> The most creative act is this continual weaving of names that reveal the structure of the solution that maps clearly to the problem we are trying to solve.
From Confucius, The Analects, 13.3:
If names are not rectified, then language will not be in accord with truth. If language is not in accord with truth, then things cannot be accomplished. If things cannot be accomplished, then ceremonies and music will not flourish.
> The value-add that Microsoft brings to Github Copilot is near zero
You are not their target audience.
The value add is the GitHub integration. By far the best.
GH has cloud agents that can be kicked off from VS Code; deeply integrated with GH and very easy to set up. You can apply enterprise policies on model access, MCP white lists, model behavior, etc. from GitHub enterprise and layered down to org and repo (multiple layers of controls for enterprises and teams). It aggregates and collects metrics across the org.
It also has tight integration with Codespaces which is pretty damn amazing. `gh codespace code` and it's an entire standalone full-stack that runs our entire app on a unique URL and GH credentials flow through into the Codespace so everything "just works". Basically full preview environments for the full application at a unique URL conveniently integrated into GH. But also a better alternative to git worktrees. This is a pretty killer runtime environment for agents because you can fully preview and work on multiple streams at once in totally isolated environments.
If you are a solo engineer, none of this is relevant and probably doesn't make sense (except Codespaces, which is pretty sweet in any case), but for orgs using the GH stack is a huge, huge value add because Microsoft is going to have a better understanding of enterprise controls.
If you want to understand the value add of Copilot, I think you need to spend a bit of time digging into the enterprise account featureset in GH, try Codespaces, try Copilot cloud agents. Then it clicks.
I have found this at a different scale in our company: agents keep writing the same private static utility methods over and over again without checking for it in existing code.
Sometimes, I'll catch it writing the same logic 2x in the same PR (recent example: conversion of MIME type to extension for images). At our scale, it is still possible to catch this and have these pulled out or use existing ones.
I've been mulling whether microservices make more sense now as isolation boundaries for teams. If a team duplicates a capability internally within that boundary, is it a big deal? Not clear to me.
Let me preface this by saying I have been writing very exacting code for most of my career to a high standard. But with AI generated code, I’m not sure if all the same value-prop exists that were used to with traditional hand-written code.
For example if AI generates 2x of a utility function that does the same thing, yes that is not an ideal, but is also fairly minor in terms of tech debt. I think as long as all behaviors introduced by new code are comprehensively tested, it becomes less significant that there can be some level of code duplication.
It also is something that can be periodically caught and cleaned up fairly easily by an agent tasked to look for it as part of review and/or regular sessions to reduce tech debt.
A lot of this is adapting to new normal for me, and there is some level of discomfort here. But I think: if I were the director of an engineering org and I learned different teams under me had a number of duplicated utility functions (or even competing services in the same niche), would this bother me? Would it be a priority for me to fix? I think I’d prefer it weren’t so, but probably would not rise to the level of needing specific prioritization unless it impacted velocity and/or stability.
Majority of the cases, I think this is harmless. In C#, for example, we have agents repeatedly generating switch expressions for file extensions to MIME-type.
This is harmless since there's no business logic.
But we also have some cases where phone number processing gets semi-duplicated. Here, it's a bit more nebulous since it looked like it was isolated, but still had some overlapping logic. What if we change vendors in the future and we need a different format? Have to find all the places it occurs and there's now no single entry point or specific pattern to search for.
Agents themselves may or may not find all the cases since it is using `grep` and doesn't have semantic understanding of the code. What if we ask for it to refactor and its `grep` misses some pattern?
Still uneasy, but yet to feel the pain on this one.
> For example if AI generates 2x of a utility function that does the same thing, yes that is not an ideal, but is also fairly minor in terms of tech debt. I think as long as all behaviors introduced by new code are comprehensively tested, it becomes less significant that there can be some level of code duplication.
We still run into the same issues that this brings about in the first place, AI or no AI. When requirements change will it update both functions? If it is rewriting them because it didn't see it existed in the first place, probably not. And there will likely be slight variations in function / components names, so it wouldn't be a clean grep to make the changes.
It may not impact velocity or stability in the exact moment, but in 6 months or a year - it likely will, the classic trope of tech debt.
I have no solution for this, it's definitely a tricky balance and one that we've been struggling with human written code since the dawn.
> Scaling the workers sometimes exacerbates the problem because you run into connection limits or polling hammering the DB
Design question here (not familiar enough with this approach with Pg)
Would an alternative be to have a small pool of pollers that would "distribute" the records to a later pool of workers instead of having workers directly poll?
> "I think that though we are a railway company, we consider ourselves a city-shaping company. In Europe for instance, railway companies simply connect cities through their terminals. That is a pretty normal way of operating in this industry, whereas what we do is completely different: we create cities and then, as a utility facility, we add the stations and the railways to connect them one with another."
I think this is it. The economic model incentivizes rail development. (Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal frameworks that in the US make it very hard for this model to work)
Because the railway companies also participate in the economic activity at the destinations, they extract extended value from enabling mobility. Imagine if the rail operators owned a percentage of a stadium or convention center, for example. This then creates the economic incentive to build more connections to this "hub".
It's actually a bad example - there is barely anything around Kyoto station except a few hotels and some shopping malls. The main shopping/entertainment area and almost all tourist attractions are north of it, requiring connection by bus or subway.
The areas around major stations in basically any other city are far more developed. Look at Osaka-Umeda for example. I don't know if that's due to the historical buildings or the relative lack of good railway within the city itself (Kyoto is mostly a hub to get between other lines)
The original comment was "I think that though we are a railway company, we consider ourselves a city-shaping company." Kyoto is absolutely not built around its station. Walk a few blocks away and there's nothing but regular apartments! The true centre is Shijo Kawaramachi.
The station itself is a pretty active hub. We arrived there 9:30 AM to visit teamLabs Kyoto (which is just walking distance away from the station) and it was already pretty packed in the station.
But I think your observation/comment maybe misses the mark: the rail operators may still end up owning some of the commercial real estate nearby whether it's office buildings, hotels, etc. It doesn't all have to be shopping or dining, just that the rail operating owning the real estate near the transit hubs provides an incentive to provide service to that hub to create more value from those holdings.
In my travels through Japan and Taiwan, rail stops are almost always hubs of economic activity of all sorts. It's a selling point when searching for accommodations while planning trips. Easy access to food and shopping. Taiwan night markets in cities, for example, are almost always near major rail station of some kind (light, metro, train). No need to go very far to get from one point of interest to another.
> Certainly, part of it is also cultural and legal frameworks that in the US make it very hard for this model to work
How so? In the United States Congress granted land to railroad companies, and the companies can sell the land to finance building tracks. Many cities started as railroad stops and grew because of the railroad.
I suspect the commenter above is reflecting on 2026 USA and not 1850 USA. The past tense nature of your comment if part of the concern highlights a common recognition that there is limited evidence the country is currently capable of building.
A lot of NIMBY/racism/classism and modern reality of legal delays means that it can be costly.
Zoning laws is another. It's a lot of fun visiting Japan and Taiwan because you can wander around and there's a huge variation of utilization in a given block. US approach to zoning means that I rarely see similar utilization in the US.
Separate from this is politics.
I'm in the NYC metro area and we've been trying to expand access into NYC for decades.
You would think that this would be a no-brainer because it enables so much economic activity in both directions (NY/NJ). Yet, Chris Christie canceled the ARC project (which itself was years in the making) for optics at the time of the Tea Party.
There's an existing disused commuter rail line in NJ near the Hudson that was shut down in the 60s. It still has many of its stations and density to support rail service today but can't be reopened because of the NIMBYs. If they can't make that work, the rest of the country is mostly hopeless.
If we put the same amount of economic pressure on rail that data centers have...the US would have probably have almost as nice infrastructure as China and be significantly better off.
The public rail industry has no bribing mechanism unlike the data center industry and the fossil fuel industry. Did I write bribe? Sorry, “campaign contribution.” But sometimes also literally bribes like Tony Soprano cash in the bag.
It's facetious to pretend NIMBYs are as such because they're racist and classist, rather than because they just want to protect the single most valuable and future-determining investment they'll make in their entire lives.
Those factors are tied together and aren’t easily separable. The racism and classism comes in because they believe that people of a different race or class will diminish the value of their investment.
It is how (unregulated) markets work, but is this the right outcome? What do you think would happen if this were allowed to play out to its logical extent?
Not sure it's a bad thing. So, they would employ maybe 30 people after they're built. Consume a lot of power and water. I'd have to see the details of a specific proposal but I'd probably vote against personally.
I believe America has built railway towns. I am surprised why America that’s very fond of capitalism never developed this concept further? With some aggressive horizontal integration you can built your own kingdom. It is brilliant!
I sometimes see the US referred to as a "post-rail" society, meaning that it has outgrown the need for rail for the more intimate, personal transportation methods we see today. I submit that, like other HN commenters say, the US doesn't need rail due to this society. How will US citizens help their friends move or do their large (in terms of volume) Costco grocery shopping without large trucks and only using rail?
I’m probably a top 5% train nerd for the U.S. I took trains to work primarily from 2012-2020, in NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC. I used to ride Amtrak from Baltimore to DC every morning. I love Tokyo’s train system. I go there every year and I always take the train. But when I went there with my wife and three kids, I took a lot of Ubers! You can’t fit our double stroller with big America bags of toys and snacks on a business hours subway in Tokyo.
Americans love choice and they love stuff. They fill their cars with their stuff drive around on their own schedule without having to watch a clock or think about what’s near a train line and what isn’t. (Even with Tokyo’s amazing railway network, you have to think about that!) My wife drives to three different grocery stores 20 miles apart to get exactly the products she wants. The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store that’s conveniently on the train line between our house and work is completely alien.
To live within a Japanese system, Americans would have to change a bunch of other things about their culture. We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities. We’d have to learn to appreciate what’s conveniently available, instead of the exact thing we want.
And not even Tokyo’s amazing train network makes it convenient to juggle two working spouses and school drop off and pickup for three kids. What line is convenient to your house, both parents work, and all three kids’ schools? The Japanese don’t even try to solve that problem.
I lived for many years next to a train station in NJ. I could readily take the train in to Manhattan, but for the hours I'd be there in evenings and on weekends, it was much more convenient and faster to drive in. My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee). I then had the freedom to leave at any time without concern for the schedule.
> My town was far enough out that the cost was slightly cheaper to drive (before the congestion fee)
Aside from culture, this is another aspect which they touch on in the article. Japan doesn't have public parking. You're only allowed to buy a car if you have access to a parking spot. Tokyo is full of lots but they're all paid lots that charge in 30-60 min increments. There's also a lot of congestion zones in Tokyo which make driving in the city very expensive. Companies that do deliveries in the city often have a company car (or fleet of such) which lets them drive to destinations.
Overnight workers who do spend significant times at work before/after the trains stop do drive in. Most Japanese families in Tokyo live in suburbs surrounding the city and will walk, bike, or drive to a nearest train station to commute in.
I'm fairly far out from Boston/Cambridge but I'm pretty much the same situation. Going in for a commute (or 9-5 event), the commuter rail is pretty good; I'm a 7 minute drive to the station. But it's basically unworkable for an evening event (or a day into evening event). Trains are maybe every 90 minutes outside of commuting hours and they're largely empty. I end up suffering the drive in, paying for parking as needed (which isn't an issue if I'm going in for my usual theater), and then a pretty easy drive home. Wouldn't even think about taking rail in for the weekend.
If Tokyo was in America, your situation would be like this: imagine going outside of your home and walk for 10 minutes to a small hamburger shop. It only has 10 seats and it’s run a by hamburger nerd who makes elite hamburgers. This guy grinds his own beef, bakes his own buns and pickles his own pickles and everything is perfect. The burgers are only 8 dollars and you can’t even imagine of making hamburgers yourself.
I know, I’m familiar with Tokyo. But my family would take up half the restaurant, only one of the three kids would like the burger, and the other two would throw a shit fit because the burger guy only sells burgers. Two different societies optimizing for different things.
There are family restaurants in Japan as well. You would not bring your family to the place described above, you would go with your spouse, friends or colleges or other adults.
> We’d have to give our kids independence to take the train themselves, instead of spending every saturday driving them around to 3 different far flung activities.
The shock! The horror!
> The idea of just accepting whatever brand of hamburger buns they have at the store...
How could a family possibly survive! Imagine having to eat a different brand of hamburger buns! Truly, America is a shining beacon of modernity and convenience where I can get the exact, precise, industrially mass produced hamburger bun.
Maybe you misinterpreted the post you replied to? I don't think they were saying this stuff is a crazy proposal, just that it will be a different way of life for most Americans. No need to be so abrasive.
They were reacting to what was presented and saying that it was foolish. It doesn’t matter if the author presented it as “I am saying this” or “Americans think this”.
You’re preaching to the choir. I loved working at a company with a company cafeteria because I hated going out into midtown manhattan every day to choose lunch. But convincing americans that all their “choice” is illusory isn’t a matter of transit policy, it’s something much harder.
When we were in Japan my son walked to school when he was 6. Parts of the walk close to the school were supervised. It wasn't just allowed, it was expected.
It just occurred to me that some of the car-hating comments on HN might be motivated by a yearning for a more communal way of life (the expression of which has been suppressed by the US's ethic of freedom for the individual).
The same way people in every other country do it (rental vans)
Rail <-> Road isn't an either or issue. It wasn't in 1850 and it isn't today. The only difference, at least in the US, is that poorly designed government intervention/policies forced low population densities.
Rail and other forms of public transport simply don't work with suburban sprawl. Large roadways also don't work - compare the state of US infrastructure against pretty much every other country out there - it's just that the financial bill from an unbelievable amount of deferred maintenance hasn't come due yet.
> How will US citizens help their friends move or do their large (in terms of volume) Costco grocery shopping without large trucks and only using rail?
Japan happens to be the 4th largest market (by stores) for Costco (US, Canada, Mexico, Japan)
Trucks can be rented. When then-wife and I were remodelling the tired old house we lived in, we didn't own a truck. We talked about it (and in this instance, had space for one), and we mathed it a bit. The numbers quickly showed that it would be very expensive to own a truck, for only a little bit of added, occasional convenience.
When we needed a truck to move cabinets or drywall or whatever, we rented one for that. It didn't cost much.
When we moved houses, we rented a truck for that. It was easier and cheaper to move with one rented huge box truck, than to own something that would be useful for that.
Otherwise: Deliveries. We just had big stuff delivered. No problem. Things like appliances and TVs were simply delivered, and this never added any expense to the purchase.
These days, even Costco delivers stuff just fine. It does tend to cost more than in-store.
Rentals and deliveries can easily cost hundreds of dollars per year. It's not free; it might even be rationalized as being rather expensive.
But owning/insuring/maintaining/fuelling/parking a car (or a truck, just the same) can easily cost thousands. It's a different magnitude.
The work I do requires me to have things like tools and ladders with me. A sedan doesn't quite cut it (I've tried), and SUVs are awful for every practical road-going purpose.
So these tools and ladders are out in the van (a top-trim Honda Odyssey) right now. It does OK on gas, it's very comfortable, it keeps everything nice and dry with 3 zones of HVAC, and it's passively theft-deterrant: Nothing about it says "steal these tools" to a would-be thief at all.
It's really good.
If I did work that didn't require a vehicle like that then I'd just have a small sedan. (I live in a very car-centric area of Ohio, as do the people I'm fond of being near. I either need a car or I need to change my views about what I find important in life; that's the way the cookie crumbles.)
And if I lived in an area with actually-good public transportation and the kinds of neighborhood shops that this promotes, then I probably wouldn't even want a small sedan. I like walking and riding a bike. And I'd rather buy a transit pass and spend more time reading, than pay for all the things that having a car requires me to pay for.
Adding the occasional train ticket (that never needs new tires, or an oil change, or a timing belt) for longer trips would be cheaper than owning a car, too.
I ride my cargo bike to Costco. I can fit a full shopping cart on it, getting enough for a family of three regularly and easily. With a small hatchback car I could easily fit way more. If I had a convenient train I'd shop more frequently with a rolling 2 wheel cart.
It's really not difficult to shop large volume thongs without a giant car.
Rail for the US has always been more about moving goods than people. For overland long-haul freight it is significantly cheaper than trucking. Rail allows us to ship goods to places where we don’t have ports or river access. A place like Japan can make such good use of rail simply because it is so densely populated.
The US is also densely populated; when people are talking about high speed rail they are talking about connecting the major, close by metropolitan areas that most people live in.
The Midwest, as an example, has roughly the same size and population as France with a larger economy. In fact, if you overlay the French TGV network onto the Midwest with Chicago where Paris is, you get a pretty good approximation of where major Midwestern cities are located: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/NMr3J3gt8C
Most travel happens between cities that are close together, and Chicago has always been the larger gateway to the rest of the nation and the world.
The French urban areas on the TGV aren’t very big; Montpelier, for example, has a total of 600,000 people in its metro area, which is roughly the same size as Toledo, OH or Wichita, KS.
Montpellier probably gets more tourism than Toledo though. And most people taking the train to Paris are probably not doing it so they can fly somewhere else.
And yeah, there would be a fair amount of demand just to Chicago the same way there is a fair amount of demand to Paris, in that they’re both the regional powerhouses with finance, HQs, etc.
I don't think this is it. The main driver is that several operations in GH are scoped around a PR, not a commit. So the reason you need stacked PRs is that the layer of tooling above `git` is designed to work on logical groups of commits called a PR.
Right, the argument against: "how is this any different than splitting into single commits?" is simply: In general you want just one level above a commit which is the PR
Line up that map of hospitals at risk with voting patterns and it tells you everything you need to know: the red states, the ones most affected by this, voted for this so that the wealthy can have more tax cuts. Don't know what else to say about this other than American voters in the lower socio-economic rungs have been bamboozled by the conservative movement.
It appears to be considerably easier to complain and blame than to actually do work to fix it.
There's an inherent vulnerability if you actually try to fix something, people can point out what you did wrong, but if you never even try, you can't be criticized for that.
The most elegant solutions typically arise not out of unbounded degrees of freedom, but building specifically with a constraint in mind.
I think that this goes with point 1: composing the one pager helps define those constraints.
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