We use Doppler reminders (secrets manager SaaS - no affiliation, it’s just a tool) and Slack reminders for team notifications.
Additionally, we use long and detailed commits that act as “howTos” when manual actions is required - we just link to the commit SHA1 even though we have notion. Git docs are evolving more naturally alongside the code. Now ofc with AI fairly high quality docs can be generated and updated automatically.
Reading? Doubt it. Seems like you already did a lot of reading. The Ousterhout book is very good and rather small but implementing is the thing that will improve your skills.
You can either find OS tools and try to work through tickets, etc (great for resume as well) or do your own thing.
I own the KEF LSX II speakers and I can hear a slight difference in sound clarity between Spotify and Tidal in acoustic songs like i.e. "landslide" by "Fleetwood Mac".
Note that Tidal is supported via "KEF Connect" or while Spotify is available through Chrome Streaming, not directly IIRC.
Is it worth the big price tag? Not sure tbh. I don't play music very loud and I don't listen all that much outside working hours where my attention is elsewhere.
> 24-bit helps in production pipelines for mixing, but for end user playback it's pointless.
If you have two versions of something, where one is better than the other and the resource cost is more or less the same it makes more sense to provide the better than the worse.
Maybe the end-user takes interest in mixing/production for which they then have the higher version allowing them to work with without the faff of having to obtain the better quality works. The end-user won't know the difference and the new apprentice has a copy that they can work with.
That's not a loss, that's a benefit even if pointless to the end user.
> Maybe the end-user takes interest in mixing/production for which they then have the higher version allowing them to work with without the faff of having to obtain the better quality works.
16-bit is enough for mixing. 24-bit (or 32-bit floats, even better) are useful _within_ the mixing pipeline, so you don't need to care if one of the steps results in clipping as long as the final result is within the bounds.
I believe the terminology is off. The author seems to confuse cynicism with realism.
Cynicism is specific trait and has only negative connotations. It cannot be “good” for a social structure by definition.
Realism is neutral. But we often assume that realism implies cynicism which is not true.
Parrhesia (tact) is the only worthwhile, long term goal in terms of attitude. And that doesn’t include cynicism. It’s about being honest without feeling like betraying yourself.
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy." - (supposedly) Isaac Newton
> “Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy." - (supposedly) Isaac Newton
Never heard of this quote, but I could certainly use a large dose of tact as defined above! The quote seems to be due to an advertising executive though, Howard W. Newton, not Isaac Newton [1].
I can relate, thanks for sharing. Indeed, that doesn't sound like something that Isaac Newton[^1] would say :-)
[^1]: My idea of Isaac Newton comes from Stephenson's novel. But I trust that Mr Stephenson's research because it aligns with Newton's other quotes (i.e. "standing in the shoulder of giants" is nice but he's calling another man a moron, eloquently) and the his relationship with Leibniz wasn't the one I would expect.
I don't really agree. The dictionary definition of cynical is "believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others".
That's certainly very extreme, but a tempered, measured belief in the negative aspects of human nature is necessary, I think.
You might say, "that's just realism", but I think they are just separate axes: some amount of cynicism (and idealism) is necessary in order to be realistic. Possibly different amounts in different contexts, depending on the other people involved.
Humans are unavoidable optimists and (sadly) the only sustainable approach is to assume the worst of everyone.
Then when they eventually outdo even your worst expectations, you will be less disappointed by the gap between your original impression and the fresh dose of reality. I've adopted a motto that I could finally put words on about a decade ago. "You are not cynical enough."
Thats how Finland made it to one of the "happiest" countries. People just not expecting anything from anyone, so if by chance something is even slightly above the bare minimum, its been good.
Oddly enough I happen to be Finnish, and formed my view of the world during my first twenty'ish years in there. That view has served me well over the subsequent decades.
It's no surprise or secret that I have since left the country.
But, imagine the case where I do not think serving the social structure is good. And I make what sound like cynical jokes about serving the social structure. For those that believe in serving the social structure, that cynicism only had negative connotations. But for those who don't believe all that, the bitter joke might accurately reflect their understanding according to reality.
Let me narrow the scope a bit. I believe that distrust in others is a flaw in human psychology. But it's old and has been stated by the likes of Plato and Dostoyevsky (e.g. "If God did not exist, everything would be acceptable") and countless others that I look up to.
IMO that is a "series-B" type of argument. We know empirically that great things come out of putting trust on the hands of "unlikely candidates". So even if God doesn't exist, ppl are still capable of "good" just because they chose to do so, given the chance.
At the same time, it would be unwise to blindly trust ppl when there are warnings all around. So why not take a tempered approach? Trust a little, then trust a little more. The "applied answer" (e.g. social policies) falls within a spectrum that might change based on circumstance, there's no absolute representation as if we're picking a point in a Y/X axis, only optimal answers (like NP-complete problems).
I wouldn't call the tempered approach "cynical", I would call that "wise".
> I believe that distrust in others is a flaw in human psychology.
It sounds like you've never met a narcissist or psychopath. I hope you never do. I think your tempered approach is fine, but still doesn't work for some types of personality.
Cynicism inherently has no negative connotations. People misrepresented it.
The definition of cynicism as per Google "an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest".
This statement has nothing inherently negative. It's science, backed by evolution. The whole economic system is based on incentive analysis, the concept of invisible hand. Software architects are taught the Principle of least privilege, why? Because of cynicism, not trusting motive of others. But for everyday life people can't handle it mentally coz they love to think everyone giving them without any expectations.
I know this sounds counterintuitive but this space is limited to write more. If you have clarifying question you can ask me.
I think the terminology objection here is mostly semantic and misses what the author is actually claiming.
No one experiences their own beliefs as “cynical” or “optimistic.” Everyone believes they are being realistic. A cynic does not think “I am distorting reality negatively.” He thinks “this is how things really are.” The labels cynic and optimist are almost always imposed by observers, not chosen by the believer. When someone calls himself a cynic, what he usually means is that others perceive his conclusions, which he believes are factual, as negative.
So the core claim is not that cynicism is a mood or an attitude to aspire to. The claim is that reality itself is often negative, and that people who arrive at pessimistic conclusions are sometimes closer to the truth than people who default to hopeful narratives. Calling that “realism” instead of “cynicism” does not change the substance of the argument.
There is also actual empirical work here, not just vibes. In psychology this shows up under what is sometimes called depressive realism. Multiple studies starting with Alloy and Abramson in the late 1970s found that mildly depressed subjects were more accurate than non depressed subjects at judging contingency, control, and likelihood in certain experimental settings. Non depressed subjects systematically overestimated their influence and future outcomes, while depressed subjects were closer to objective probabilities. Later work refined this and showed the effect is bounded and context dependent, but the core point survived: positive mental health is often associated with optimistic bias, not neutral accuracy.
More broadly, a large literature on optimism bias and self serving bias shows that psychologically healthy people tend to overestimate success, underestimate risk, and interpret ambiguous evidence in their favor. That bias is adaptive and motivating, but it is still a bias. People who lack it tend to have more internally consistent and stable world models, even if those models are less emotionally pleasant.
So saying “realism is neutral” is true in the abstract, but psychologically misleading. Humans do not converge on realism by default. They converge on motivated belief. When someone repeatedly reaches pessimistic conclusions across domains, it is at least plausible that they are sampling reality with fewer affective filters, not merely indulging in a negative personality trait.
That does not mean cynicism is virtuous, or that it should guide social behavior. Tact and parrhesia are social strategies. They are orthogonal to whether your internal model of the world is accurate. You can be accurate and tactful, accurate and abrasive, inaccurate and pleasant, or inaccurate and hostile. Mixing those axes together is what creates confusion here.
The real disagreement is not about tone or attitude. It is about whether optimistic distortions are a feature or a bug. Psychology suggests they are a feature for well being, but a bug for accuracy.
It was code-named to disambiguate it from the old compiler. But Roslyn is almost 15 years old now, so I can't call it new, but it's newer than the really legacy stuff.
It essentially lets you operate on the abstract snytax tree itself, so there is background compilation that powers inspection and transformation.
Instant renaming is an obvious benefit, but you can do more powerful transformations, such as removing redundant code or transforming one syntax style into another, e.g. tranforming from a Fluent API into a procedural one or vice-versa.
That's a very weird comparison...as the market for a search engine is basically every internet user. A networking overlay for technical users is a much smaller market.
Use LLMs as a personal tutor, ask it to evaluate your solution. Give it context, as much as possible. Discuss about new concepts. Once you think you figure it out, make sure you double check with a human otherwise you might end up wit a flawed understanding of classes, inheritance or modules.
Additionally, we use long and detailed commits that act as “howTos” when manual actions is required - we just link to the commit SHA1 even though we have notion. Git docs are evolving more naturally alongside the code. Now ofc with AI fairly high quality docs can be generated and updated automatically.
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