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Beware the Complexity Merchants

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on the importance of simplicity in engineering, emphasizing how it facilitates speed and creativity. This idea is reinforced by a reference to Scott Carey's essay on how complexity disrupts software development, citing Ray Ozzie's assertion that "complexity kills" the productivity of developers. The author notes the frustrations of dealing with "accidental" complexity—unnecessary complications from tools and processes—while trying to address the "essential" complexity inherent in business problems. Justin Etheredge's differentiation between these two

Free assets collection (ressources for frontend dev and designers)

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and outlines a curated collection of free resources for frontend developers and designers, including stock images, illustrations, and background generators. These resources are categorized and provided for free use, with some offering AI-generated content clearly indicated. The collection features general image banks, lifestyle and food images, as well as tools for creating dynamic backgrounds, gradients, and textures. Users are encouraged to contribute suggestions or improvements through a CONTRIBUTING.md file and pull requests. The message expresses gratitude to

Building Twice: A clone of Once

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: /r/ruby

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Senior devs aren't just faster, they're dodging problems you're forced to solve

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the efficiency difference between experts and novices in problem-solving situations. It highlights how novices, lacking experience, often face greater challenges and inefficiencies while trying to navigate complex problems, leading them to create unnecessary complications for themselves. In contrast, experts can quickly assess the situation and apply strategies to move forward efficiently. The analogy of two characters in a maze illustrates this concept, with the expert equipped to handle the maze effectively, while the novice flounders without the necessary tools or knowledge. The discussion

The Awful German Language (1880)

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The speaker reflects on their experience learning German while visiting the collection of curiosities at Heidelberg Castle. They impress the curator with their German skills, which the curator finds unique and valuable. The speaker reveals the challenges they faced during their language learning journey, including the death of three teachers and the complexities of the German language itself. They describe the language as confusing and full of exceptions, making it difficult to grasp. Each time they feel they understand a rule, they encounter a new complication, illustrating the ongoing struggles

Cracked - method chaining/CSS-style selector web audio library

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: Hacker News

"I Dropped My Phone The Screen Cracked" is a web audio library designed to simplify the creation and management of audio nodes in browsers using method chaining and CSS-style selectors. It aims to make audio coding intuitive and accessible, allowing users to easily encapsulate audio chains as macros, create plugins, and connect nodes flexibly. The library promotes simplicity and encourages creativity in audio experimentation. For further information, users can access comprehensive documentation, a one-page overview, a Reddit interview, and an app for Mac

Ollama's new engine for multimodal models

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Ollama has introduced support for multimodal models with a new engine, starting with a 109 billion parameter vision multimodal model. This enables users to ask location-based questions about video frames and follow-up inquiries about multiple images and their relationships. The example applications include character recognition and translating vertical Chinese spring couplets into English. Previously, Ollama relied on the ggml-org/llama.cpp project for model support, prioritizing ease of use and model portability. However, as more multimodal models

Teal – A statically-typed dialect of Lua

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Teal is a statically-typed dialect of Lua that enhances the language with type annotations for arrays, maps, records, interfaces, union types, and generics. It aims to provide functionality similar to TypeScript in the JavaScript ecosystem while adhering to Lua's principles of minimalism, portability, and ease of integration. Teal is implemented as a compiler, referred to as "tl," which compiles `.tl` source code into `.lua` files. Users can experiment with the Teal

The best new features and fixes in Python 3.14

Published: 2025-05-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The first beta release of Python 3.14 has been launched, introducing several new features aimed at enhancing the programming experience for developers. One major addition is the template strings, or t-strings, defined in PEP 750. These allow for advanced string formatting by enabling the manipulation of variables within a template's structure rather than just its output. For example, a template can automatically clean HTML tags from variables or transform parts of the string. This feature simplifies writing custom template engines like Jinja2

OpenJDK talks about adding a JSON API to the Java Standard Library

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/programming

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Building AI Applications in Ruby

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/ruby

In this second part of a series on creating web applications with generative AI integration, Ed Izaguirre argues that Ruby may be a superior choice over Python for building such applications. While Python dominates the AI landscape due to its robust frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow, Ruby's strengths become apparent when addressing the complexities of modern web development. Izaguirre highlights that many clients express concerns about the complexity associated with contemporary web applications, primarily driven by the rise of single-page applications (SP

A leap year check in three instructions

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: Hacker News

Falk Hüffner discusses an efficient method for determining if a year in the range 0 to 102499 is a leap year using minimal CPU instructions. The leap year calculation is based on the proleptic Gregorian calendar, extending backward from its introduction in 1582, allowing years before 1582 to be treated uniformly without negative values. Hüffner presents optimizations to typical leap year checks, replacing certain modulo operations with simpler bit masking techniques. For instance, instead of checking

Initialization in C++ is bonkers (2017)

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The program in question raises a question about the values of `a.a` and `b.b` in C++, revealing that `a.a` will be 0 while `b.b` will be indeterminate, leading to undefined behavior. This is attributed to the complex nature of initialization in C++, which involves concepts like default-, value-, and zero-initialization. In a simplified outline of C++11 rules, global and value-initialized variables default to 0, whereas other variables

The unreasonable effectiveness of an LLM agent loop with tool use

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: Hacker News

Philip Zeyliger discusses his recent work on an AI Programming Assistant called Sketch, which utilizes a large language model (LLM) for programming tasks. He describes the simplicity of the core operation in using the LLM with tools, highlighting that a general-purpose tool like bash allows the AI to tackle various programming problems effectively. Zeyliger notes that Sketch can streamline tasks such as git operations, merges, and type-checking by automating them. He emphasizes the adaptability of the tool, which

Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: Hacker News

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Deactivating an API, One Step at a Time

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the process of decommissioning an API, highlighting the importance of ensuring that no one depends on the API set to be shut down to avoid unpredictable consequences. It recounts the author's experience in replacing an older API with a more capable version while managing existing consumers. To mitigate issues, the author first limited access to the old API by blocking new consumers through a token-based authentication system, allowing only those with tokens generated before a specific date to continue using it. The next step involved identifying existing

10 Years of Stable Rust: An Infrastructure Story

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/programming

By visiting the website, users consent to a privacy policy concerning cookies and tracking. Necessary cookies that ensure site functionality do not require consent under GDPR. Users can choose to accept additional cookies for analytics or decline them, allowing only essential cookies. Additionally, the Rust Foundation marks the 10th anniversary of Rust's 1.0 release on May 15, 2025, with a guest blog by Graydon Hoare, the language's initial author. Hoare reflects on Rust’s evolution over the

Microsoft support for "Faster CPython" project cancelled

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the cancellation of Microsoft's support for the Faster CPython project, which resulted in layoffs for most of the team members, causing emotional distress for those affected. The author reflects on attending the Python Language Summit at PyCon, where discussions about improving Python continued despite the recent challenges. They emphasize the resiliency of open source development, noting that collaboration among long-time community members persists regardless of corporate changes. The author also expresses disappointment over the lack of sponsorship for beneficial projects like Faster CPython and encourages

Launch HN: Tinfoil (YC X25): Verifiable Privacy for Cloud AI

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The authors argue that solving AI privacy issues will lead to more valuable AI applications, similar to how TLS enabled secure online transactions. They have backgrounds in cryptography and security, with expertise from institutions like MIT and companies like NVIDIA and Cloudflare. They believe traditional privacy techniques, such as personally identifiable information (PII) redaction or legal contracts, are inadequate. Instead, they propose using secure enclaves—isolated areas on a chip that allow secure AI model inference in the cloud without exposing data to

Good runbooks are a MUST - unless you want to risk a heart attack

Published: 2025-05-15 | Origin: /r/programming

Bojan Vukojicic describes a typical, stressful on-call scenario when he receives a critical alert about increased errors in a spam service right after returning home. Despite initial panic, he follows the runbook but realizes he cannot fix the issue and calls his team for help, allowing him to free up his evening. He emphasizes the importance of effective runbooks in making incident response smoother, especially when under stress. Reflecting on his experience as a Reliability Operations Engineer in a newly formed team,