@mattly@hachyderm.io
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

mattly

@mattly@hachyderm.io

I create software, music, artwork, and cynicism

I deal w/: late diagnosis #ADHD, #Dysthymia, #AuditoryProcessingDisorder, #CPTSD; chronic tinnitus

cis/straight male, parent in a neurospicy household

I get caremad about how humans & computers interact, and by habit think a lot about systems design & 2nd+ order consequences

I used to paint with pigment & light; these days I paint with sound

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Elucidating, to random
@Elucidating@mastodon.social avatar

Oh he also thinks GraphQL is good. Oh no. He's gone.

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

My sense of this is, “it’s used in places where it shouldn’t be & the unnecessary complexity grinds the project to a halt” but that hasn’t been my experience at all (2/2)

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@Elucidating Genuine curiosity here: having implemented it successfully for the front and back ends of three separate projects, each of which actually needed a proper query language across the interface, what’s with the hatred for it?

I agree that:

  • most projects don’t need query language interfaces
  • there’s a dearth of material on patterns for serving it well
  • the Apollo library for working with it is terrible… (1/2)
mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@Elucidating I used lacinia for Clojure and a library I can’t recall the name of for Go. The projects all used reflection heavily in constructing SQL queries and/or talking to other APIs

For the two projects I did front ends for, I did roll a <100loc JS client; one of those also had a go CLI client that I rolled a client for, it was similarly small

mattly,
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@Elucidating Option types using unions, basically

Don’t get me wrong, I will be the first person to say that most projects shouldn’t use it

GraphQL requires a LOT of thinking about your domain and implementation up front and doesn’t offer a lot of ways to correct mistakes in that design

I’ve also built query languages on top of GRPC/Protobuf and JSON, so I I’d like to hope I know what I’m doing in that regard

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@Elucidating Perhaps I haven’t had enough coffee yet - my implementations introspected on the query, built out a plan with a dependency graph, and used channels/core.async to execute the plan. Failures stopped that part of the graph. It was similar to the data loader pattern but it’s been a few years

And I agree with that statement for most projects. Like I said,

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@Elucidating In my query-planning phase, I had both a schema-aware recursion limit and a complexity estimator, and would reject queries over both a hard threshold and a sort of complexity-rate-limiting factor; we never had any problems on the other side of that

but all of the projects I used this for did not have publicly documented APIs, and two of them were solely for internal tooling and not open to the public at all

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

> Did you sign in from a new device?

NO I SIGNED IN FROM THE SAME DAMN COMPUTER I SIGN IN WITH EVERY TIME BUT FOR SOME REASON YOU NEVER REMEMBER THAT DESPITE MY CLICKING THE "REMEMBER ME ON THIS TRUSTED DEVICE" BOX

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

I wonder what would happen if sales people insistent that I “contact them for a quote” actually understood the lengths many of us go to to avoid talking to people

mattly, to ADHD
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

in personal late-diagnosis comorbidity news, I've have a diagnosis for , aka "Persistent Depressive Disorder”

> As dysthymia is a chronic disorder, those with the condition may experience symptoms for many years before it is diagnosed, if diagnosis occurs at all. As a result, they may believe that depression is a part of their character, so they may not even discuss their symptoms with doctors, family members or friends.

I think this is going to be as big as the ADHD diagnosis

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

“They may believe depression is part of their character”

I’m in this photo and I don’t like it

kissane, to random
@kissane@mas.to avatar

Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software is so good I keep yelling as I read it, it should be considered foundational for so many people interested in tech—and it’s such a tightly written, info-dense, pacey read.

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@kissane Kevin’s narration is SO GOOD

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

Got another amber alert, with a bit.ly link taking me to Xitter, two minutes on and this is all it shows

We should be doing better

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

it finally loaded and it’s an image with no alt text and type that ends up being 4 point on mobile

something something the society we deserve

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

When I talk about technology as societal infrastructure this is what I mean

I’ve lost track of the number of private tech companies I’m expected to agree to the terms of service for in order to participate in civic life anymore

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

For the first time in many years, I feel like I’m both past the burnout I had accumulated and not in a situation where I’ll accumulate more

My burnouts have come from

  • employer funding running out / parent co insolvency
  • lack of recognition for doing the necessary thankless work that prevented something bad happening
  • work going towards sociopolitical ends I oppose
  • subpar compensation
  • not getting to tackle the problems I was hired for
  • not making time to work on things important to me
mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

In some ways, now, I want to part ways with tech, and do something suggested by @sixwing about the last time I was free of burnout: make synthesizers in the forest. I’m closer than ever to that, and taking baby steps in that direction

BUT I’m not ready to leave tech entirely. I know the impact I can have in the right places, I just have to figure out how to do that on my own terms. I’m consulting, for now, but I also want to get away from selling my time

mattly,
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As I talk about that, getting away from selling my time, I hear a LOT the idea that I should enter the creator economy, become a youtuber, sell ebooks. That’s not what I want either

I wouldn’t even know where to START with courseware. The impact I can have on technology projects comes from cross-functionality, being curious, having a solid liberal arts background, and knowing what to get caremad about

I’ve mentored design to coders & type systems to designers; statistics to both

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

and so I think about going the other way with tech: building a product and selling it. I’m comfortable with this idea. It parallels the kind of work my parents did, the business I ran with them, the startup work I did earlier in my career

I’ve even got some great ideas!

But I’m more wary than ever of the idea; it seems there are very few non-extraction models for making money from software anymore. The big app idea I have, I’d want to find ways to prevent lock-in while creating an ecosystem

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

Quite the thread, seems like this project is three script kiddies in a trench coat https://recurse.social/@dylnuge/112224580867240812

18+ Frances_Larina, to random
@Frances_Larina@sfba.social avatar

Housing 'affordability has just totally collapsed,' economist says

"Would-be homebuyers need to earn $113,520 a year to afford the typical house in the U.S. — 35% more than what the typical household earns annually, which is $84,072"

I would love to see the numbers if enclaves of the ultra-rich were excluded. I'm not saying housing is affordable, at all. Only that I think it might paint a slightly different picture, and point out where part of the problem lies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/02/housing-affordability-has-just-totally-collapsed-economist-says.html

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@Frances_Larina I really wish articles like this would make the source data more readily available

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

Love is letting your partner continue to believe she doesn’t snore when you have all the tools at your disposal to shatter that belief

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

an accommodation is not a perk

mattly, to random
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

I got one too many “FOURTH REMINDER: take our survey to let us know how we’re doing” notices, and setup a poster site: https://nosurvey.org

danilo, (edited ) to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

what’s really gonna fuck us up is when the AI purveyors quantify the lifetime carbon, energy and water consumption of a human developer and come out on top per 1000 SLOC

so be careful where you put the criticism goalposts

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@danilo @jenniferplusplus as I get further away from FTE & have been exploring consulting etc, I’ve done a lot of reflection what specifically I’m good at, vs what’s the disconnect with FTE roles,

and one thing I’m really good at is asking questions about safety & correctness, and championing those values in human/computer interactions

the thing is, it’s hard to convince someone whose paycheck depends on ignoring safety & correctness that they need to care about those things

mattly,
@mattly@hachyderm.io avatar

@danilo @jenniferplusplus I bring this up because in some ways it gets at the heart of, what are the LLM code gen things good at?

because it ain’t this type of work. It requires thinking very deeply about consequences and getting caremad about poor design

the people who want the code machine to go brrrr don’t care about those things at all though, and I’m not sure how to make them care short of, well, consequences

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