First personal little thing was a little mobile friendly website for taking coffee and tea orders. Two pages, one for someone to enter orders, second for listing orders and marking them as done. Was a bit of a gimmick idea I'd had in the back of my head for family lunches to save me running around with a scrap of paper and a pen asking what everyone wanted. Thought it would make a good little exploration of "vibe coding".
Second is a utility that will take a text file export from Wallabag, and use text to speech to convert it to an MP3 file. I then integrated it into a utility that I already wrote for managing articles so if I tag an article with listen it automatically gets converted and gets shunted to the podcast listening app on my phone.
Last was to recreate a little directory listing utility that I've had a 32-bit binary of for ages, but no longer (if ever) have the source code for. I'd always promised myself I would write it once I learned Rust, but decided try using AI as I was getting impatient to have it now. The utility lists all files, including hidden, in a directory, grouped by type. Below is an example listing the directory for the project itself:
> including an appalling “it’s all in your head” from her family MD at the time
Oof. That one resonates so much for me - even living in a country with far better healthcare.
There's a term I dislike but is apt: medical misogyny. Basically it's, "systemic, conscious, or unconscious gender biases [which] affect how a patient is treated by the healthcare system."[1]
Systemic in particular is that basically the vast amount of knowledge amassed in the medical sciences has come from studying men. Comparatively little for those not assigned male at birth.
One of my kids has complicated health issues, pretty much from the time they hit puberty. If they hadn't had me (someone born with a penis) advocating for them and attending most medical appointments throughout their teenage years I'm pretty sure they would be dead now.
My most appalling memory is a gastroenterologist who patronisingly told my kid with a diagnosed anxiety disorder which exacerbated awful gut pain from irritable bowel syndrome that, "If you weren't anxious all the time you wouldn't be in so much pain." We both had a good cry in the car park after that appointment. It certainly set treatment of their IBS back a couple of years at least.
(Fortunately after a string of bad ones, we found a GE that treated them with compassion, and not as a gastrointestinal tract with an annoying human around it.)
Whew, yeah, touched a nerve there. So, medical misogyny. It's a thing.
> There's a term I dislike but is apt: medical misogyny. Basically it's, "systemic, conscious, or unconscious gender biases [which] affect how a patient is treated by the healthcare system."
This is a loaded UK-centric policy/humanities term and I would suggest using sex/gender disparities instead which does not imply animus and is therefore much more useful for productive discussion.
Implicit and systemic biases in medicine are very real and supported by ample data.
> Systemic in particular is that basically the vast amount of knowledge amassed in the medical sciences has come from studying men. Comparatively little for those not assigned male at birth.
At least for the US this hasn’t been the case in clinical research for the past 15 years or so which in aggregate leans a bit more female than male if anything. Some specific fields still have sex disparity in clinical research for a variety of reasons but that’s the minority these days.
> This is a loaded UK-centric policy/humanities term
Yes, the implication of animus is the chief reason for my dislike of the term. The main failing of most alternatives is they don't roll off the tongue as easily or succinctly.
> this hasn’t been the case in clinical research for the past 15 years or so which in aggregate leans a bit more female than male if anything.
Oh yes, I didn't mean to imply the situation isn't improving (and an overcorrection in research at this point in time is probably a good thing, IMO (if it is in fact happening, which I struggle to believe (but that's my issue))).
The body of knowledge in medical science is a lot older than 15 years though, so I would think it will take a lot of time and effort to equalise.
Thanks for your response. I found it constructive and informative to my own thinking.
I'm a man, and when I was a teenage boy I was tired. All the time. My feet had also shrunk and I lost some height. This all started after a bad concussion, though I'm not sure if he made the connection on that last point.
My doctor's diagnosis? Depression. Oh, and my foot arch must be getting higher.
My sister's best friend going up lost her dad because he was told that the pain from recent dental work couldn't be that bad and that he should just tough it out. The infection broke through into his brain and he died very quickly.
My dad almost died from lupus because doctors wouldn't test him for it because it primarily affects women.
Women, statistically, are more neurotic. I'm sure that affects how doctors diagnose them, and it shouldn't. However, I don't like things like what you're describing to be attributed to misogyny. It could be, but it also could just be that doctors focus way too much on horses when it could actually be a zebra. Hopefully LLMs will help with that - when GPT 3 or so came out way back when, one of the first things I did to test it was to give it what I knew about my condition at the time. It told me 3 tests I should have done, one of which was correct, and one of which I still haven't managed to get a doctor to give me after trying for many years.
If you blame it on misogyny the actual problem won't get fixed.
I'm not blaming it on misogyny. I thought I was very clear that "medical misogyny" is a commonly used term, and was very specific on the definition.
Also, in this sibling comment thread[1] to yours I discussed with haldujai why we both dislike the term, specifically because of the animus is implies, which is inaccurate.
It is however, a term you will hear in discussions like this, so it is good to know what it means, and the fact that the problem as defined exists, no matter what you call it.
As a Yank with practically every single demographic, physical, and financial advantage in his favor, I’ve been gaslit by about 8 of 10 specialists. Only car dealerships are worse.
Even obvious things like “I can’t move my left hand after 1 hr of light typing” were excruciating difficult to get diagnosed by “board certified” specialists with 20 years experience. It’s not that they were wrong —- they flat out weren’t even interested in making diagnosis nor conducting a simple test that could lead anywhere. Financial costs and insurance requirements weren’t the issue either.
“My chest hurts after walking slowly to the mailbox. ‘Well, you waited 1 month for this appointment, we’ll do an ultrasound in 2 months, discuss it 1 month later, and then maybe figure out next steps “
I cannot imagine a more dysfunctional aspect of modern society. The Department of Motor Vehicles is a paragon of efficiency by comparison.
Imagine if I told my boss the critical issue escalated by a major customer would be handled that same way…
There are a lot of bad software engineers but they tend to get weeded out since most are employees. Imagine paying them 2x-3x the amount with no direct managerial supervision and even more poorly informed customers. The name for this is “doctors”. The game is played by not trying to be great in medical practice - instead the strategy is only to be financially successful.
Agreed. Disability, physical as well as intellectual. Age. Neuroatypicallity. The list goes on.
Honestly, I think when you're facing any sort of potentially serious health issue you need a wingman coming to the appointments with you. Someone who can hopefully be a little more emotionally removed. Who can ask the questions you didn't think of to make sure you've covered everything. Who you can debrief with afterwards to make sure you've taken in all the important information you were just scrambling to wrap your head around while you were in the room. And sometimes to argue on your behalf.
Done this with my kidult for most of their life, obviously. Did it with my dad's oncologist visits for prostate cancer. Had it myself with cancer and other times. You just need someone you trust in your corner when you're vulnerable.
I know some authors in particular never, ever want to be sent story ideas. The potential of being accused of or sued for plagiarism down the track for something even vaguely similar is non-zero.
I’m sure the viewpoint from being in mergers and acquisitions is quite different (and to me, often comes across as quite callow). I’ve been a software developer for 35 years (closer to 45 if you include my pre-professional life, aka adolescence) and have deliberately stayed “on the tools” in my career with working in codebases and product development as I’ve found that is where I am happiest and can make the best contribution, rather than move up the managerial ladder to my level of incompetence, to quote Peter.
To create a successful product in IT, or any industry really, it takes a lot of different skills, facets and (often competing) priorities. And those priorities do change over time. I’m sure by the time a product or service crosses your desk, the codebase quality is not as big of a priority. Earlier in the life cycle a shit codebase makes for a shit product that is a lot harder to grow and maintain — so much so that most of them have probably folded before they reached the stage of looking to be merged or acquired. I’ve dabbled in sound mixing for live performance and when training others I’ve mentioned the fact that it very hard to make a bad singer or musician sound good, but very easy to make a good singer or musician sound bad. Same goes for trying to make what would otherwise have been a good product or service with a bad codebase. That’s really hard and creates a hell of a lot more work for every part of the business.
I’ve had sales people tell me to my face that they are the most important part of the business and the actual product or services is not that important. And in my more callow stages of life experience I’m pretty sure I’ve reciprocated with words like useless and parasitic, and that I could replace them with a small bash script. But in reality what we all do is important to the complex endeavour of developing and maintaining a successful product or service. The existential threat of AI is moving up the ladder of incompetence and changing the face of what we do. It may even jump a few rungs in the process. But it’s not there just yet. Keep making good sales, keep making good mergers, good products, good acquisitions, good services, and good codebases.
— No tokens were harmed in the production of this comment. —
Your argument is sound. It certainly takes a good deal of skill to create good code. And yes, good code makes it easier to create a better product.
And yes it's easier to build a better company on a better product.
But history is littered with "worse products" that won in the marketplace.
It turns out that all the attributes you name are helpful but not necessary. Good marketing trumps good product. We see this over and over again.
The best combination is good marketing and good product. If I can only get 1 of those then I'll take hood marketing. Equally if you have a good product but bad marketing you don't get many (if any) users. The "ask" section on this site is littered with that.
So, assuming we can all make "good enough" code, the code doesn't matter. It's all good enough. The distinguishing feature is the marketing, because that leads to market share, and that's all any company is really selling (once it sells for a lot).
I'm upvoting you because your comment is well made, and certainly common, even if it is incorrect:)
Having been involved in multiple different acquisitions, on both sides of the table, I can anecdote that the code quality had no impact on any part of the acquisitions. The players are not buying or selling the code.
Your entire argument hinges on "good enough". Problem is: you can never know if something is "good enough", except in hindsight for those products that succeeded.
I'm upvoting you because your comment is well made, and certainly common, even if it is nothing more than a tautology :)
The bar for "good enough" can be set quite low. In general, consumers can be convinced to buy almost anything. And their resistance to good marketing is very weak.
The problem with presenting good examples is that decades of sustained marketing is hard to overcome even with facts which are immediately obvious. Indeed good marketing has already negated those facts.
For example smoking is objectively terrible and yet was (and is) very popular for decades. Tobacco might be out, but vaping is still cool; same message as before.
From outside its easy to spot US examples because their absurdity is obvious to outsiders. It's harder to see examples in one's own society (because we have our own marketers.)
In software land there is obviously lots and lots of complete rubbish. Most of it gets no marketing at all. But is Windows the best OS? Is Chrome the best browser? Is Google the best search engine? Is Facebook the best social network?
Or do each of those have a competitor with "better code" that has no marketing and gets no traction?
When IBM hooked up with MS was it because of good code? When Sun bought MySql was it for the customer base, and Brand, or the code?
Did Facebook buy WhatsApp for 18 billion because of the code? Fo you think they compared the code to some other messenger with 100 users, or did the 400 million people using WhatsApp matter more?
In truth every product you ever heard of, and ever used, was good enough. Github is full of projects with really great code and no users.
There's a fundamental disconnect between business people and codesmiths. The programmer wants another year to craft perfection. The business needs to start selling and earning next week.
Good code lasts longer, and is better for the company in the long run. Engineers know this. Companies know they have to ship, and sell and earn, to survive at all. Engineers sneer at marketing, the product should be good enough. (Tell that to Amiga.) Marketeers are frustrated by Engineers who want to build forever and never ship. (Any wonder they want to replace us with AI.)
Yes AI products are objectively worse. But if history tells us anything; that doesn't matter.
But was Google the best search engine when they got popular? Most definitely! Chrome the best browser? According to most, yes! When MySQL got popular, that was also due to it being the best free product out there at the time.
That is to say, a good product can easily be the key factor to growth. Especially in the critical early phase. But it'll have to be a lot better than the well-known alternative.
I've been in an acquisition where code quality was important. But it was probably an edge case since the buyer just wanted to turn the company into a feature, and ease of integration into the buyer was important.
Counter-point: many acquisitions are not for the code itself but for the engineers who designed and wrote the code. Acquihire is almost exclusively used to describe acquiring engineering talent that can… design systems and write code.
> I’ve had sales people tell me to my face that they are the most important part of the business and the actual product or services is not that important.
Same here. This happened when I was 22 years old I didn't want to believe it.
BUT, I've seen far more shitty codebases win marketplaces with strong sales & marketing, than I've seen stellar codebases with shitty sales & marketplaces win marketplaces.
I think this perspective benefits from experience, the ability to step outside one’s self, see that the world is complicated, then focus on the thing you enjoy.
As much as I agree with you now, I also accept that younger me wouldn’t have!
Second is a utility that will take a text file export from Wallabag, and use text to speech to convert it to an MP3 file. I then integrated it into a utility that I already wrote for managing articles so if I tag an article with listen it automatically gets converted and gets shunted to the podcast listening app on my phone.
Last was to recreate a little directory listing utility that I've had a 32-bit binary of for ages, but no longer (if ever) have the source code for. I'd always promised myself I would write it once I learned Rust, but decided try using AI as I was getting impatient to have it now. The utility lists all files, including hidden, in a directory, grouped by type. Below is an example listing the directory for the project itself:
Some command-line flags to just list a particular type, such as only directories, or only unsatisfied symbolic links.reply