uncle retweeted
Techniques i use daily as a senior software engineer:
1. writing before coding
i start with a doc, comments, or a rough design. if i can’t explain it clearly, i’m not ready to code it.
2. reading code more than writing code
most bugs and design flaws are already in the codebase. understanding existing systems is leverage.
3. thinking in failure modes
timeouts, retries, partial failures, backpressure. i constantly ask “what breaks first?”
4. measuring before optimizing
logs, metrics, traces first. intuition lies, numbers don’t.
5. designing for deletion
every abstraction should be easy to remove. if it can’t be deleted, it’s probably too heavy.
6. simplifying hot paths
critical paths get boring, explicit, predictable code. cleverness is pushed to the edges.
7. making trade-offs explicit
latency vs consistency, speed vs safety. i state them clearly so everyone aligns.
8. writing code for the next reader
clear names, small functions, obvious control flow. future-me is the main customer.
9. using constraints intentionally
limits on memory, timeouts, rate limits. constraints create stable systems.
10. continuous refactoring
small improvements daily. waiting for a “big rewrite” is how systems rot.
unavailable
uncle retweeted
Andrej Karpathy literally built the neural networks running inside coding assistants.
He taught the world deep learning at Stanford. He ran AI at Tesla.
If he feels “dramatically behind” as a programmer… that tells you everything about where we are.
The confession here is that raw intelligence and deep technical knowledge no longer guarantee mastery. The new stack isn’t about understanding transformers or writing elegant algorithms. It’s about orchestrating a zoo of stochastic systems that nobody fully controls.
Karpathy’s list is revealing: agents, subagents, prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations. That’s 15+ new primitives that didn’t exist 18 months ago. Each one evolving weekly.
The mental model problem is real. Traditional engineering gives you deterministic systems. You write code, it does exactly what you wrote. Now you’re managing entities that are “fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing.”
His “alien tool with no manual” framing is exactly right. We’re all reverse-engineering capabilities in real-time. The documentation is always out of date. The best practices from 3 months ago are already wrong.
The magnitude 9 earthquake isn’t coming. It already hit. The aftershocks are the new normal.
I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind.
uncle retweeted
I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind.
uncle retweeted
Figure out what you want.
Ignore the opinions of others.
Do so much work it would be unreasonable that you fail.
Realize it never mattered to begin with.
Help others once you get there.
uncle retweeted
Solana remains the leading network to trade any asset and now introduces $ZEC
Trade & LP Zcash on Orca, powered by @NEARProtocol intents
uncle retweeted
Friendly reminder that you can feel terrible, have terrible circumstances, and still make the right decision.
uncle retweeted
Excuse any AI slop on the ReadMe - Just wanted to get something out to you guys on how this works.
Hope you guys enjoy <3
github.com/MidTermDev/Alchem…
uncle retweeted
If you are still not on @MyriadMarkets I don’t know what to tell you tbh
Join here
myriad.markets/markets/uptob…
uncle retweeted
Please be gentle. Losing a good portion of this years gains is personally devastating. This is not what I wanted to be remembered for. And it won't be. I've never been liquidated before. But I've never traded through ETH flash crashing over $1,000 in a short amount of time before, either.
Going to go get some comfort from my wife, take a deep breath, allow myself 24 hours tops to grieve, and then figure out how to rebuild. This life has beaten me down so many times, my journey has never been easy. But I've never given up, and ultimately always come out on top. This time will be no different.
Much love to all of you. Let's regroup and write this comeback story.
