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I find languages like Haskell, ReScript/OCaml to work really well for CRUD applications because they push you to think about your data and types first. Then you think about the transformations you want to make on the data via functions. When looking at new code I usually look for the types first, specifically what is getting stored and read.

Similarly, that approach works really well in Clojure too, albeit with a lot less concern for types, but the "data and data structures first" principle is widespread in the ecosystem.

I've heard good things about Clojure, and it'ss different from what I am used to (bonus points because I like an intellectual challenge), so trying it out is definitely on my todo list.

Really the issue is about cultivating a culture of caring and willingness to learn. That generally threatens the powerful so it is always an uphill battle to protect said values.

Unfortunately the source doesn't matter when there so much. It is really hard to differentiate things when you are inundated. Did you try a Show HN here? It requires more luck than ever because of the same problem, but worth a try. I'll take an honest look if you do it (though hard to say if I am the target market).

I wonder how much cost savings there are in the long term when token prices go up, the average developer's ability to code has atrophied, and the company code bases have turned into illegible slop. I will continue to use LLMs cautiously while working hard to maintain my ability to code in my off time.

You shouldn't have to maintain your ability to code in your off time. Is your company one of those that's requiring AI only coding?

I will have to checkout Magit, but, as an already heavy Emacs user, my time in Emacs has remained constant even with increased use of agentic coders.

Without telling us what kind of code you are talking about it is hard to compare. I would say that is true for CRUD web code because there is so much out there that the LLMs can reference.

I work on all sorts as we have an IoT product offering.... embedded bare metal systems, web, backend IoT servers, Gateways, APIs, Import/Export Systems, Integrations with Manufacturing systems, accounting systems, Automatic Test Equipment. I've been coding for nearly 50 years now, so pretty experienced. What peoples comments seem to imply to me is that they haven't really gone full agentic coding, where you hone your context, your tools, and how you iterate and test with an AI agent. Where any mistakes an AI makes you make sure it can't do it again, you have it setup so your AI code reviews are honed to focus on the things you care about etc.

Software development is a quite vast discipline.

In my experience performance of LLMs can be surprisingly good on things that are not mainstream, like database engineering, and surprisingly bad at mainstream categories approached in an unconventional way.

That said, I'm amazed that you have 50 years of experience and still able to have the mental flexibility to adapt to new development paradigms.

As you imply, this stuff isn't simple to pick up, and is completely different on how we have done our job without AI.


> I'm amazed that you have 50 years of experience and still able to have the mental flexibility to adapt to new development paradigms.

This is the root of age discrimination in technology fields.


Sorry, I now realize that it could be read like this.

Just to clarify, I meant to share admiration toward a fellow engineer.

I do not think that age implies any hard assumption, usually brings cultural diversity which is good.


gdorsi , it's not that hard to swap really, because the goal, designing systems, just got easier. I feel AI lets you be a system engineer way better as you can quickly iterate. I have the same kinds of goals in mind, just can do it a heck of a lot quicker.

hubertdinsk, can't reply directly... but yes lots of niche things, especially in the embedded side, automatic test side. We have a lot of hardware, we control a lot of things, sense a lot of things. There's nothing inherently complicated about it such that AI can't code, in fact you feed AI technical data sheets its insanely useful when writing code against that hardware. It's going to pick up on all the weird nuances. It's great for protocols, especially proprietary ones. Anything with spec sheets are good.

there's no magic anywhere. At the end of the day the result is 0 and 1 onto memory.

The approach to get there is the differentiate factor. If you are to tell a probabilistic tool to be 99.9999999% correct it would just be silly.


so not niche at all. You described a bit of everything.

Niche is more like "ISO26262 compliant, response time under 50ms, measured with a oscilloscope with at least 40MHz bandwidth, failure rate less than 10^-7, proven with maths and soak tests". It gets more niche the closer you get to hardware.

Next word prediction will get you laughed out of the room.


I took a look at it because you do PDF generation (I am doing front-end PDF generation in my project as well so I wanted to compare), not because I know anything about knitting or crocheting. I made a design, drew on the grid a bit, but was unable to export. I am not sure if I was missing something but it would be helpful to the user if there was a message in the export area about why they cannot export yet.

Hey, sorry about that! I have a half-hearted "premium" feature tier of which PDF is one.

I just deleted that particular if-statement so you should be able to export.

It's not anything fancy, but gets the job done. Uses pdf-lib.


No worries. I enjoy debugging UIs and giving a few pointers. PDF generation works now. The "Enter Zen Mode (upgrade plan)" button is unreadable (white text on grey background) and if I click the button it says "Your form submission has been received.".

I really like https://math.growingswe.com nice job! I did the foundations page. I will work through some more lessons and give you some feedback later this week. I am also working on some math projects. Take a look at my other comment in this Ask HN.

I am working on some math education tools. One is free and open-source, the other is paid.

Free Math Sheets is a tool to generate math worksheet PDFs (and the answer keys if required). Currently it supports K-5 but I want to expand it to higher levels of math (Calculus, Physics, you name it!). You select a bunch of different options and then generate it. All in the front-end. No back-end or login in required. https://www.freemathsheets.com

If you are interested in helping out or forking it, here is the github repo github.com/sophikos/free-math-sheets

The paid project is Numerikos. I am going for something in between Khan Academy and Math Academy. I like the playfulness and answer input methods from Khan Academy (but it is linear, doesn't have a good way to go back and practice, etc.). I like Math Academy's algorithm (but it has multiple choice answers, yuck! and is easy to get stuck and doesn't have a good way to explore on your own). Currently Numerikos supports 4th and 5th grade math lessons and practice. The algorithm is based on mastery learning like Numerikos, but you can also see a list of all the skills and practice whatever you want. I am also working on a dashboard system where you can build your own daily/weekly practices for the skills you care about. Next up is 6th grade math and placement tests.

https://www.numerikos.com/


I'm working on a similar thing, but due to various problems I encountered (auto-grading, scheduling, guidance, ...) I have, for now, concentrated on making a curated collection of problems / exercises. It's not yet a generator but rather "one of each kind of problem".

The idea is that _any_ user-facing tool, whether an app, worksheet generator or whatever, will need something like this for content, so I'm making this available for free and hoping for others to build on top of it.

I'm sticking to university-level stuff because I feel that school-level, especially math, is over-saturated already.

Technically, it is currently built as a React app, but that is mostly me sticking to tools that get out of my way. Generating PDFs or Anki files should be relatively straightforward.

https://github.com/janitza-mage/spot-problems-4


Nice! University-level math would be great. That is my end goal as well, but I probably won't get to that until the end of the year. I am focusing on lessons that my kids will use, then switch focus to ones that I will use. Do you have it hosted somewhere? Or can you add some details/screenshots to the readme?


Children are afforded more lenience in sane societies (before the law and in social contexts) because they are still developing and not as well socialized/experienced as adults. I assume most pro-piracy people support personal use and not commercial use of content.

The issue is that child labor laws encourage children to pursue cybercrime if they want to make money since legitimate companies will not hire them. This results in a lot of incentive for children to commit cybercrime such as piracy and without the disincentive of punishment they are free to do it. These 2 things are incentivizing antisocial behavior in society.

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