent some time writing an easy, story-telling game, based on Jack Vance's Dying Earth books, in it.

Time is never wasted when you are doing something new.

New comment by zabzonk in "Solving the “Zork” Mystery"

zabzonk — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:01:01 +0000

Before I came across Zork, I thought I was quite intelligent...

New comment by zabzonk in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

zabzonk — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:56:23 +0000

You can't beat (literally) Esme Weatherwax and Gytha Ogg. Magrat is great too, particularly in "Lords & Ladies".

New comment by zabzonk in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

zabzonk — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:53:08 +0000

I didn't read the Tiffany Aching books for quite a while because I thought they were aimed at adolescents. Perhaps they are, but they are also full of Pratchett humour and characters. Don't miss out on them!

New comment by zabzonk in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

zabzonk — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:11:31 +0000

They were not so poorly paid - I was a senior analyst/programmer (and did some teaching), quite reasonably compensated, and the lecturers would get quite a bit more than me.

But if you want to substitute "established business model" for "corruption", go ahead. I must say that not all of them were bad.

New comment by zabzonk in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

zabzonk — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:49:20 +0000

Sorry, bad link to book. Use https://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Book-Kites-Original/dp/0140...

It really is a great book if you have any interest in flying things.

New comment by zabzonk in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

zabzonk — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:20:14 +0000

One lecturer at a Polytechnic I worked for made his students buy his book. Well, a photocopy actually, done without payment from him by the Poly's Copy Services.

Other lecturers got "gifts" from publishers for requiring or at least recommending the publisher's books.

The amount of corruption in higher education is quite astonishing - you only have to look at the prices of required/recommended books compared with actual good, classics to realise this.

New comment by zabzonk in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

zabzonk — Fri, 22 May 2026 03:24:25 +0000

Back when I was a kid in the smallish UK city of Lincoln, we had two big model shops (tools, balsa kits, aero engines, Airfix, etc.), one big toyshop (Scalextric, and toys for young kids) and one rather weird place that specialised in fishing gear, Meccano and 00-guage railway stuff.

Now all are gone, and I do wonder how kids of today will be able (for e.g.) to experience building a glider (balsa, cutting out with a razor, tissue covering with paste) and launching the final product into the sky. We have lost something.

BTW, if any of you or your children want to get into things aeronautical I can strongly recommend https://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Book-Kites-. Some string, a little bamboo or dowel, and a binbag and you are ready to go.

New comment by zabzonk in "Python 3.15: features that didn't make the headlines"

zabzonk — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:24:02 +0000

> in my experience that's usually a pretty small part of any given codebase

Our experiences differ then. Mine is that almost all of the code I write is directly targeted on the usually quite complex problem I am trying to solve. I don't do boilerplate, for example.

New comment by zabzonk in "AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale"

zabzonk — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:09:03 +0000

Except that LMMs don't work on individual words.