Arne Brasseur

Pro-tips for anyone creating an address form.

ZIP code is not a generic English term for postal code, but instead a very specific USPS thing (it stands for Zone Improvement Plan). If you serve anyone outside the US of A, call it "Postal Code".

Not every country has states, don't make it a mandatory field.

Many, many more nuances to international addresses, but these are the ones that bother me most as a Belgian.

Something I've only come to appreciate recently.

When an engineer hears "tech debt" they hear "bad". You don't want to go into debt if you can help it. It makes you anxious. You want to pay it off ASAP.

But for business folks debt is just a tool to enable more growth. Debt is good, it's essential. You pay it off from future growth, or roll it over. But tech debt doesn't work like that.

I think this leads to a lot of miscommunication and frustration.

RE: @marijn@mastodon.social

Instead of trying to change ProseMirror to incorporate these new insights, I have chosen to create a completely new system with a new name. A ProseMirror 2.0 with an incompatible interface would amount to the same but make it ambiguous what people mean when referring to ProseMirror.

This is the way, people! I know your project has built up all this clout and name recognition, but if the new version is really a rewrite, or a significant re-architecting, then make it a new project. Let the old one live out its days on its own merit, don't force people to "upgrade" (migrate, really). Don't sow confusion. Names are cheap, you can have as many as you like!

The longer it sits with me the more the commodore phone pisses me off. Browser: blocked. Social media: blocked. We don't need lobotomized nostalgia machines, we need devices that give the user the power to shape their experience. Operating systems designed with human wellbeing in mind. Calm, powerful technology that grants agency. This is worse than a toy.

(And we need to keep big tech accountable for their harmful products, but that's another story.)

Anecdotally, from talking to a lot of people in person at Dutch Clojure Days, my impression is that, at least in this community, the number of people who practice or believe in full on vibe coding is very small. The number who categorically don't engage with AI is also very small.

The vast majority seems to use some LLM tools for coding at least semi-regularly, and think it's useful at least for some things (not always agreeing on which things). There's huge variation though in how much and in what way it's being used.

Still, the general sentiment seems to be mostly negative. There are ethical and environmental concerns, worries about jobs security, but also just a sense that it's unsatisfying to work with, with frustrating, mediocre, and inconsistent results. People who have to use it at work expressed that code review is now the bottleneck, and that they can see their codebase deteriorating week by week, with more duplication and inconsistencies.

This is all very anecdotal, so make of it what you will.

RE: @tegeltje@mastodon.nl

#lifegoals

Doing fairly well

This is the kind of AI discourse I would love to see more of. Grounded in research and reality, practical and centered on outcomes.

Shaming and stigmatising people for their LLM use may feel justified, but it'll lead to the opposite outcome of what you want to achieve. Meet people where they're at, and focus on AI literacy instead.

(Please don't engage with this point unless you've watched the video. Yes it's long, it took me a few sessions, it's worth it.)

https://youtu.be/watch?v=y85nqc2zm7M

I wrote about AI in software engineering, and about making choices.

A longer and more nuanced follow-up to my viral toot from last week.

https://gaiwan.co/blog/in-the-face-of-tech-kaiju-2/

The Clojure Documentary is out! This was a delight to watch, it greatly humanises the tech and people behind it, but also gives a good overview of the things that make #Clojure remarkable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y24vK_QDLFg

As I agonise over these docs I ask myself, will anyone read this, or will they just ask claude?

I already noticed this at my previous gig, reading comprehension, and the willingness to focus on a non-trivial piece of writing, just going down the drain. Just copy-paste it into chatgpt, skim the AI summary, move on.

Reading technical docs is work, it takes effort and concentration, but you get rewarded with new skills. A good writer can make the reading easier, but there's a lower bound beyond which you sacrifice too much rigor and precision.

Made myself a profile on https://couchers.org/, in preparation for an upcoming travel adventure. I was big on Couchsurfing in my 20s, but Couchsurfing was also one of the first sites that enshittified HARD. A community built by volunteers, sold to private equity, and locked behind a subscription...

But anyway, there's a few other hospitality exchange (hospex) platforms that tried to fill the gap, notable BeWelcome, but Couchers really nails the vibe of the old CS and seems to have a good amount of profiles.

Two very senior engineers, pairing for over an hour, to figure out that a function call had its first two arguments in the wrong order.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Maybe it's that stupid stuff will trip you up, no matter how experienced you are. Or that positional arguments were a mistake. Or maybe that meatbags weren't meant to code and we really do just need to hand it all over to the AI overlords.

This should be studied in schools, a field guide in recognising LLM generated text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ASigns_of_AI_writing

Interesting Clojure technique, by @cgrand@mastodon.social. (ab)use the tagged-literal function in data modeling.

https://buttondown.com/tensegritics-curiosities/archive/when-you-run-out-of-types/

#berlin peeps, I'm looking for someone who wants to sublet their place the last week of August. August 21 to August 30th or thereabouts. It's for me and possibly my partner. Non-smokers, no pets, responsible people who go to bed early. Lmk if you know of anyone who's leaving town around that time. Vielen Dank!🙏🐻

RE: @olivia@scholar.social

Amazing thread! Lots of resources to look into.

I did a write-up of the tools and tooling we used while organising Heart of Clojure 2024.

Is anyone aware of similar posts from other conferences, especially community/open-source events?

Are there organisers on here that want to share what their stack and process looks like?

https://github.com/heartofclojure/heartofclojure-site-2024/wiki/Conference-Tooling

RT appreciated ❤️

Hell hath no fury like a redditor who missed the point

— ancient proverb

I just emailed all Belgian MEPs regarding the vote on #chatcontrol. It was really easy, this tool will let you copy-paste all relevant email addresses, and provide an email template. Just add your name at the bottom.

https://fightchatcontrol.eu/#contact-tool

RE: @oblique_strategies@mas.to

More like discard an axios amiright? #npm

If there was a European conference in the spirit of Strangeloop , what would you call it?

An incredible stroke of luck

putt.day #52 ⛳ 5/6 Birdie
🟡🟡🟡🟡🟢
https://putt.day/s/GbJSpRDKq8K4

Reminder that we are having a informal #clojure meetup in #leuven #belgium tomorrow. Come say hi! No Clojure knowledge required. https://mobilizon.fr/events/496659ea-e89c-4601-a0af-0ccc8e9633cf