Sure. I'm experimenting like everyone else, but I mostly use gptel as the primary interaction surface and Claude Code for a range of refactorings and other "more than mechanical, less than creative" edits. Both of these are very (!!!) well complimented by magit, which is so good at AI supervision it seems designed for it, by a genius.
For Claude Code I'm rapidly switching anything I want "vibe coded" into Hadkell for code, Dhall for config, and check-heavy Nix for deploy. Between that and some property tests that I seed and then have Opus elaborate on, you can put Claude Code so restrictive that it just hits the compiler in a loop until useful code comes out. Its trapped: I hoist CLAUDE.md in from the Nix store so it physically can't edit out the brutal prompts around mocks and lies, and -Wall -Werror in GHC gives it nowhere to hide, all it can do is burn tokens and desperately Web Search tool until it gets it perfect ish or I cut off its money because this requires a real LLM minimum and likely a real programmer. If there's a property test welded into the type system it can't even fail to use a parameter: that's an error Claude.
I have a bunch of elisp in // hypermodern // emacs for things like OpenRouter integration and tool use, but frankly, stock gptel is so strong I always wonder if I'm getting my money's worth trying to tune it into the asymptote.
Also as another Emacs user I'm wondering what lesser known packages or elisp snippets do you use? gptel, magit, tramp and org-mode are the usually touted killer features, but what else do you use in the Emacs ecosystem?
Sorry, I saw another commenter ask about the dots but for some reason didn't see this one, all the key files are linked as gists here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44817968
Let me know if you have any questions (or suggestions for that matter, it's rough in places).
Share your dotemacs/gptel config? I'm not in love with emacs eider integration. Wondering how to put direct editing/control to the model. Still very cludgy with gptel though I've been using it for months
This is the fairly "cut down" one I alluded to without my mixed-results heavyweight AI integration stuff, this is like a gist of my open dev box session so it's got random shit commented out and stuff, but I think most people's config looks like that point in time:
I work for a medium-sized proprietary/discretionary fund. AFAIK the principles trade all kinds of stuff, macro stuff. My current job is tuning up the execution on the cryptocurrency adjacent desk, but not like blockchain stuff, it's somewhere in between OG crypto trading stuff and like Wall St. HFT circa 2006-2010 depending on how you measure, it's in the "kernel bypass matters but FPGAs are still exotic" sort of regime, some of it is legacy REST APIs still but FIX 4.2 SBE and other real finance protocols (and real banks and stuff) are starting to be a part of the ecosystem.
I aspire to be a lot faster than this stuff (I've built faster stuff than this) but this is quite a good library (amazingly good by OSS standards, good stuff in this area is rarely OSS, props to the maintainers): https://github.com/crypto-chassis/ccapi, in particular this library does a really good job of being correct across a lot of surface area, it's serious people doing it, and there are forks of it that use DPDK floating around.
If by who's paying for it you mean the big Anthropic bill? My boss's boss is pretty enlightened about the fact that learning how to use AI well is expensive, so when I'm on a tight schedule I get a pretty forgiving budget for the model fees. It's a pretty serious perk in the sense that it's really expensive to master using these things :)
I very much recommend just watching some of the great `magit` videos on youtube, but later on when I have time I'll do a little `asciinema` of like, a Claude Code interaction and reviewing / piecewise incorporating the bots changes, so if you check back here tonight or tomorrow latest I'll do a little demo.
I buy disposable vapes because I convince myself it’s my last one. Once it runs out I’ll quit.
Buying a rig is accepting defeat.
Except this vape ran out faster than I expected. I have a big week at work coming up and I can’t afford the dip in energy level and productivity that comes with withdrawal. I’ll buy one more just this once and then I’ll quit for sure.
Amazing the hoops my mind jumps through for an addictive molecule.
I went from disposables to a refillable one as part of my cutting down.
Being able to mix my own liquid meant I could slowly reduce my nicotine levels, whilst maintaining the habit of smoking, making it easier to finally come off it at the end.
Switch to unflavored. The flavorings likely act as MAO inhibitors and synergistically boost the neurological effects of nicotine which by itself is not significantly addictive (but can be habit-forming for some people).
Exception to the rule is menthol flavoring. Menthol is a kappa opioid agonist. In the nervous system, it produces dysphoria — opposite of euphoria, i.e. feeling bleak, anxious, depressed. This effect lasts longer than nicotine’s effect, leading to redosing.
It might be better to accept what is right now and buy a rig but then play with the nicotine level to reduce it step by step. Once you reach 0 you won.
> I’ll invite an acquaintance to get a coffee or beer with me a few times but never have this acquaintance seemingly think of me if I’m not directly asking them to hang.
This is a great start! You’re already doing what most people find the hardest: making the first move.
Grabbing coffee, and even going out to dinner, aren’t good activities for making deep connections. They’re too short and too routine. They can work, it’ll just take longer, and you will have to work harder to make sure conversation is meaningful.
I think the best way to make real friendships is to go on a weekend trip somewhere together. First of all, you’re spending days together instead of hours, but more importantly, you’ll have a shared experience to remember. You get to see what someone is like not only during activities and meals, but also during downtime.
Weekend trips could be awkward if it’s just one on one though, so if you don’t have a group, the next best thing is doing an activity together. Figure out a shared interest, then invite your new friend to do something you’d both enjoy. Maybe it’s a concert, talk, hike, whatever. Do that a few times and your new friend will associate you with that activity. Next time they’re going to a concert/talk/hike or whatever, they’ll invite you to tag along.
Btrfs snapshots are the closest thing I can think of. It doesn’t have the concept of branches specifically, but you can take snapshots of the entire file system and view specific files from those snapshots without having to roll back the whole system.
Manual saving files with different version names is the easiest solution that would probably work for most use cases. That’s what I do for music production. Every time I start a session I save my project with a new minor version, e.g. Epic Banger v0.4, in case I need to revisit older versions. I wish there was a way to include change log messages though.
Managing rounding and ensuring each set of entries balance can be tricky, especially if you have to share data with a system that can only handle currencies with two decimal places.
There are scenarios where it’s actually not possible to have every set of entries balance, and have the total sum of all entries equal the correct balance.
For example, if you had three monthly payments of $5, $10, and $10, you might book something like:
Cash (5) Expense 8.33 Deferred (3.33)
Cash (10) Expense 8.33 Deferred 1.67
Cash (10) Expense 8.33 Deferred 1.67
All three of those blocks of entries balance, but the sum of expenses is 24.99 instead of 25.
I’m not sure there’s a way around this issue if you’re forced to use two decimal places. Luckily the discrepancy is immaterial.
I’d love to know if anyone else has encountered this problem.
In my mind, a senior engineer knows what needs extra attention and where it’s ok to cut corners.