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Writing toy software is a joy

blog.jsbarretto.com

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Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#111

Post by lillecarl »

dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

I do this. But the killer usecase for me is writing all boilerplate and implementing some half-working stuff keeps my attention on the issue which makes me able to complete more complex things.

A recent example is when I implemented a (Kubernetes) CSI driver that makes /nix available in a container so you can run an empty image and skip a lot of infra to manage.

I talked to it a bit and eventually it wrote a Nix derivation that runs the CSI codegen for Python and packages it so I could import it. Then I asked it to implement the gRPC interface it had generated and managed to get a "Hello World' when mounting this volume (just an empty dir). I also asked it to generate the YAML for the StorageClass, CSIDriver, Deployment and DaemonSet.

So LLM left me with a CSI driver that does nothing in Python (rather than Go which is what everything Kubernetes is implemented in) that I could then rewrite to run a Nix build and copy storepaths into a folder that's mounted into the container.

Sure implementing a gRPC interface might not be the hardest thing in hindsight, but I've never done it before and it's now a fully functional(ish) implementation of what i described.

It even managed to switch gRPC implementations because the Python one was funky with protoc versions in Nix(Python bundles the grpc codegen it's so stupid) so i asked it to do the same thing for grpclib instead which worked.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#112

Post by zffr »

roughly wrote: post #11

One of the best things that I’ve done for myself, career-wise, came during a 6-month sabbatical between jobs. I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to do, but I kept finding myself stymied by scope creep - when you don’t have any constraints, it’s hard to decide how big a project should be, and the projects would grow to these massive unfinishable beasts. I decided to constrain myself to one week per project - what…

Out of curiosity, how did you end up with 6 months off between jobs?

I would love the opportunity to take ~6 months off, but I feel scared that if I just quit, it might take me a longer time to find a job again.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#113

Post by rokkamokka »

snarf21 wrote: post #87
josefresco wrote: post #80

Vibe coding via Claude has re-ignited my passion for fun, side programming projects. After a few false starts, I figured out the tooling, processes and in just a few weeks I've built several apps and I'm having new ideas consistently: -Family calendar/weather dashboard -Bluesky reader that allows you to hide posts you've "seen" -Work PM dashboard to make time tracking more gamified and dare I say... fun? -Chrome Redd…

I struggle with Claude fixing a bug and not giving me the updated output. Like explicitly having to ask it for the fix 6 times while it insists the update is in the output. Did you ever have that happen?

Personally, I just fix the bug myself. It's way less aggravating for me than prompting back and forth many times.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#114

Post by rokkamokka »

polytely wrote: post #89
dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

It is nice when it works, but sometimes I run into trouble where I don't know a right word to put in the prompt to get the answer I'm looking for. I've recently been playing around with Raku and had a really cryptic type signature error and Claude was of absolutely no help because it didn't know about the interaction of Signature literals and 'Slurpy' sigils in method parameters. Only when I learned about it and incl…

To be fair, this isn't a new problem - many times I've wanted to find something but not even known what to Google for.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#115

Post by roughly »

zffr wrote: post #112
roughly wrote: post #11

One of the best things that I’ve done for myself, career-wise, came during a 6-month sabbatical between jobs. I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to do, but I kept finding myself stymied by scope creep - when you don’t have any constraints, it’s hard to decide how big a project should be, and the projects would grow to these massive unfinishable beasts. I decided to constrain myself to one week per project - what…

Out of curiosity, how did you end up with 6 months off between jobs? I would love the opportunity to take ~6 months off, but I feel scared that if I just quit, it might take me a longer time to find a job again.

I'm single, rent controlled, and was working at a FAANG-ish company.

The fear was real, for sure, but it honestly made a huge, huge difference for both my mental health and my employability afterwards. I also got to spend some time figuring out what I actually wanted to be doing, so I had a much clearer picture of where my skills and interests aligned after, which helped the search as well.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#116

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

bitwize wrote: post #90

Ever since Nintendo let the mask slip and got up to their old evil bullshit with the Switch 2 launch, I decided to dust off the solution my teenage self came up with: I'll just play the video games I write. Even if they're small and amateurish, they're worlds and experiences crafted personally for me. And I don't have to pay a cent for them, let alone put up with "key carts", DRM bullshit, or we-can-remotely-brick-yo…

What sort of evil bullshit did Nintendo get up to with the Switch 2 launch? I don't follow gaming news.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#117

Post by z0r »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #62
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who am I impressing at the gym? The weights have already been lifted

So you don't look like sh* that's more impressive than cranking out code that absolutely no one cares about. Especially things that have been done 100s of times.

Please work out. But also please write software if you want to improve your skills.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#118

Post by eliasdorneles »

sowbug wrote: post #107
eliasdorneles wrote: post #93

I quite enjoy the spirit of the article, and I believe joy in programming has become even more important in the AI agent coding age we're leaving. However, am I the only one finding those time estimates way too short? I'm not the fastest programmer on Earth, but I'm not the slowest either, and I think most of those projects would take me a lot more time than those estimates, specially if I'd be working only 2-3 hours…

Your project is vastly more specified than a toy project, because it has a real customer (you) who will expect it to work after it ships. That expectation is what separates toys from real tools. I bet you could write a word processor in an hour. It might only add or delete one character at a time (no selections). It might persist only to a hard-coded "output.txt" filename. You might have to kill the process because t…

Fair point, my example was indeed "shipped to production" and may not compare a throwaway static generator toy project.

I still think those estimates are off, because I think many of those projects would need significant research and learning time, possibly more than actually coding -- not to mention time spent troubleshooting when something goes wrong.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#119

Post by teaearlgraycold »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #44
dakiol wrote: post #39

> Perhaps you’re a user of LLMs. I get it, they’re neat tools. They’re useful for certain kinds of learning. But I might suggest resisting the temptation to use them for projects like this. Knowledge is not supposed to be fed to you on a plate Am I the only one using LLMs as if they were a search engine? So before LLMs I was searching on Google things like "pros cons mysql mongodb". I would read the official document…

> Now with LLMs, I simply prompt the same with a little bit more of context "pros and cons of using mysql vs mongodb when storing photos. Link references". In near future, companies will probably be able to pay lots of money to have their products come up better in the comparison. LLMs are smart enough to make the result seem "organic" -- all verifiable information will be true and supported by references, it will on…

They’re already talking about llm search optimization as the new SEO.

Re: Writing toy software is a joy

#120

Post by socalgal2 »

bee_rider wrote: post #36
Swizec wrote: post #3

Toy Software is a lot like working on your bike/car/boat/whatever. Working on your bike is fun. Working on the bike you need to ride to work tomorrow is stressful. I miss writing toy software. It’s fun. But inevitably I want to use said software and that’s where the trouble starts. You find all the bugs and none of the time to fix them.

I dunno. Working on a bike you want to use to ride to work could be stressful if it is your only bike, you need it to get to work, and your manager will be really mad if you don’t show up to work one day. If there was any slip available it wouldn’t be so bad. Actually, I really like this analogy because 1) We can’t really work on non-trivial fixes for our cars because they are too complex 2) We’ve totally structured…

> If we really cared about “uptime” of employees, we’d all be living in bicycle range of our jobs

And then reality hits. You're married and your partner's job is on the other side of the city. You just bought and house and now you want to switch jobs but you'd be limited to only jobs in biking distance. eTc....

I bike to work (was 4 miles, now 2), but it's unrealistic to expect people to be in bicycle range of their jobs.

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