While it can be nice to throw something out there and play with it, I think a lot of the anxiety that causes people to feel that they _need_ to do that comes from the idea that "thinking isn't working." As an alternative, try validating early stages of thought work as being "real work" that's usually far more valuable than what follows.
Whiteboarding or taking notes can be a good proxy for thought work in early stages. Iow, those are good ways to "get something imperfect out" early because they are at a high enough level that they don't kill much time. However, hacking code out before it's been thought through tends to be a massive time suck.
I definitely agree that there's a shitton of value in hitting things regularly though (usually daily).
"People who are concerned enough about their insomnia to get a prescription from their doctor and take it regularly are more likely than other people to have heart problems and other health issues"
Good to know but maybe not particularly compelling?
The profit increases are from price gouging and anticompetitive behaviors; these companies don't need to provide value to increase their profits anymore.
I think it depends what your typing speed target is, probably. Even for someone who's got a lot of experience, I think it's easy to get bottlenecked on typing speed when it's not a specific focus. Speaking from personal experience, I've been programming for 20ish years and up until a couple months ago my typing speed was probably 90WPM. I recently started practicing intentionally and it's now up to an average of 125ish. If I were interviewing someone and their typing speed was like 60WPM as an experienced dev then that might be a little bit of a red flag. But with auto complete and whatnot, I think it's pretty easy to be at a solid 70 - 90 and still be a very solid dev, and what you get after that is mostly leaning on autocompletion less and being able to spit out some of those idioms a bit faster than you could copy/paste or fill out a snippet.
But possibly to your point, what I am is a passionate _thinker_. I'll take pretty much any opportunity to get away from the computer and do things in my head instead because I find that it's generally faster. If I were someone who liked to prototype "on paper" then I might've been a much faster typist long ago.
Reading this, the principle of least astonishment immediately comes to mind. I think a lot of the time when a lengthy comment is needed, refactoring or external documentation (maybe with a link in the comments) is actually a better option. PR descriptions and comments have the upside of existing in a historical context; they don't rot because they simply don't exist outside of that context. But, of course, they can be a little bit harder to find.
I definitely do agree that this is often a good use case for a nice comment though, especially because those weird expressions are usually locally scoped so that you don't have to worry too much about comment rot. But yeah, using a proper variable name has that advantage when it isn't local -- changing it in one place will queue the type system to tell you to change it everywhere (and you can probably automate it if you want to).
I guess that I don't think comments, variable names, or PRs are particularly good at conveying broader context though (like what the use case is, historical considerations from bugs, legal requirements, etc.). I think you're kind of talking to a reader who already has the context, and if they don't then none of those things do a great job of clarifying. Kind of circling back, I really like to push more things to external documentation paired with nice conventions and patterns. A lot of the time those docs also have the benefit of being at a high enough level that they don't rot, too. If you know the pattern then you just read the code and it doesn't matter so much if the specifics changed.
I don't think this product is for me, but I wanted to mention that the pricing feels wrong. You're pitching people dealing with large volumes of email, but then I'm paying $25/mo for 200 emails which isn't a lot. Also, how are the fields being extracted? Like, how reliable is it? Is it an AI backed thing or like looking for specific formats? And how do I hook it up to my email?
Hi, thanks for your feedback. For pricing, I used a friend as a baseline, he receives around 200 emails per month, roughly 10 per open day. I’m open to revisiting the pricing model based on user feedback.Yes, Saprius is AI-backed and doesn’t rely on specific email formats, which I believe is one of its core strengths.It’s both easy to use and powerful.Regarding reliability, it really depends on your use case. That’s why we offer a free trial with 5 emails ,you can send yourself 5 test emails to see if it meets your needs before committing.When you create an account, there’s a video that show up explaining how to connect it to your email account. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/xpkiUl3kS3o
If you have any more feedback or questions, I’d be happy to answer!
> Newton did not just describe motion—he invented the ideas of force and mass.
I think this is just what incremental progress looks like from the outside. It's a magic trick that happens when we don't see each step of the progression.
> The narrative around AI in science is shifting—from tool to theorist, from assistant to author.
I agree that AI is making people out of touch, and I think that's part of the market's goal. It's a lot easier to sell stuff to people if you can convince them it's magic.
I don't think that AI has fundamentally changed anything about the nature of discovery; we're just making reference materials fluid and generative -- it's an incremental step. So, I agree with you that the narrative is largely missing the pieces that make things "tricky". It feels sort of like people are rediscovering copy pasta and then being like, "Look how much work I did!"
Got it—and thanks for subscribing! Really appreciate the feedback. I used the default settings, but now I know what I’ll be tweaking tonight. Totally agree—simple is best.
I really love using the em dash, especially now that I’ve learned how easy it is to type one the iOS and macOS keyboards — but the risk of being labeled an AI now really takes the fun away.
Butvthe normal dash is just wrong in most contexts it is used, and I simply cannot stand this.
Agreed, I'm torn between my pedantry for adhering to style guides and being pilloried for seeming like an AI. There's no safe ground anymore.
(Though I used to use the em dash with spaces on either side — like this — and only recently converted to the more common, tighter spacing—like this. I might go back to my old ways since it's different from how AI uses them, like some sort of weird shibboleth.)
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I hope I don’t get grilled, or offend anyone for saying this:
I use AI at every level of my work because it speeds things up—especially when it comes to grammar and sentence structure. And yes, I was overusing dashes even before ChatGPT was a thing.
I use AI for coding too. It definitely helps with speed and boilerplate, though I’ll admit it sometimes sends me deep down the rabbit hole. Still, the ideas, creativity, and decisions are my own.
For what it’s worth, the structure is AI-assisted, but the wording and ideas are entirely my own. I use whatever AI chat window or tool is open in my browser—Grammarly, Hemingway, Word or others.
I’m here to share and learn, and I hope that still comes through—Thanks again.
Got it—I'm green here. My comments are human, sometimes put in AI for spelling, grammar, and structure. I will avoid AI for HN posts at all costs, and thank you for clarifying.
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