Hasnain says:

"The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining."

Hasnain says:

“Footnotes:

[1] Since big companies throw around the VP title pretty casually, this post is arguing that many of those VPs are actually directors in thinking and accountability. This may be one reason why big company VPs have trouble adapting to the e-staff of startups.”

Hasnain says:

She is an incredibly brave woman and this interview is worth reading.

I also can’t imagine being a parent who’s so bad that your kid feels this way towards you.

“TV: Do you ever feel scared? He's the richest man in the world.

VW: He's a pathetic man-child. Why would I feel scared of him? Ohhh, he has so much power. Nah, nah, nah. I don't give a f**k. Why should I be scared of this man? Because he's rich? Oh, no, I'm trembling. Ooh, shivering in my boots here. I don't give a f**k how much money anyone has. I don't. I really don't. He owns Twitter. Okay. Congratulations.”

Hasnain says:

“What’s clear is that the definition of “software engineer” is expanding, not contracting. The skills that make someone valuable are diversifying. And this creates both challenges and opportunities.

For those who love the craft of coding, this shift can feel threatening. But remember that AI tools are still just that - tools. They don’t understand the “why” behind the code, the business context, or the human needs being served. They can’t innovate in the true sense of the word, at least not yet. And as far as we know, they can’t feel the satisfaction of solving a complex problem or the joy of creating something new.”

Hasnain says:

““It’s taught me more about parenting than any books I’ve read or professionals whose brains I’ve picked,” notes Hilton, who was inspired by Bluey when endeavoring to make Daddy: Live in Concert (out on April 8) entertaining, educational and fun for parents. “Their patience, rules, engagement, love and faults make me think it’s a show for parents masking as a show for kids. It’s reminded me many times what an incredible time in both my life and my kids’ life this is.””

Hasnain says:

Good piece on AI and how it’s affecting software engineering - I especially loved the conclusion though

“A lot of dumbasses in company leadership see AI and salivate at the idea of reducing headcount so "AI can do the work". This is clearly a fear that a lot of people who earn paychecks for a living have. I have two thoughts on this topic:

Firstly, if you're a company leader who sees a wave as large as the introduction of the computer coming and your thought is to "use less resources to do the same work", you're an uncreative hack and it's you who deserves to be fired. The goal should be how you can accomplish more when you have cognitive co-processors at your disposal.”

Hasnain says:

“Different world views

For Alicia Jones, not having anyone else to financially depend on—or split rent with—is the worst part of being single. “Especially with the threat of layoffs, it’s much more stressful being a single person,” said Jones, who is 38 and works in communications for a real-estate company in Washington, D.C.

Her last long-term relationship ended two years ago over conflicting views of their shared future. “He wanted the white picket fence and me at home with the kids,” Jones said. This despite the fact that her salary was nearly 50% higher than his. “

Hasnain says:

Definitely need to upgrade so we’re safe the next time a pirate swings by with a 2x4 cannon

“The bad news is that Joe and Jane Consumer won’t be able to buy these kinds of windows at the local home-supply store—at least not yet. While the primary manufacturer of this type of window is offering its tech to other window makers, it’s only opened up U.S. production in the past few months, and it’s still scaling up manufacturing.”

Hasnain says:

AirBnB recently did a large scale migration of code using LLMs. I've been trying to find good datapoints for things like this, so personally reading this blogpost (link in comments) was quite exciting.

I have done a crapton of these migrations by hand (aided with static analysis/codemod scripts in the past) and I'm excited to see where LLMs can go in this space.

Some key takeaways from this post (which resonated well for me, similar to how I'd do it as a human funnily enough):

* Break the migration into manageable chunks:
* Migrate each file independently
* Within that too, have a logical set of sequential steps.
* Don't try to do the whole thing in one shot
* Choosing the exact specific context matters a lot for the LLM
* Retries help -- if it fails, just try again
* It's easy to get "good enough" to e.g get 75% of the way there
* From there to 97% took a lot more work
* ... and it doesn't make sense to go to 100% (in terms of ROI)

Money quote from the article below

"Airbnb recently completed our first large-scale, LLM-driven code migration, updating nearly 3.5K React component test files from Enzyme to use React Testing Library (RTL) instead. We’d originally estimated this would take 1.5 years of engineering time to do by hand, but — using a combination of frontier models and robust automation — we finished the entire migration in just 6 weeks."

Hasnain says:

“It is time to meet the moment; the only question is how you will decide to. If you stay this course, tightly gripping the reins of power while you sabotage the fight your party and your people are ready and desperate to enter, few will see you as any sort of hero. No message you could hope to deliver will ever be taken seriously if you persist in behaving in this obstructive way. Whatever you may have accomplished in your career will be lost to the sands of time and you will be written into history as a Vichy clown, plagued by obtuse cowardice, who used his own power to make sure the nation would suffer the consequences of his own personal failures.”