Heya folks!
Any conversation
…
NIH syndrome? I am guilty of it too. I love implementing things from scratch, you learn a lot by doing so and you get to own the codebase end-to-end, so no surprises and fighting around others’ choices. It can get exhausting too though, in the end I succumb to using off-the-shelf components because my primary goals move at a higher level.
I don't see much point in trying to build software at a "higher level", like whole products and services. I'm going to go down low and train myself on the fundamentals. Hopefully in time I'll be able to contribute to the foundational bits.
You're right, it does get exhausting. At some point you just want to rebuild everything, which is not possible.
I started blogging… again
mataherry.bearblog.dev
i made an extension to get a top hacker news items with summary on every new tab.
chromewebstore.google.com/…/pmlajlgklmgabkhammfolkgkeghamjnn
cool! i've made The Front Page you might want to check it out also - it shows the first 3 pages of HN with AI summaries and images. Like a newspaper.
Really glad to be using Haskell for work - especially in today's climate with agentic coding.
Our team uses containers to keep our development environment consistent across team members, though, and most agent sandbox approaches want to either offload your work fully to the cloud or they want to sandbox the agent harness process itself.
We're not ready for full cloud based development (yet?) and sandboxing just the agent doesn't work for us when the agent needs to run docker.
... because letting the agent run docker gives them a too-easy escape hatch from their sandbox.
So we're currently stuck with using VMs. This turns out to be tricky but seems do-able.
My current approach is to provision a VM image and use Incus for the execution. My main goal is to keep my current workflow of local/non-agent dev working seamlessly and share the source with the VM/agent.
This means sharing my working dirs with the agent VM but overlaying artifact dirs from VM-owned block devices so we don't take too big of an IO perf hit.
I also don't want the agent to be able to
git push so that means we need some quirky git config to rewrite origin paths and thread through some agent specific PATs ("thanks" GitHub) for read-only repo access. These ALSO need to be threaded through to the development containers - they need to clone private repos.... in the end, this seems to work but I haven't lived with it for long.
There are still some quality of life issues to work out, but I think it'll work out.
At this point, I've removed all coding agents from my host - and that's nice.
Curious, why does using Haskell make a difference here?
It's tangential to the sandboxing topic, really. I started the first post with a broader intent in mind and then elaborated on the sandboxing setup I'm working on.
For AI-assisted coding, though, it's nice because Haskell provides a lot of feedback earlier in the development process compared to lots of other languages. It tends to work once it compiles (obviously not all the time).
…
Microservices.
Not really programming, as this is more on the architectural level.
Microservices is a valid approach when you need to address massive scale. The thing is, I have seen it applied to things that could realistically serve its audience in a handful of modest servers with a less fashionable approach.
It was done under the guise of simplification; each individual microservice was in fact very small. But this at the cost of absolute spaghetti architecture.
let i=0;while(++i){process.stdout.write(i%80==0?'\n':Math.random()<0.5?'/':'\\')}\\\//\/\\\\\\\///\///\\\\\//\///\/\/\\//\/\//\//\/\//\\/\///\\\\\\//\\\\\/\\\\/
\\/\\/\/\///\\\/\///\/\/////\\///\/\\/\\\//\\\/\///////\\\/\////\\\/\\\//\\/\//
\\//\\\\\/\\\/\///\\///\\//\\\\/\//\\\//\////\//\\\\////\\/\/\/////\//\\\//\///
\\/\/\\//\\///\/\\\//\/\/\\\///\/\\\/\\/\\\\/\\\\\\\\\\/\\//\/\\/\///\//\\\//\\
/\/\\\\/\/\\/\\/\\/\\\\\\/\\\/\\//////\/\//\\\//\//\//\\/\\\/\//\\\//\\\\\\\/\/
\\\///\////////\\/////\\//\/\///\\\\\////\/\\\\/\//\\/\/////\\\//\\/\/\\\\\////
\///\/\/////\//\////\\\/\\/////\\\////\//\\\\/\\\\//\\\///\\\\\\//\\////\//////
/\/////\\\\\\//\\/\/\///\////\/\\\///\\///\//\/\/\\\/\\/\\\\\\//\/\\\///\\/\/\\
/\\///\/\\\/\\\\//\/\///\\\\\/\/\//\\/\\/\/\///\/\//\/\///\\\///\//\/\///\\\\/\
\\\\/\\\\/\/\\\\\///\/\////\\///\\///\\/\/\\\\\/////\\\\\//\\\\/\\\\\\///\\///\
\\/\//\\//\///\/\///\\\\/\//\/\\/\/\//\\/\/\/\\/\/\\/\\\\/\/////\\\///\\\\\//\\I have a toddler.
I come home from work, cook, feed, clean, wash up. We read stories and play. I put him to bed.
Then I put something on the television and my wife and I scroll on our phones until she goes to bed.
I am not so careless with the little free time I have.
I continue to scroll until about 1 am.
The next morning I do it again.
On the weekends, I get to drink wine.
Spending mornings scouring job boards and listings and applying.
Afternoons working on Cheltenham Open Data and iOS app development.
What about you?
