I’ve had several occasions where I would build a feature “properly” with defensive guardrails and handling of edge cases “that will never happen (but are technically possible)” and then you run into the coworker that says “it’s overengineered. YAGNI. Just do the one-line fix”

But...were they wrong? There is a difference between "edge case" and "cannot ever happen". I've seen this trend a lot lately where Claude suggests a lot of extra code to handle things that cannot possibly happen. Unless you ask it to, it won't trace the flow of data through the app to confirm the edge case actually exists, if local conditions appear to allow it. Then the developer lets it implement this crap without asking that one question, and I have to say YAGNI in the review.

I've seen so many software bugs in my career where when you traced execution, you'd find the code crashing in a block with the comment //this can never happen

I’m a big fan of “Parse dont validate” and I feel like injecting that approach into python has so many benefits.

there’s all the code correctness stuff that we all love. But the biggest benefit is making it so much easier to maintain other parts of the stack.

Following a stack trace into somebody else’s functions and you see that the args are completely untyped or just a bunch of ‘dict[str, Any]’ is the worst. But if you see those inputs as more narrowly typed data classes it makes it so much easier to grok what the function is supposed to do

The AI art is also a class/status marker.

If a business markets itself with these AIgen posters, you get wildly different responses from different groups.

boomers that spend all their time on Facebook will think “this is such a nice pretty poster” and be oblivious to the fact it is even ai. Even if they knew it was ai they don’t care.

Young people will think it is low class/trashy. Some hate it because it’s ai, others hate it because the poster is ugly/busy/confusing.

its interesting that people view different parts of the job as 'the fun part'.

you like typing out the code, but i see that as the drudgery that I have to slog through after the fun of drawing architecture diagrams and writing out the api specs.

Different strokes for different folks. I have never written an architecture diagram or api spec in my entire career. I predict I would not want to do either.

I’m pretty sure the Beale ciphers are a hoax, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

`potato + sunflower = chicken` is some weird videogame crafting/alchemy logic

Real world “crafting” is far stranger than any game.

i'd love it if spotify split into two companies: - an enterprise platform that just provided a an API to access/play songs and direct the payment to the correct rightsholders - a consumer app that built on top of that to provide the 'spotify' we all have

let a whole ecosystem of music streaming apps take off that cater to different niches of listeners.

each app would be able to differentiation themselves with their UI but also features like recommendations/playlists/etc. And spotify wouldn't see them as competitors because they'd still be getting their cut because they all go through their API.

Rights holders would never allow it. It would be too easy for their enterprise customer to underreport plays.

Automating the c-suite doesn’t save you money by cutting headcount, it saves you money by reducing salaries. Having a decently competent AI executive would put a lot of downward pressure on the insane benefits packages these folks get

typos mean its more likely to have been made by a human.

typos mean it's more likely to have been made by a careless human.

Certainly. But in the current social environment, being seen as (mildly) careless is less bad than being seen as someone who lets an LLM write prose for them.

That's kind of sad. I miss being an OG em dash user.

i make typos constantly (seriously, check my post history). i probably have typos in my resume. i just dont know why anybody should care.

the meaning is still easily parseable. i cant imagine letting something so superficial matter

I make typos all the time as well, on stuff I am just writing off the cuff like a forum or chat message. But when it comes to something important, don't you check it over dozens of times? hundreds of times? A mere missing semicolon will make your code not compile. How could you let a superficial typo go uncorrected once you see it? How could you not see it when it's in the most obvious spot?

It suggests a certain lack of diligence; like you didn't proofread your work. What about the person that should have proofread it as a second opinion? Did this really follow a rigorous academic process at all? <- That's the first impression when the presentation is sloppy.

their only ethicist left? gasp!

now they are exactly like every other company that has zero ethicists on staff and expect the employees to weigh the ethical ramifications of their work.

What companies do you think expect their employees to weigh the ethical ramifications of their work?

I’d argue a lot of them expect the opposite. To suppress the ethical concerns.

Even in recent memories you had Mark Zuckerberg telling his employees to use pirated sources. And executives at fossil fuel companies have to act unethically.

Food testing? Hospitals? Childcare? Pharmacists? How about "clergy"? I could go on and on.

Do you believe that no one in management in these fields pushes the importance of ethics?

I think that individuals are capable of making ethical choices. I think that relying on individuals within for-profit businesses to make ethical decisions for the entire company is absolutely insane.

Food-testing: There's literally a parasite going around right now. Look at the response from some of the for profit businesses that was allowed to happen.

Hospitals: It is not ethical to deny patients care based on their insurance.

Clergy: The cover up of child sexual abuse scandals.

Childcare: lots of examples of sub-par care given to save money.

I think we can look upon the collective works of the corporations of the world and agree that the employees do not do that, nor are they expected to.