Comment by giancarlostoro

17 hours ago

I have done both strict back-end, strict front-end, full stack, QA automation and some devops as well, I worked in an all Linux shop where we were encouraged by great senior devs to always strive for better software all around. I think you're right, it mostly depends on your mindset and how much you expose yourself to the craft. I can tackle obscure front-end things sometimes better than back-end issues despite hating front-end but knowing enough to be dangerous. (My first job in tech really had me doing everything imaginable)

I find the LLMs boost my productivity because I've always had a sort of architectural mindset, I love looking up projects that solve specific problems and keeping them on the back of my mind, turns out I was building myself up for instructing LLMs on how to build me software, and it takes several months worth of effort and spits it out in a few hours.

Speaking of vibe coding in archaic languages, I'm using LLMs to understand old Shockwave Lingo to translate it to a more modern language, so I can rebuild a legacy game in a modern language. Maybe once I spin up my blog again I'll start documenting that fun journey.

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giancarlostoro

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badRNG  14 hours ago

> Speaking of vibe coding in archaic languages

Well, I think we can say C is archaic when most developers write in something that for one isn't C, two isn't a language itself written in C, or three isn't running on something written in C :)

  • kgeist  8 hours ago

    If we take the most popular programming languages and look at what their reference (or most popular) implementations are written in, then we get:

      C++: JavaScript (V8), Java, C#

  C: Python, PHP, Lua, Ruby

  Self-hosted: Go, Rust

    Far from archaic indeed. We're still living in the C/C++ world.

    • pjmlp  1 minute ago

      Java and C# compilers are selfhosted.

      Then depending on which JVM implementation we are talking about the actual JVM runtime can be Java, C, or C++, or a mix of them.

      Modern C compilers are written in C++.

      Rust uses LLVM, written in C++.

burnt-resistor  15 hours ago

Hehe. In the "someone should make a website"™ department: using a crap tons of legacy protocols and plugins semi-interoperable with modern while offering legacy browsers loaded with legacy plugins something usable to test with, i.e.,

- SSL 2.0-TLS 1.1, HTTP/0.9-HTTP/1.1, ftp, WAIS, gopher, finger, telnet, rwho, TinyFugue MUD, UUCP email, SHOUTcast streaming some public domain radio whatever

- <blink>, <marquee>, <object>, XHTML, SGML

- Java <applet>, Java Web Start

- MSJVM/J++, ActiveX, Silverlight

- Flash, Shockwave (of course), Adobe Air

- (Cosmo) VRML

- Joke ActiveX control or toolbar that turns a Win 9x/NT-XP box into a "real" ProgressBar95. ;)

(Gov't mandated PSA: Run vintage {good,bad}ness with care.)

  • giancarlostoro  14 hours ago

    To be fair, we have Flash emulators that run in modern browsers, and a Shockwave one as well, though it seems to be slowing down a bit in traction. Man, VRML brought me back. Don't forget VBScript!