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Scientists are so adorable

> edit: I think I read HN comments more than HN articles. Interesting

Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.

I always check comments first before clicking the link, unless it's something I'm knowledgeable about and/or interested in and already know I want to read. It saves a lot of time.


> Images should above all never be funny.

Why on Earth not? Maybe a blog about conflict in the middle east isn't the place, but a blog sharing stories about the tech industry? Surely some humorous screenshots will add to the experience.

Obviously just throwing in random images totally unrelated to the subject matter would be a huge turnoff, but I cannot think of any reason why you'd take such an absolute position on something so low-stakes.


I agree with the point and didn't realise it until I read this post. Whenever I see a funny image or comic in a technical post it always feels a bit like it doesn't quite belong there, like someone had a quota for humour. It feels a bit like the author isn't confident with their message and acted like a conference speaker throwing in a bad joke for some easy laughs.

It also breaks the flow. Reading from long form text and then skipping to image and parsing the text breaks the mental flow, for me at least, and there never seems to be a clean place to do it.


You get this jarring tonal whiplash when you add funny images to an otherwise serious text. The images detract from the message you are trying to convey. It also risks triggering a skimming behavior where the reader is just skipping between the images.

It also appears insecure and juvenile, as though you're not fully confident that what you are saying will stand on its own without attempts at comedy, and ironically raises questions about the age and experience of the author.

Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule of thumb, I would strongly avoid this pattern of communication.


You're kind of moving the goalposts.

You went from "Images should above all never be funny," to "You get this jarring tonal whiplash when you add funny images to an otherwise serious text."

Yeah, if a post's text is 100% serious, then yes it would be jarring to insert funny images. Nobody's suggesting you do that, though.

>It also appears insecure and juvenile, as though you're not fully confident that what you are saying will stand on its own without attempts at comedy, and ironically raises questions about the age and experience of the author.

This comes across to me as strangely judgmental and narrow-minded about what good technical writing is.

Joel Spolsky is, in my opinion, the best software blogger of all time. His posts often integrated humor, and I think it definitely heightened rather than detracted from his writing.

Look at the bloggers who are most popular on HN: Paul Graham, Julia Evans, Simon Willison, Rachel Kroll, Terence Eden. All of them often use a lighthearted style and integrate humor, often with humorous images as well.


it decreases authority projection

Your understanding of the repository pattern is correct. It's the other people in this thread that seem to have misunderstood it and/or implemented it incorrectly. I use the repository pattern in virtually every service (when appropriate) and it's incredibly simple, easy to test and document, and easy to teach to coworkers. Because most of our services use the repository pattern, we can jump into any project we're not familiar with and immediately have the lay of the land, knowing where to go to find business logic or make modifications.

One thing to note -- you stated in another comment that the repository pattern is just for database access, but this isn't really true. You can use the repository pattern for any type of service that requires fetching data from some other location or multiple locations -- whether that's a database, another HTTP API, a plain old file system, a gRPC server, an ftp server, a message queue, an email service... whatever.

This has been hugely helpful for me as one of the things my company does is aggregate data from a lot of other APIs (whois records, stuff of that nature). Multiple times we've had to switch providers due to contract issues or because we found something better/cheaper. Being able to swap out implementations was incredibly helpful because the business logic layer and its unit tests didn't need to be touched at all.

Before I started my current role, we had been using kafka for message queues. There was a huge initiative to switch over to rabbit and it was extremely painful ripping out all the kafka stuff and replacing it with rabbit stuff and it took forever and we still have issues with how the switch was executed to this day, years later. If we'd been using the repository pattern, the switch would've been a piece of cake.


I can't believe I had to dig this deep to find this comment.

I have yet to see an AI-generated image that was "really cool".

AI images and videos strike me as the coffee pods of the digital world -- we're just absolutely littering the internet with garbage. And as a bonus, it's also environmentally devastating to the real world!

I live nearby a landfill, and go there often to get rid of yard waste, construction materials, etc. The sheer volume of perfectly serviceable stuff people are throwing out in my relatively small city (<200k) is infuriating and depressing. I think if more people visited their local landfills, they might get a better sense for just how much stuff humans consume and dispose. I hope people are noticing just how much more full of trash the internet has become in the last few years. It seems like it, but then I read this thread full of people that are still hyped about it all and I wonder.

This isn't even to mention the generated text... it's all just so inane and I just don't get it. I've tried a few times to ask for relatively simple code and the results have been laughable.


puts on tinfoil hat

The coverage of this story has felt a lot like it's being used as an excuse to trick people into believing that Signal is nOT a sECuRe mESsAGing APp to discourage regular people from using it.


Then what does "curated platform" mean, exactly?

The user curates their profiles?

And then throw QR code menus into the mix. I'm 35 and I have to zoom so far in to be able to read the menu, which then also involves having to scroll horizontally to fully read most menu items, which makes it easy to lose your place, etc.

Being elderly, the frustration must be unbearable.


Not to mention that at this point, QR codes are vector for phishing. People aren't nearly careful enough scanning those things.

https://www.designnews.com/automotive-engineering/scammers-t...


I'm happy that died around me. QR code menus suck.

OP, are you the author? If so there are a few typos I'd like to help you fix.

Regarding the article, I'm a little bit shocked that unit testing is part of the conversation at all. Firstly, I would consider unit testing to be an intrinsic part of software development, not a separate process with separate tooling that got tacked on as an additional task (like, for instance, needing to learn how to use Kubernetes).

There's a lot to complain about in the industry regarding tooling complexity, but the author doesn't actually get into it at all. The only thing they seem to go into detail about is how unit testing makes writing code more difficult / slow, and a paragraph on React.

And then there's this 'graph -- and while relatable, it has nothing to do with the general thesis:

> A big gripe I have with how software developers are often expected to operate is that they are often told what the requirements for the software are by a BA or some other liaison between them and the business [...]

Yes, this is an incredibly frustrating part of software development, but again, it doesn't have anything to do with tooling and all the software surrounding actually writing code, which is what the article seems to have been about originally.


Nope, I'm not the author

As long as people continue to use their phones in lieu of a PC, they'll continue buying larger and larger phones :(

I hate it and I feel like there's a not-insignificant market of people that want to go back to small phones.

The Moto X (2013) was, in my opinion, the perfect smart phone. The curve of the back and the rubberized texture were so comfortable in the hand. Never once dropped it.

I drop my Pixel all the time because it's so light and thin and slippery. Drives me crazy.


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