Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
How do you pronounce zsh?
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Software principles that last don't come from architects in glass offices. They come from practitioners who noticed what kept working.
These principles arose from doing the work. They did not descend from on high from those far removed from the work.
This, I feel is the most fundamental truth about doing work: those without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Internet programming attacks through the ages
80s: hehe...I pretended to be Bob on IRC
90s: 1k people went to my website at once and the server caught on fire
00s: PHP/ActiveX/Flash - we make tech that's basically designed to be hacked
10s: one of these 10k nodejs dependencies got hijacked, glhf figuring out which one
20s: the LLM got prompted-injected via emojis
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
The Real Engineering Career Ladder
Jr - how do I even code?
Mid - I can code!!!!! Code EVERYWHERE!!!
Sr - how do I solve the same problem with less code?
Staff - delete like 90% of this code
Principal - I miss coding
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
If you want to be a 10x engineer:
- Share your ideas freely with little concern for credit
- Default to openness
- Hear another team member all the way out, especially when you disagree
- Fail together, not alone—no one learns if you keep it secret
- Message where you're going as much as current location
The 10x engineer lifts up their team to get 10x things done.
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Finally, I had to reach down and just tell it: copy the file from root to each service. Is it elegant? No. Did it stop the errors from creeping in from having the other random things it tried. Yes.
It proposed to me all other kinds of elaborate solutions: lazy loading, multiple .env file references, etc. I accepted them and then it would drift back to multiple .env files.
3/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
To be clear, I didn't spend 48 hours in a row trying to fix this, nor even 1 hour.
It's something that kept coming up in its behavior that it would drift to as a default over time.
It viscerally highlighted things I already knew:
1. LLMs really can't remember
2. LLMs cannot "think"
3. LLMs cannot "know"
4. LLMs cannot learn because of 2 & 3
They are best simulate the appears of all of these.
It still remains on you.
If you don't know where you're going, you will get there.
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Claude kept trying make multiple env files for each service. No matter what I did.
So what did I do?
I'm using claude-mem, beads, and several other skills to attempt to improve alignment and long term memory.
I had it make a plan. I had it store that plan. I had it make tasks in beads about that plan.
I even eventually started ADRs to describe the decisions I made.
Didn't matter what I did. It kept trying to make multiple .env files for each service.
2/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Finally, I had to reach down and just tell it: copy the file from root to each service. Is it elegant? No. Did it stop the errors from creeping in from having the other random things it tried. Yes.
It proposed to me all other kinds of elaborate solutions: lazy loading, multiple .env file references, etc. I accepted them and then it would drift back to multiple .env files.
3/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
I had an interesting experience over the past 48 hours with LLMs.
I have a little side project I'm working on, and it's in a monorep. I wanted to be able to put a .env file at root and then have each service reference it.
Claude code repeatedly choked on this constraint.
How it choked is the interesting part.
1/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
Claude kept trying make multiple env files for each service. No matter what I did.
So what did I do?
I'm using claude-mem, beads, and several other skills to attempt to improve alignment and long term memory.
I had it make a plan. I had it store that plan. I had it make tasks in beads about that plan.
I even eventually started ADRs to describe the decisions I made.
Didn't matter what I did. It kept trying to make multiple .env files for each service.
2/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
I had an interesting experience over the past 48 hours with LLMs.
I have a little side project I'm working on, and it's in a monorep. I wanted to be able to put a .env file at root and then have each service reference it.
Claude code repeatedly choked on this constraint.
How it choked is the interesting part.
1/x
Robert Roskam@raiderrobert@mastodon.social
I have used ChatGPT