Scott Smitelli
scottsmitelli.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Scott Smitelli writes satirical and personal essays about software engineering work, hiring, on-call duty, and tech culture.
What HN saysCommenters praise his piece mocking the em-dash-means-LLM heuristic as a brilliant skewering, and cite his allegory about hiring.
26HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
26stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
7 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1If it cites em dashes as proof, it came from a tool5 people · 12 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 2The ideal candidate will be punched in the stomach3 people · 394 points · first shared 2025 · 252 comments on HN
- 3Altoids by the Fistful2 people · 274 points · first shared 2025 · 140 comments on HN
- 4Take this on-call rotation and shove it2 people · 191 points · first shared 2025 · 148 comments on HN
- 5This is my dead grandmother's Special Day2 people · 19 points · first shared 2024 · 5 comments on HN
- 6Et tu, Panera?2 people · 6 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 7The "No, but" Engineer2 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 8You Don't Have To2 people · 5 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 9Everybody Imitates Hypnotoad (History of and Recreating the Hypnotoad Sound)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 10Shut Up and Dance2 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 11Cosmore: Reconstruction of the source code of Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure2 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12The Hidden Worlds of the Klein Tools TI250 Thermal Imager1 people · 245 points · first shared 2022 · 73 comments on HN
- 13Large Chainsaw Model1 people · 36 points · first shared 2024 · 22 comments on HN
- 14An Unwilling Participant in Your Smart Fantasy1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Dirty, disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden boids. § Scott Smitelli1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
thundergolfer · 2026-04-20
This article is a brilliant skewering of the 'em dash means LLM' heuristic as a broken trick deployed by those too-clever-by-half.
1. https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/em-dash-tool/
alt187 · 2026-03-07
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/em-dash-tool/
Discerning readers do not stop at the em dash. At least, I don't.
spicyusername · 2025-10-20
I developed a monstrous stress cough, which sometimes made me double over and vomit. Reminds me of the all too relatable allegory "The Ideal Candidate Will Be Punched in the Stomach"
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/ideal-candidate/
int_19h · 2025-10-01
Even if it's not you, it's still ethically questionable. It won't be the manager in question who will have to deal with the fallout, even in the long run - it will be another software engineer. It would ultimately contribute to this:
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/altoids-by-the-fistful/
desertmonad · 2025-03-29
Born in 79 so I'm either X or millenial - don't really care. I'm nostalgic about the times when tech was sought out and less pervasive. This recent article[1] really made me nostalic about the "goold ole days".
The "boring" days.
Anyways, I feel less sorry for myself and more empathy for younger generations.
Growing up has always been challenging, before school shootings, and online bullying..
Now you can't escape the call(s) without it implicitly being interpretted as ghosting.
/r
[1]https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/take-oncall-and-shove-it/
bisrig · 2025-02-25
For some reason, my first thought when I saw this was to think back to this other recent post: https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/ideal-candidate/ I feel like these are linked in some hard to describe way.
LowLevelMahn · 2025-02-22
so Spice86 helps in translating realmode 16bit DOS code into similar assembler looking like C# code - which got the exact same semantic and behavior but its pure C# - you can then use the normal Visual Studio debugger/IDE to port or extend the code - that is a huge benefit over beeing trapped using >30 years old DOS debuggers, compilers and IDEs for this already very hard work
its to ease the process of rewriting assembler code into high level code by having a highlevel-assembler-code in between
Spice86 is not intended for Binary exact reversing, like with https://www.scottsmitelli.com/projects/cosmore/ or Duke Nukem, ZZT or F15 Eeagle reversing project - these are using the same compiler and try to replicate every byte of the original exe - to prevent any reversing bugs at first - but this is the hardest form of reversing and takes easily years of hard work