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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 16h

Darn. I should have worn my "assume all women are technical and can breathe fire" t-shirt.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 22h

The full set of slides is here: hollycummins.com/quarkus-ridi...

Six and a half ridiculous things to do with Quarkus - Holly Cummins

Let’s abuse the tools! Everyone knows Quarkus is computationally efficient, expressive, and rock-solid for production. But did you know that…

hollycummins.com

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 22h

I didn't have a chance to show this (generated in 13ms with a quarkus + picocli) in my #Devoxx talk:

A grumpy cat meme saying "I ate a Devoxx sandwich/It was awful"

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 7d

Fascinating pointer from @kevlin.bsky.social and James Lewis: cepr.org/voxeu/column...
"[Professions using AI] worked roughly 3.15 hours more per week in the post-ChatGPT period. When AI complements human labour rather than replacing it, the process makes each hour of work more valuable."

#GOTOConf

As AI’s power grows, so does our workday

Technological progress is typically expected to lighten the burden of work. But as artificial intelligence has been integrated into workplaces, early evidence suggests a paradox: instead of reducing workloads, many AI-equipped employees are busier than ever. This column examines the relationship between AI exposure, the length of the workday, time allocation, and worker satisfaction. Though AI-driven automation and delegation allow workers to complete the same tasks more efficiently, the authors find that employees in AI-exposed occupations are working longer hours and spending less time on socialisation and leisure.

cepr.org

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 9d

It's even funnier on a smaller model:

Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 9d

I just tried to reproduce @janelleshane.com's brilliant "make an LLM apologise for suggesting a giraffe as CEO" experiment. It 100% worked on Ollama.

Which is bad, because when I read it I did an involuntary shriek of laughter, and woke a sleeping puppy, and now I won't be able to do more work.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 10d

As if you didn't have enough reasons to dislike commuting ... 😔

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 11d

InfoQ have published "The Efficiency Paradox," complete with transcript.
Apparently I said things like:
- "Am I optimizing for the right thing, or should I maybe be just a little bit more jellyfish?"
- "If you do the same experiment to your stool, it's much less cruel"
www.infoq.com/presentation...

The Efficiency Paradox and How to Save Yourself and the World

Holly Cummins discusses how to eliminate waste in software development. She shares strategies like "LightSwitchOps" and build-time initialization to improve machine efficiency. She explains how these ...

www.infoq.com

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 13d

Expected: is "Hello from Quarkus REST"
Actual: , Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., [many more Skibidis]., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi., Skibidi.. This demo is dog water.
😳

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 14d

There's no sense crying over spilled milk, but spilled coffee?

That's *definitely* worth crying over.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 15d

Switching to paying by dry weight eliminated the whole cycle of "farmer spends money to increase water content of potatoes" followed by "Walkers spends money to dry out potatoes". Reduced costs for both sides, reduced carbon footprint – double-double win.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 15d

When Walkers analysed the carbon footprint of their crisp production, they discovered a big cost in drying out potatoes. Why were the potatoes wet? They paid farmers by wet weight, which created an incentive for farmers to increase humidity.
Solution? Pay by dry weight. 🧵

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Reposted by Holly Cummins

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 17d

The even more unbelievable crime fact (which I learned relatively recently) is that burglary has fallen by more than 90% since the 1990s.

Did anyone notice? Nope. Does anyone believe it? Nope. But is is true? It is!

Tom Clark @tom-clark.bsky.social · 17d

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds

open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

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Reposted by Holly Cummins

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 17d

It's absolutely astonishing: In just about 13 years, Norway has skyrocketed from virtually no sales of zero-emission battery electric vehicles to nearly 100% of all new passenger car purchases.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · 17d

*Lots* of goodness ⬇️
www.infoq.com/podcasts/neu...

"Context switching is going to impair your decision-making. So maybe don't make any big business-critical decisions if you have nine hours of meetings back-to-back because you're going to probably do a suboptimal choice making in that context"

The Myth of 100% Utilization: The Neuroscience of Productive Teams

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Shannon Mason about optimizing team productivity by understanding the neuroscience behind cognitive load, distinguishing betw...

www.infoq.com

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 10

If you haven't seen it, I recommend @dylanbeatt.ie's great talk on this subject: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o32O...

Email vs Capitalism, or, Why We Can't Have Nice Things by Dylan Beattie

YouTube video by Devoxx

www.youtube.com

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 10

"Octopus-themed crafting event."

That's, um, specialized. But amazing.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 10

Portuguese water dog. Although (same as yours!) rocks are her second favourite food. I'm beginning to question everything I thought I knew about natural selection.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 10

And [thinks hard about how twins work] happy birthday to *you*, @sharatchander.bsky.social 🎂

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 9

It's a common myth that dogs are meat-eaters. Based on observation of my puppy, their favourite food is rose bushes.

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Reposted by Holly Cummins

Artem Zakharchenko @kettanaito.com · Sep 1

I want as many developers as possible to experience the joy of refactoring their code when they have a good test suite by their side.

It's infectious. You'd want that feeling all the time.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 1

Zombie applications are a big problem, but zombie libraries are bad too. Not sorting out CI and update automation leaves apps vulnerable to security vulnerabilities, but it also leaves them vulnerable to bad, expensive, planet-hurting,performance: thenewstack.io/outdated-pyt...

Outdated Python Versions Cost Companies Millions

Running older versions goes beyond being a technical debt problem; it's a financial hemorrhage bleeding out organizations’ cloud bills.

thenewstack.io

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 1

Past me submitted an abstract for Devoxx promising six labour-intensive demos, including this, totally sensible, demo: “Benchmark an application against a grapefruit, because metric units aren’t tasty”.

Abstract got accepted. Current me is NOT IMPRESSED with past me.

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Holly Cummins @hollycummins.com · Sep 1

Ooh, cool, I did not!

Reposted by Holly Cummins

GOTO Conferences @gotocon.com · Aug 29

🎙️ On today’s #GOTOpodcast, @trishagee.bsky.social & @charleshumble.bsky.social unpack Professional Skills for Software Engineers:

• Why “soft skills” aren’t soft
• Communication that drives products
• Networking that opens doors

🎧 gotopia.tech/podcast

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