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I learned how to code assembly. Knowing it makes me a better developer.

It’s how I deeply understand what a RAM lookup vs having it already in a register means for optimization.

These are things you need to know if you want to work on high performance applications or in limited embedded systems.

So, yes, many of us need to and it’s important we keep teaching it to future students.


It’s how I deeply understand what a RAM lookup vs having it already in a register means for optimization.

Me, too, but we should both understand what we're talking about: a hobby.

It's like teaching cursive to schoolkids. All well and good, but don't you dare complain about limited classroom time for instruction in other, more important subjects.


Understanding how computer architecture works is a hobby? Is unimportant?

I built and deployed embedded systems robotics that protect water and oil pipeline infrastructure that costs billions of dollars if there is a failure.

That is not a hobby, that’s a career.

The tools I built just helped fix the fresh water access for my entire city of 2 million people. Explain to me what’s more important than people having access to water.


That's great, you sound proud of your work and you should be. But what about all the human pipeline-inspection crews you've put out of work with your robots?

I'm not putting any inspection crews out of work.

Humans put the tool in the pipe and analyse the data. This isn't newfangled shiny tech, it's old stuff designed and maintained from a decade ago.

There's no fancy AI, no magical automated robots. Just humans using EM tools to scan pipes.


This is why I like fountain pens… I regularly write down the things that are important to me.

Things I need to do, ideas I want to ponder on, people I need to remember or get respond to.

Writing is learning. Writing is understanding.

I have so many conversations with people who are always telling me I’m “retro” or “old school” for doing this.

I don’t even bother explaining the psychology behind it anymore. I’ve got no time for the ignorance.


Sharing my small bit of wisdom about burn out:

Burn out isn’t caused by putting in too many hours at work. It’s a symptom of forcing yourself to do work you don’t align with.

Forcing yourself to care about KPI’s and goals you don’t give a hoot about will usually result in collapse.


That sounds very interesting to hear about!

What diminished the day-to-day difficulty for you? Is it because the ecosystem became more mature, or did you "crack the code" for how to interface with everything you needed from your phone? Is your use-case for a phone wildly different from that of a typical user?

It's really cool to hear that someone is successfully daily driving it and making this ecosystem work for them!


> What diminished the day-to-day difficulty for you? Is it because the ecosystem became more mature, or did you "crack the code" for how to interface with everything you needed from your phone?

Neither! I just got accustomed to doing without stuff. That’s an effect I wildly underestimated.

Many things are still difficult (looking at you, CloudFlare [0] and DataDome [1]!) but I think I’ll manage.

> Is your use-case for a phone wildly different from that of a typical user?

Not really, I guess.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816826

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921224


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