I’ve met one who asked me a question like this and he’s still at Apple having been promoted several times to a fairly senior position. But the question was only half hearted because the question was “how much CO2 would we save if we made something 10% more CPU efficient” and the answer even at Apple’s current scale of billions of iPhones was insignificant.
So now you and I both have come across such a manager. Why would you make the claim most engineer’s don’t come across such people?
I am very interested by something like this but your README is not making it easy to like. Demonstrating with 2-3 sample apps using RDX might have gone a long way.
So how do I start using it if I, for example, want to use it like a decentralized `syncthing`? Can I? If not, what can I use it for?
I am not a mathematician. Most people landing on your repo are not mathematicians either.
We the techies _hate_ marketing with a passion but I as another programmer find myself intrigued by your idea... with zero idea how to even use it and apply it.
- MANDATORY: Re-learn focus. I will not self-diagnose but I exhibit ADHD symptoms and I started actively fighting them back (they mostly come from the phone). I am not going to just deny myself access to apps on schedule -- my brain never clicked schedule, not even once in my life -- but through a persistent and sustainable self-change from deep within. It's slow but it's beginning to work.
- MANDATORY: Get more intimate with my Neovim. I've always kind of half-arsed my editors / IDEs, I always found it annoying to become a deep expert. This must change; surface-level skills rob you of productivity. I already am hugely annoyed by my typing speed, which is quite excellent but still not enough to work almost at the speed of thought. I want to achieve something near to these levels.
- OPTIONAL: Integrate closer with one ore more LLM agents for coding. I have not paid for any yet but copying-pasting from a web UI gets tiring. Sometimes you really just want to say "OK, now remove that duplicate test and include that edge case" and see it materialize in 20 seconds. I am not against paying, it's just that so far the paid tiers have not been a blocker. Well, seems like they are now.
- MANDATORY: Prioritize body. I have health conditions and I have a relatively good visibility how to fix them. I regularly end up desperately trying to solve more and more problems on the computer just so I don't get up and start a workout. I started turning this around but it's way too slow and time and age don't wait for anyone.
In general: connect better with myself, forgive myself all the previous mistakes, understand why and how they came to be and remove the root causes, put myself on a better path. And above all: be more true to myself.
I hope you find that your first and last goals "re-learn focus" and "prioritize body" feed into each other nicely. I worked a lot at my ability to focus on tasks (not just work, but in general) this year, and starting an exercise routine really helped me out a lot. Strength work is a time for me to not be on the phone or computer. Having that time to be in my own head and just think about stuff I find helps sharpen my mind for the rest of the day. Good look!
I do a lot of local dev using docker. I've taken to adding an image just for agents and using that to make modifications. Agents can install or run anything they need without touching my actual machine. I can also limit what they can read and write.
Yes, that would be the ideal setup indeed, agreed.
But ruined health made me laser-focus on my wife and my work and I ignored many other things. Much to my shame, I don't even have a home media center and I have all the skills to make it happen and have it be much better than f.ex. Netflix or Disney+ UI.
It's all about carefully picking my battles, at least in this stage of life. Lack of focus and trying to be everywhere led to me making dozens, if not hundreds, of easily avoidable mistakes. I am hellbent on never allowing that again.
I feel like I could’ve written exactly this myself.
The first point is the hardest. It affects every aspect of my life and I have no idea how to really tackle it. This is the first year where I feel the need to take drastic action to achieve some kind of improvement.
I would not even know how to call my so-called "technique" if somebody else did not do it for me: awareness.
What I do I would today call "reconciliation" or "making peace". Let me explain.
On the one hand, I start recognizing in a colder, more methodical and mathematical manner, what things I did screw up in my life and why. I drill down and understand what emotions, unmet needs and un-addressed trauma led to these faulty decisions. Then I say: I understand why I did it but this only worked against me, it's time to change it and put myself on a better path. And by "better path for me" I don't mean only financial and career success; I mean those _and_ being happier and calmer.
On the other hand, I allow my more beastly / primitive / emotional / immature side to show up. I don't shun it, I try to sympathize with it and somewhat validate it. That's basically treating a part of yourself like an angry and lost kid: you do feel for them but want them to stop doing damage. But you also want to not force anything on them; you want them to understand and internalize they are only hurting themselves and others (in this case: other parts of you) with zero benefit for anyone involved.
---
It's not easy. I had a very rocky start in life. Sure I did not sleep under bridges but growing up in a shitty Eastern European town with a gay brother and you yourself being the nerd who effortlessly gets all A grades and is also good at karate, physically attractive and liked by girls sadly had a ton of downsides that many people are blind of. Almost everyone hates you for being different and they feel threatened by you while all you want is to fit in and be a part of a friendly group. It was and still is a big tragedy, one I don't claim I have managed to come to terms with even as of today.
---
But what I do lately is talk to my more primal side: "Look, I really understand how much you hate doing X and Y. I hate them too! But what else would you do? We did it your way for so long, you had an almost complete full reign and look what happened -- now we all suffer from severely diminished physical and mental health, we hate our life and often our work, we know that we wasted our best years on pointlessly rebelling against things we could never change. Where did all that bring us? Please, work with me. I understand that you never feel heard because we never achieved the life you wanted. But I can't see any shortcuts. Do you? If not, then let us please take the long but much safer road to our goals. That way we'll still get there one day. If we are not making progress then we'll talk again and readjust strategy and maybe do things more your way. But in the meantime, can we do things my way for a while? Please?"
Or something very similar.
But all that is 99% specific to me. You really have to find your own way to your deeper and more primal / emotional side. It exists and very often sabotages you because you never give it the wheel. Being civilized does this to us and no, I am not saying you should go outside and beat someone to death with a ratchet wrench of course. I mean that you should find a way to do the things you truly want, regardless of the cost.
I am NOT doing this well at the moment. For example I am too chicken to give up programming. But as mentioned above, I am trying to reconcile a few factors the best way I can for the moment. Maybe if that unlocks more energy and more motivation then the time would be ripe for more drastic measures.
Adult diagnosis last year for me, bring gentle with myself for past mistakes is part of my plan. I’m also trying adderall under medical supervision, so I can strengthen the habits and systems with a little extra help.
Check my reply to your sibling. No good formula. I am just starting (was somewhere at the beginning of 2025). In general: try to reconcile the parts of you that don't feel listened to, with your everyday self.
And be a touch assertive when you need to. I found I can't just put down the phone so I changed what I do on my phone (books instead of doom-scrolling). So far it works okay-ish. I am fine with a gradual progress.
> MANDATORY: Get more intimate with my Neovim. I've always kind of half-arsed my editors / IDEs, I always found it annoying to become a deep expert. This must change; surface-level skills rob you of productivity.
I'm actually not that convinced of these productivity gains in the context of IDE tricks. The cost of learning + tool-lock seems steep compared to the actual productivity gains. I'm switching fairly regularly between IDE's, and even if VS Code is the default, the only reason I'm considering learning it in depths is because some people incessantly comment on these things during pair programming.
I'm in the same boat as the parent with helix. I like to think that its not about being able to type x chars more per second but rather doing some clever tricks sometimes with your IDE just because they safe you from boring work and is lots of fun. For example repeating the same action with macros across multiple files is so helpful and maybe only needed once a month or so, but oh boy, when you pull it off it is so fun and rewarding!
I’m used to both vim and emacs. While I appreciate some IDE power features (debugging, code generation, tools integration,…), ultimately editing is very much a chore with them. You could add emacs or vim keybindings, but then you start to miss some of their features.
But whatever the editor/IDE, There’s always some neat tricks that will help you, especially around editing and tools integration.
I get your point but I am fairly sure I'll never move away from Neovim or nano (when I really have no choice).
There are Zed and Helix of course and they are on my radar but... not enough focus and energy for such big quests.
As for speed, I know Neovim can do much more than I use it for and I want the speed. When I can code even quicker my thought just flows through my fingers and the result is always good. But I have not been like that for years (ever since I gave up Emacs) and I want it back (and no I wasn't that much faster with Emacs either).
I would say durability. HN is obsessed by e-waste so pointing out that something can last 7+ years wins some over. Not being sarcastic, nor am I mocking anyone, I am stating an observation.
I am puzzled by the "GT 1050M is not competitive today"? What does that even mean?
You are moving goal posts. Your parent clearly specified long-term stability and lack of repairs. Granted not all laptops are that durable. But many are. I have a pile of old laptops, one I clearly remember using it as a daily driver for development in the interval of 12 to 10 years ago. Just ran it yesterday, wanted to see if I can put it in a homemade computing cluster. Worked fine after being battered with Fold@Home for 12 hours.
You did admit your bias, for which I am grateful. But admitting it or not, let's recognize it's still making people prone to judging from a filter bubble perspective. Barely any dev cares about GPU performance being competitive today. I am a fairly average dev and I and my kind care that the laptop can drive one 4K screen at 60Hz and that's it.
Sure , "sustain" is subjective. If you're sticking to Arch Linux, programming VIM, and browsing docs for 20 years, you'd get more value out of one good base over any potential upgrades. But that doesn't seem to be the world we live in, hardware or software wise. We don't really build laptops like we would fridges, and the former has a lot more moving parts regardless.
>But admitting it or not, let's recognize it's still making people prone to judging from a filter bubble perspective.
Sure. My other opinion to emphasize is that I don't think Framework is trying to aim for the average user. Nor even average dev. If you're questioning why you not buy some $600-1000 range laptop,or why you need a 5090 at all, you 99% don't really need the flexibility of a modular laptop.
On top of that, the average dev could (or at least, used to until recently) also afford a brand new replacement laptop, so they probably aren't as cost conscious nor as specs demanding as a game Dev like me living in a boom bust cycle (and it's pretty bust right). I'm around that time considering an upgrade and I'd much rather throw down $600 to just slap in a new GPU like I would in a desktop, instead of another $2000+.
> That's one of the best idea they have! You might have bought a laptop with 4 USB ports 5 years ago, only to realize you'd be so much happier with two USB-A. Or you realize you never ever use the SD Card slot. Well, you'd fix that easily on a Framework, not on any other laptop.
With all due respect -- meh.
I have a fairly old-ish laptop that I am not bothered to upgrade because a Ryzen 5500U is super capable to this day (and I don't do local LLMs) and it has a 10Gbps USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, and a USB 3.0 Type-A port. And an SD card reader.
I bought a hub. I put the laptop on a stand and plug its Type-C 10Gbps slot in the hub. Job done.
All this clamoring about being able to replace ports surely resonates with many people but to this day I don't view it as a true advantage. If you have to carry your laptop to a dedicated office, a stand and a hub are table stakes anyway. And that's not even touching a proper big display, keyboard and a mouse.
And furthermore, if making the ports flexible leads to too many design compromises then to me that means that I am making a bad deal.
I am periodically inspecting Framework laptops and I still find them lacking. Their appeal to tinkerers has IMO peaked and they should pivot to another pitch or they might not survive. Though I really, really hope they do. We need the competition.
I’d be better off for my work laptop with an even smaller cube that was built expecting a hub to be plugged in. No monitor, keyboard or mouse. I don’t think the keyboard and monitor on it have ever been used outside of diagnosing why the hub isn’t working.
Yeah, that too. And AFAIK many devs do that, they buy mini PCs that are very generously specced and just carry them between home and office, usually plugging every periphery needed (display, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet) by just plugging one high-speed port from the box PC to the hub.
I have two dongles for the wireless connectivity of both, and the choice is between sticking both in a dock and bring the same huge dock every single place I go, or move them from dock to dock as needed.
Having two USB-A would mean I stick them on the machine itself and never think about it anymore. Then if they could completely disappear inside the port extensions it would be a dream.
TBH I wouldn't be using the Framework as my primary work laptop either way, use cases are very limited and I already have the power and modularity needed with the Z13, but as a personal laptop for way wider use cases it ticks all the right boxes. If only it shipped outside of US and EU.
I understand. I have a mini hub, something like 10x4x1 cm. Works fine for me and it even also has Ethernet.
As mentioned, I'm sure Ftamework has valid usages. To me they command a much higher price premium than I'm comfortable with paying for those valid usages however.
I do love and want a libre booting stack. To me _that_ is the really good stuff. But they need to chill on prices.
You are so quickly accepting a wild assumption -- that all 3 GPU major producers will exit the market. The "memory cartel" bets on people being impatient and COVID has shown that people will just wait out the terrible GPU prices and come back to buy when the prices are reasonable again.
That cartel is imply flying high right now, convinced they got the market by the balls.
They don't. Just give it most of 2026 and you'll see.
I guess time will tell, will it? Your sarcastic remark does not bear any prophetic value.
They can act as monopolist as they want. They can try anything and cackle maniacally at their amazing business acumen all they want.
Turns out, total addressable market is not infinite. Turns out people don't want to spend on RAM as much as they would on a used car. How shocking! And I am completely sure that yet again the MBAs would be unprepared for these grand revelations, like they are, EVERY time.
Still, let us wait and see. Most of us are not in a rush to build a gaming machine or a workstation next month or else puppies will start dying.
I am pretty sure the same people now rubbing hands and believing they have found the eternal gold, will come back begging and pleading for our measly customer dollars before not too long.
Huh? Only thing I noticed during COVID was a few GPUs and some HDDs getting insanely expensive. Surprise surprise, not even 18 months later (I think more like 14 on my local market) the sellers finally got it through their thick skulls that economy is not what you see in simulations and that 95% of people absolutely will not pay ~$4000 for an RTX 3090 / 4090. And similar for the 18TB HDDs.
I am not saying you are wrong but here in Eastern Europe, while we did suffer the price hikes (and are suffering those of the DDR5 RAM now as well), the impact was minimal. People just holed up, said "the market's crazy right now, let's wait it out", and shrugged. And lo and behold, successfully wait it out they did.
As I mentioned in another comment in this thread, I highly doubt high RAM prices will survive even to 2027. Sure a good amount of stores and suppliers will try to hold on to the prices with a death grip... but many stores and vendors and suppliers hate stale stock. And some other new tech will start coming out. They would not be able to tolerate shelves full of merchandise at prices people don't want to buy at.
They absolutely _will_ budge.
I predict that by July/August 2026 some price decreases will start. They are likely to be small -- no more than 15% IMO -- but they will start.
The current craze of "let's only produce and sell to the big boys" has happened before, happens now, and will happen again. I and many others don't believe the hysteric "the market will never be the same again after" narrative either.
For 24 years of career I've met the grand total of _two_ such. Both got fired not even 6 months after I got in the company, too.
Who's naive here?
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