Remote
Adam Millerchip
@adam@toots.adamu.jp
Is this thing on? 🎙
Software "Engineer", dabbler, tinkerer, idealist. Resident of Kyushu, Japan.
On the 'verse since 2021, but migrated to my own instance in 2025.
"Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsistence of the system into unfixable obsolescence" --Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
120 Followers
109 Following
27 Posts
Joined April 30, 2025
Replying to
@waldoj I guess it's a pretty hard sell to say, so you've identified you want to solve a problem with software. But... you're not allowed to ask for a specific solution, or schedule, or budget.
Replying to
@soulcutter I wrote a tongue in cheek CI check to ban conventional commits
https://github.com/adamu/unconventional_commits
Replying to
@toxi@mastodon.thi.ng I'm starting to think that AI might be the virus that kills its open source host. I'm not sure OSS will be sustainable for much longer. I wrote a partially-developed thought here:
https://toots.adamu.jp/@adam/statuses/01KHKKBXH8BTRZ50FNXADATMWP
Replying to
@jimgar I also started learning Japanese over a decade ago. And now I live in Japan and speak it every day 😎
Replying to
@jimgar part of my first job was answering the phone for technical support, where we just asked them to write an email...
Replying to
@ello@void.ello.tech oh yeah it also means you can just "allow" cookie popups because that's faster and no cookies are getting saved anyway
"it's useful for agents"
The irony that we are creating natural language interfaces that exist purely for machines to talk to each other. I hope history looks back on this period as absolutely insane.
Replying to
@malcircuit I quite like the echo chamber here as it offsets the complete boosterism I'm exposed to elsewhere.
Changing my vocabulary.
You didn't use Claude code. You outsourced to anthropic. And they didn't even get a person to do it, they automated it.
Replying to
@jimgar there's also Taiwan and Singapore. Singapore is very multi-cultural and has a large ethnic Indian population.
Replying to
@jimgar I am forced to use it due to my coworkers submitting PRs completely written by Claude and having Claude auto-reply to my comments. Also Cursor automatically commenting on PRs. But also I made myself only use Claude to write code for a week. I was planning on doing alternate weeks of manual/week of agentic coding. I did one AI week. I will probably do one more to say I gave it a shot, then go back to my old ways for at least the code I write myself.
Replying to
@jimgar yeah, my thoughts too. To be fair it was intended to reply to the AI auto-review but was left to reply to people too.
Replying to
@jimgar I did find it very impressive how it can go and research stuff. For example, I had it go and read the Japanese and UK law and figure out some nuances regarding driving licences I've been wondering about for years. For coding, I don't like it. I am left wondering if the patterns it used make sense, feel out of depth if it's doing things I don't know about, and feel pressured just to let it go on a rampage without keeping it reined in.
Replying to
@decadecity I actually did an LT comparing software to other engineering disciplines and how writing software is more analogous to writing the blueprint, not the construction.
I'm not sure how to fit AI into that model though. Are we giving up the design? Or automating the design? 🤔
Replying to
@semanticist @decadecity yeah I was thinking about that yesterday too. Like I write SQL and the query planner 'decides' what happens. But the language is declarative and I'm saying exactly what I want and the outcome is always the same...
Replying to
@semanticist @decadecity yep that kind of AI makes sense. It's also something I have no interest in working with personally.
It's funny that Phoenix uses Firefox's original name
https://codeberg.org/celenity/Phoenix
Also TIL that IronFox uses Phoenix. Wonder if LibreWolf does too.
Replying to
@nicd@masto.ahlcode.fi I've been using FUTO keyboard for a while now thanks to @shom@gts.shom.dev 's suggestion. It took some tweaking and getting used to but I quite like that I'm not literally sharing every keystroke with Google.
https://gts.shom.dev/@shom/statuses/01KD77YR2AVHHXR983ETXNYADH
Replying to
@Foxmonsieur@mastodon.social @1password@1password.social yeah I think they are treating the fedi is a pool of devs to sell their enterprise stuff too, whereas in reality it's a bunch of individuals who just want a simple browser plugin. With the recent price rise and the shift to enterprise, I'm going to be at least evaluating my options at next renewal.
Replying to
@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems the first thing that taught me never to trust updates was Windows Genuine Advantage.
Replying to
@Routhinator@tenforward.social I think the uncomfortable conclusion is that it's going to take bold, principled, and lucky people to make those companies 😬
Replying to
@ello@void.ello.tech I don't use Phoenix directly. In LibreWolf I allowlisted the domains that were allowed to keep cookies. At the start it was super annoying, but you really only use a handful of sites so now I really like the defacto private tab mode. History, yeah, I would find that frustrating too. Don't remember if I had to enable history or whether it's on by default in the forks I use.