Posted by david927 3/30/2025
Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)
The real key here is how migrations over time are handled seamlessly and effortlessly. Never again do you have to meet with half a dozen teams to see what a field does and if you still need it - you can identify all the logic affecting the field and all the history of every change on the field and create a mapping. Then deploy and the system migrated data on the fly as needed.
Still in stealth mode and private github but the launch is coming.
The difference is that I'm building a database and exposing the WAL to the application layer. What that means is that you can connect your legacy DB application and have it issuing insert and update queries which are now native messages on a distributed message queue. Suddenly you gain a conokete audit trail for your entities without brittle tables and triggers to track this. Then instead of hooking up Qlik or devezium, you can just stand up another instance of the DB, propagate the realtime WAL and you've got streaming analytics - or whatever new application you want.
Also, I've recently picked up modeling my financial choices and circumstances in Python. Modeling uncertainty is especially interesting I've found. I might share the Jupyter notebook some time to get some feedback.
- It will work as a library that a tool (e.g. family finance tracker) would be based on;
- Every record will be immutable and undeleteable; the whole thing is space inefficient, though I've some mechanisms in mind for pruning away unnecessary records, and it's just plain text, so I'm not worried: should compress well; I wouldn't envision something like this working well on a very large scale though;
- Editing of preexisting records will be implemented as adding a new record that simply references the previous one as its previous version; also, you can implement a ledger by creating a parent-child chain (though the tracking of signatures I mentioned previously might be a simpler approach);
- I like the append-only model because it gives you history of edits for everything, and protects you in case of mistakes (or malice);
- You'll be able to collaborate on records (and the whole db) with other devices/people; every record will be signed by its author/device; conflicting edits (records marking the same record as their parent) will not be deconflicted automatically by the db: the high level app can choose how it wants to do that: throw up an alarm for the user, ignore the older fork, whatever;
- SyncThing-compatibility will be achieved by simply having each device only edit files specific to it; there won't be a single file that is edited by more than a single device/user, thus, SyncThing conflicts can't happen;
- The db will have fairly good guarantees: if it runs its checks and tells you all's good, you can be sure that records were not changed, there is not a new record masquerading as an old record, a record was not secretely deleted, records weren't reordered, another device didn't edit some other device's files, every record's author is its author;
- It was important for me to make the database easily editable and readable via regular text editors, i.e. not only plaintext, but text-editing-centric, but I've not found a way to do that at the lowest level; right now I'm contemplating using some variant of JSON for the records; however, I do envision a text-interface where the database, or a database query/subset, is rendered as a text file, and edits are automatically picked up by a daemon and translated into new records in the actual db, but that would be just another tool using this db, not a feature of the db itself;
- Like for anything synced via SyncThing, the user (or an app using the db) will want to implement some kind of backup (SyncThing is not meant for backups), unless the data is not sensitive to loss.
PUGs need a way to communicate and broadcast, to be discovered, but it doesn't necessarily need all of Meetup's features. Also, PUGs probably don't want to be tied to Facebook or other social media platforms. It'd be best if they allowed a simple ownership transfer, once you get tired of organizing.
That's why I created https://pythonuser.group/ - a lightweight side project that, despite being rough around the edges, fulfills the core need: allowing people to discover PUGs worldwide for free. The platform costs me almost nothing to maintain. Allows to subscribe to local PUGs via RSS (not sure if it works). I'll add "export all my PUG data" once someone requests this feature.
It's the first time I share it with the world. Please don't treat it as prod-ready. Feedback welcome at hn@{username}.com
See here: https://imgur.com/a/e3Xo9Io
Carimbo source code: https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo
More information: https://nullonerror.org/2024/10/08/my-first-game-with-carimb...
Started as a personal pain after moving to the US. Now works for both people and businesses. Built our own voice infra. iOS, Android for B2C, and web dashboard for B2B. Building full-time with my wife – just pushed the first version of the mobile app this week.
I do however think people would be more tolerant of an AI answering a phone call they made, I'm bullish on that half of the equation.
Absolutely not.
For younger kids I've modified Overcooked 2, a traditionally co-op game. I've replaced the second player with a visual scripting platform that allows kids to code their way through levels — worth noting I haven't removed co-op, there's still room for 2 other players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ackD3G_D2Hc
For older kids I've been making contributions to GodotJS, which allows you to build games in Godot using TypeScript rather than GDScript. GDScript is pretty nice, but I want to be able to teach kids skills that are more directly transferable to different domains e.g. web development:
https://github.com/godotjs/GodotJS/pull/65
I used to be Head of Engineering at Ender, where we ran custom Minecraft servers for kids: https://joinender.com/ and prior to that I was Head of Engineering at Prequel / Beta Camp, where we ran courses that helped teenagers learn about entrepreneurship: https://www.beta.camp/. During peak COVID I also ran a social emotion development book subscription service with my wife, a primary school teacher.
would the ability to pick up a new language/syntax be also a skill worth learning?
but my impression of the godot community is a lot of gdscript,some C#. So they would not easily be growing in the godot community and make games.
as for teenagers learning new languages, if i remember my teens, 200 years ago, learning new computer things was a thrill, not a chore.
and like I said earlier, I see the habit of picking up a new language a wonderful skill.
hope it is clearer. good luck with your quest of teaching kids to make their own games with godot.
Therefore, I‘m working on a mid- to longform blog post that details how precisely the competencies that senior developers and tech leads already have are the key to fully harness the potential of these tools.
And who knows, maybe I‘m going to develop this into some form of consulting or training side project.
https://manuel.kiessling.net/2025/03/31/how-seasoned-develop...
Feedback more than welcome!
https://manuel.kiessling.net/2025/03/31/how-seasoned-develop...
I've been working on building a programming method for biology labs. Basically, it is a dynamic execution environment using lua that can have full rewind-ability (for complete execution tracing) and pausing - you can execute some code then wait a week or so to continue execution. The idea is you can have a dynamic environment for executing biology experiments where the route changes on the basis of outcomes - something I haven't really seen anywhere else. Then I focused a bit on the pedagogy of LLMs so that you can ask an LLM to generate a protocol, and then when you execute it and get unexpected results, it can automatically debug its own protocol using a code sandbox.
It all sounds decent in theory but the difference is I actually implemented it and ran a real biology experiment with it (albeit a simple one that I knew wouldn't work)
Demo here: https://github.com/koeng101/autodemo (probably watch the video)
To start with, there's https://nuenki.app. It's a browser extension that selectively translates sentences into the language you're learning, so you're constantly immersing yourself in text at your knowledge level.
I've also been working with a friend on a device to help blind people without light perception. I'm quite new to electronics. It's pretty simple, conceptually - a coin-sized device on the forehead that takes in the light intensity in a ~15 degree cone, then translates it into high resolution haptic feedback to the forehead.
The idea being that it means people without light perception can gain a sixth sense through neuroplasticity, with helps them navigate the room and understand their surroundings. We're planning on open sourcing the files. My mum used to teach blind kids, and there's been quite a lot of interest!
As for Nuenki, I'm pretty bad at marketing, so I'm doing a final lot of work to see if I can make it work financially - seeing if an exceptionally generous affiliate program will do the trick - before putting it on maintenance mode, since I have a small group of users who really like it. I'm burning through my gap year fast, and really want to focus on the electronics project, tutoring, and practicing maths for my physics degree.
I just installed it and enjoying the integration.