Looks like Textual[1] -- the buttons are always a giveaway

[1] https://github.com/Textualize/textual

Watching was supposed to be a prototype become the production code is one of the most constant themes of my 20 year career

Software takes longer to develop than other parts of the org want to wait.

AI is emerging as a possible solution to this decades old problem.

Everything takes longer than ppl want to wait. But when building a house, ppl are more patient and tolerant about the time taken, because they can physically see the progress, the effort, the sweat. Software is intangible and invisible except maybe for beta-testers and developer liaisons. And the visual parts, like the nonfunctional GUI or web UI, are often taken as "most of the work is done", because that is what people see and interact with.

It's product management's job to bridge that gap. Break down and prioritize complex projects into smaller deliverables that keep the business folks happy.

It's better than houses, IMO - no one moves into the bedroom once it's finished while waiting for the kitchen.

No, the org will still have to wait for the requirements, which is what they were waiting for all along.

until the whole company fails because lack of polishing and security in the software. Think tea app openly accessible databases...

is there any evidence the tea app failure was due to AI use?

Or as a new problem that it will persist for decades to come.

I don’t really see this as universal truth with corporate customers stalling process for up to 2 years or end users being reluctant to change.

We were deploying new changes every 2 weeks and it was too fast. End users need training and communication, pushback was quite a thing.

We also just pushed back aggressive timeline we had for migration to new tech. Much faster interface with shorter paths - but users went all pitchforks and torches just because it was new.

But with AI fortunately we will get rid of those pesky users right?

Different situation. You already had a product that they were quite happy with, and that worked well for them. So they saw change as a problem, not a good thing. They weren't waiting for anything new, or anything to improve, they were happy on their couch and you made them move to redo the upholstery.

They were not happy otherwise we would not have new requirements.

Well maybe they were happy but software needs to be updated to new business processes their company was rolling out.

Managers wanted the changes ASAP - their employees not so much, but they had to learn that hard way.

Not so fun part was that we got the blame. Just like I got down vote :), not my first rodeo.

Yes I pay for the most expensive Claude sub with my own money and use it at work.

I also have to use it via a proxy server I set up to get around the corporate firewall which explicitly blocks it. The company like the results but wouldn't like how I get them..

More corporate ridiculousness

CC very regularly ignores very explicit stuff in CLAUDE.md for me, and I know I'm not the only one. The cycle of compacting/starting new conversations feels like a sisyphean spiral of the same undesirable behaviour and I've yet to find a satisfactory solution despite a lot of effort to that end.

I don't think it's fair to dismiss this article as a superficial anti-ai knee jerk. The solutions you describe are far from perfect

Fair enough. For me compacting conversation always feels a bit weird; I have no way to tell what it effectively deleted from the context but I (very) regularly have it re-read and update CLAUDE.md as part of the process or after "discussions" with the LLM so I would guess that might be why it follows patterns in it a bit stricter for me than for most. It would be nice if the tool took care of that automatically.

You know something is a good idea when you're surprised it hasn't already been invented. This is one of those (assuming it actually hasn't I guess).

Really handy little tool. Nice one

I would be surprised if has not. There have been lots of tools over the years where the idea was to present a command-line interface compatible with Sendmail's message submission mode, and hand the mail over to a smart host, possibly not using anything like SMTP.

I predict that someone will be asking for the -t option to be supported here. (-:

it works implicitly . gmail api reads the headers for BCC / to: etc. I'll see about improving the command line args and usage

I felt the same way . The idea came when I tried to submit patches to sourcehut using my gmail account and the gmail smtp gateway didn’t work (connections, formatting).

A quick proof of concept with the REST API and I thought – why don’t we all use this for patches?

Same experience from pretty much the same time.

I ran a relatively small web consultancy at the time and we were in the middle of trying to specialise in the new, more complex things people were starting to build on the web.

We had the potential to land a contract with what would be by far the biggest client we'd ever had. But they wanted us to test the water with us first by having us build a series of obnoxiously complex manufacturing cost calculators for one of their sales-focused web sites.

It was all complex rules and interdependent inputs/display values. And because it could all be hard coded it was the perfect candidate for a client-side only site (I don't think we even called them SPAs yet)

I remember thinking jQuery UI didn't feel like the right tool and React was super clunky back then so I reached for Mithril and had a great experience.

The declarative approach, automatic updates to the DOM etc that we take for granted now felt like magic back then. Being able to describe the data model/logic in a relatively abstract way and then watch as the UI changed in response was pretty cool.

Did they ever tell you why you didn’t land the contract?

I’d bet the customer’s CTO/tech lead took one look at the codebase and was instantly discouraged because some novel and unknown frontend framework was used.

yeah (as became a theme really until we were acquired and it was no longer an issue) we didn't get past procurement as we failed some sort of due diligence check(s). Can't actually remember what it was specifically in that case, lacking some certification or weren't financially stable enough or some rubbish like that

Rings true for me. Always the sign that you've found someone you can be good friends with when you feel that sense of comfort

I always used to say about my wife in the early days: "being with you feels like being by myself" (meant as a compliment)

I think it depends on one's goals maybe.

Big communities are more diverse and easier to find like-minded people. Good if you want to blend in whilst being part of a subculture.

However, if the point is to stand out/be different then small, more homogenous communities present a great opportunity for those with the requisite confidence or apathy

100%

I live down the road from OP in Harrogate and it's an incredibly desirable and affluent place

Also while I'm commenting. I know OP isn't saying the North is shit. Just poor(ish).

Nevertheless I just want to say I love the north of England and genuinely think it's one of the best places in the world. We've already established that I'm in one of the better areas so my perspective might be a little skewed, but I honestly think it's an incredible place and I hope this doesn't put people off visiting.

Also from the Harrogate area, but moved to London for uni and haven't made it back yet. Whilst Harrogate is very nice and affluent, I'd say the biggest difference isn't the personal wealth but the council wealth. There's far far far more wealth in the south and I've honestly been amazed at just how big the gap is, especially noticeable in infrastructure and services like roads and schools. Even the schools in poor areas of London are better than the local Harrogate schools. Just look at Yorks council funding (now merged with Harrogate) which has the lowest funding per capita in the UK.

Despite this tho I'd much rather live in Harrogate and enjoy the countryside than London tbh, plus people are less miserable there...

You guys certainly have some of the nicest accents in the Anglosphere, imo.

I expect the accent is part of it, actually. Call it the Henry Higgins effect.

  Rose: If you ARE an alien, how come you sound like you're from the North?

  The Doctor: Lots of planets have a North!

(the joke lands better for American audiences if you mentally replace "North" with "South"; in many ways the economics/stereotypes are similar)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svi-fBXZzqI

> Harrogate and it's an incredibly desirable and affluent place

Did they fix the smell issues?

Poor vs shit is an interesting discussion. If your life, your environment, isn't shit, why would you even care if are poor? Would you rather be rich and unhappy? (I spend very little, yet I don't feel deprived.)

> I think as devs we often think of our site or application as the center of the user's universe

Jakob's law is a thing but I actually think in the case of GDS they are in the fairly rare position of perhaps being able to justify the hubris you speak of slightly.

Not only are they directly or indirectly responsible for the UI of a frankly staggering number of online services, they are also one of the most influential bodies - perhaps in the world - when it comes to this sort of thing.

My only concern about setting a standard (beyond the usual process of setting a standard) it's that a standard for what exactly? All the other government sites that ... you don't need this key sequence on?

For the user I think that still means asking them to memorize something odd for a very limited use case that you won't think of visiting any other government site.