I guess this is as good a thread as any to ask what the current meta is for agentic programming (in my case, as applied to data engineering). There are all these posts that make it to the front page talking about productivity gains but very few of them actually detail the setup that's working for the author, just which model is best.
I guess it's like asking for people's vim configs, but hey, there are at least a few popular posts mainly around git/vim/terminal configs.
In my opinion no frontier model is the best at everything, especially if you're having to catch it up with pre-existing information about your project or an esoteric scripting language, that being said, with Cursor you can try out all of the popular available models and get a feel for which do better with which tasks, in my experience - Codex is a okay model but use light thinking if you value your time, Gemini 3 flash is where its been at for me recently if I need to do big changes I go to that, And cursors model composer is good for making plans or doing refactors / making rules. Cursor gives you tools to make prompting feel like less of a repetition game, so you worry more about the task at hand and its been super efficient for me. I don't use proper version control so the fact it saves a history of every files dif's, and you can jump back easily in chats and regress the code base is the game changer.
I push most work into chat interface (attach full codebase as a single file, paste in specs, describe what I want), then copy the tasklist from chat into codex. This is to reduce codex token usage to avoid breaching weekly limits. I'd use a more agent-heavy process if I didn't care about cost.
There more stuff in mine, but at the top of my ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md file, I have:
## Important Instructions
- update todo.md as items are completed
**Commit to git after making code changes.** Check `git status` first - only commit if there are actual changes:
```bash
# If not in a git repository, initialize it first:
git init
# Then commit changes:
git add <FILES_UPDATED>
# Be surgical - add only the changes you just made.
git commit -m "Description of changes"
This lets me have bite-sized git commits that I can marshall later, rather than having to wrangl git myself.
> now that he's gone we need more checks and balances
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
I had a Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro and picked it over the contemporary Pixel 4. At the time, I was extremely unimpressed with the offerings from Google or Samsung (I've always been on Android so didn't consider the iPhone) and started looking to Chinese OEMs. They had a wide variety of features and build quality. Some were cheap but some, like the one I chose, felt quite premium, had all the latest features (in some cases better than the Pixel), etc. It eventually got replaced by a Pixel 8 Pro but I would try it again.
I don't think I'm saying every Chinese OEM makes phones on par with iPhone or Pixel, but as with any market with multiple options, some are good, some are not so good. There also seems to be this weird anti-China sentiment that appears whenever these phones come up and I think it'd be a more interesting discussion if we focused on the hardware/software instead of country of origin (not saying that that's the case here, it's just been my experience in the past).
> It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval
Then how is it being reflected in Congress? Where are the Republicans speaking loudly on behalf of their dissatisfied constituents and voting on bills accordingly? We shouldn't have to wait every two years for a midterms or general election for the negative approval rating to make itself known, politicians can choose any time to act in a way that shows they're listening to their constituents.
they're basically fucked. they can't turn against Leader, because their base would abandon them immediately. But they desperately wish they could hold him back, because they are well aware they are going to get creamed in November.
as far as "bills", there's no bills because that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).
> their base would abandon them immediately...they are going to get creamed in November.
These seem contradictory. So they risk losing their voters if they oppose Trump, but also know voters will vote them out?
>that's up to Mike Johnson who is a super loyalist. His district is very safe (Cook R+26).
That's part of why we've had so many forced votes around Johnson.
And I guess we'll see in Novemeber which branch is true. Either the R's are safe and the voter base is strong/popular enough to keep them in, or they are actually unpopular and at best scared of Trump (and at worst, super loyalist) and they will go down with the ship.
their base alone is not big enough to give them electoral victory. they always need more. but they need the base too. Because of Trump's lawlessness, they can't have both, hence you see a lot of retirements etc. this year.
I guess it would be a major step towards civil war, but I wonder if states have the right to protect their residents from unlawful conduct by federal law enforcement. ICE has established a clear pattern of behavior in the last year that should remove any assumption they are acting lawfully (and federal judges have told them as much).
Unfortunately, that path back for Germany required holding those responsible accountable, in some cases fatally so. I don't see that happening here. Nothing will prevent or dissuade Trump's political allies from continuing his movement. Yes they may lose an election here or there, but I don't see any indication that MAGA is anywhere close to becoming politically toxic. Until a post-WWII style reckoning can be had, I am not optimistic that reputational repair can happen.
> Yes they may lose an election here or there, but I don't see any indication that MAGA is anywhere close to becoming politically toxic.
I think we're on the cusp of it right now. The ICE murders make it more and more untenable and indefensible for the average American to defend without sounding crazy. But even if this doesn't do it, or an invasion of Greenland somehow doesn't do it, the big question will be: can MAGA even survive as a movement without Trump?
> Until a post-WWII style reckoning can be had, I am not optimistic that reputational repair can happen.
I fully agree. A third Reconstruction is needed in this country.
Not a lawyer, but I've been thinking a lot about under which conditions stand your ground laws might apply to people defending themselves against law enforcement officers. The power balance is still such that most people won't shoot at a police (or ICE) officer, so I don't think it's likely to happen, but there is already legal precedent[1] regarding it.
I’m actually somewhat surprised that one of the masked, badgeless officers hasn’t been shot yet. So many of the actions look like a cartel kidnapping and some of them are happening in states with stand your ground laws where the major factor would be whether the person felt threatened.
If nobody is enforcing the law, then they have the power to do whatever the administration is allowing them to do, and at this point, that seems to include everything up to and including murder.
Yeah, though who would enforce those laws? At this point you have the head of DHS stating at press conferences that she's directing ICE to disregard federal court rulings.
What kind of democracy do Venezuelans want and will it be the same kind of democracy Trump wants to install? What if they want a democracy that continues to be friendly towards Cuba and wary of the US? Will Trump accept that?
edit: this comment made before two threads were consolidated. Original thread titled "Explosions reported in Venezuelan capital Caracas"
While I agree that "hypocrisy" isn't the right word here, I see where OP is coming from.
At least in American media, the use of passive voice (or as I've heard it called sometimes "exonerative voice") often obfuscates or otherwise provides cover for authorities. For example, "Tower collapses after missile strike" and "Man dies after being struck by bullet during arrest" are both technically true and yet also leave out important context (the country who fired the missile, the person who fired the gun and why).
Even if this headline is appropriate for now, it's not surprising that there should be questions over how it's worded.
I guess it's like asking for people's vim configs, but hey, there are at least a few popular posts mainly around git/vim/terminal configs.
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