Yeah there's something on almost every roof in Damascus, and Google's imagery is usually fashionably 2-5 years out of date so it's probably even more now.
"I have written this maxim a few different ways, but it is worth writing again: no army can help but recreate its civilian social structures on the battlefield."
Interesting to see Conway's law show up here. Companies tend to ship their org structure in a product.
I think Conway's law is more interesting. It seems natural that networks of human relationships would mirror each other when the same groups of humans translate themselves into a new context.
Whereas the structure of technological products is a "different thing" than the human relationships that created it, it's less obvious that it would translate across that boundary.
Unless the technology is glued together with ad-hoc systems using email, slack, Dropbox, and the like. At least that’s my experience in small businesses.
I think it’s about software engineers, who are supposed to be impervious about effects of caste structures and hierarchy, judging programming languages from the caste lens.
That is my interpretation, please don’t hold me against it
Someone once told me Indian software companies deliberately hold "secondary" staff like support etc under worse conditions than engineers (smaller monitors, less windows on walls, etc), because there was some law that said if they would get the same treatment, they would be eligible for same pay.
So they made sure the treatment was obviously inferior.
So, no idea but the Python restriction might have been only one more deliberate hardship on some poor folks.
If someone knows something more accurate, happy to learn.
True, but this is not what might be considered an unexamined company. You can be sure it's under all its investors' microscopes.
If for no other reason than they would rather spend their days procrastinating on everything else, so they can obsess over some of the most interesting numbers they will ever see.
Well if you've got billions of dollars just sitting around doing nothing, and many many more billions of dollars that are performing wonderfully, you should be able to afford throwing a few billion away if that's what ends up happening.
> I also think we need a high level formal specification language to tell agents what we expect them to do.
Let’s make that specification Turing complete while at it.
Jokes aside, IMO it will be a good natural progression. Specify the problem statement in LLM specification, generate the code in Go/Rust whatever is the language of your choice and review the generated code to make sure it adheres to the architecture/design principles that you have set.
It absolutely should be Turing complete. I want to formally specify some constraints/invariants that any generated code has to meet, like very high level test cases.
It doesn't have to be a new language. I'm sure some existing language can be used to create a DSL that serves this purpose.
It can obviously never be complete. Some parts of the spec will always have to be natural language if we want to make the best use of LLMs.
Maybe we can have Large Logic Models instead, and they could have formalized keywords with rigid meanings? Like IF, WHILE and FOREACH maybe. Or even ASYNC if you want to be modern about it.
I do think that AI models should get better at logic. But if code generators are supposed to be tools, we have to tell them what to do. I'm not sure what combination of languages is best for that purpose.
It would be so much easier if we could precisely specify what we wanted, without all the double meanings, slang and general ambiguity that comes from using a natural language.
If only there was an entire class of well-studied languages which don't have any such ambiguity. They'd be perfect for programming LLMs! We could call them "programming languages" perhaps.
What's the capacity though. Either way this seems extremely high unless we are talking in terms of like 100kw or something. For reference, I recently installed hybrid/net-metered system set up at my home in India; 7kw solar with a 20kWh battery for around $10K. The biggest cost is for the batteries though. The panels themselves have become extremely low price and the prices continue to fall.
It's interesting to see Tesla's solar business getting disrupted by Chinese manufacturers after EV.
> I would expect around 50k-60k for a 1000 sq ft roof (not US).
That's about 90 m². Here in Germany [1], if it's just replacing tiles, you're looking at 10k, add 20k for adding heat insulation - and you can get 15-20% back with government assistance from that sum. The only way you reach 50k in costs here is if you have to fix structural issues (e.g. rotting wood due to water ingress, but if you take proper care of your roof you won't need to do that - expected life time for roofs is about 80 years for the tiles and much more to the tune of centuries for the wood framing.
I included the structure because I only know of cases (including my own) where both needed replacing. Centuries for the wood structure is hypothetically possible of course, but only if maintenance is ideal (no water ingress) and without insects. Once there are water issues, they rapidly decay. Retrofitting both new insulation and additional roof loads like solar is also not possible for every old roof structure. The flat roofs somewhat common in 60s and 70s construction also have very short lives and often need to be replaced wholesale after 40-50 years. Despite the reputation, they're not at all cheaper than traditional roofs, at least not when you have to adhere to the current building codes
A bundle of shingles is $50, 3 bundles to cover 100 sq ft is $1.50 sq ft in materials. Figure $1.50/sq ft to demo and dispose of the old roof shingles.
Materials and demo comes out to $3,000, figure $500 for tools and nails, mark it up to $4,500-5,000
Probably (4) people can knock out a 1000sq ft roof in an 8 hour day, call it 40 hours of labor for demo and install.
Surely the labor cost and markup is not $1,000 an hour, that’s what it would have to be for a 1000 sq ft roof to cost $50-60k. $125/hr for 40 hours is $5,000.00
I’m building reporting for my company and what you said mirrors my experience nearly 100%.
I’m a backend developer so I know what it takes to build a half decent reporting system. Writing all those queries, slice and dice charts and what not takes real time and effort. All that has been outsourced to Claude Code. I now focus on ensuring that the system is sound architecturally and that useful reports are being surfaced.
